Old American car batteries are making Mexican workers sick

After returning home from his job at a car battery recycling plant in northern Mexico one afternoon in 2019, Azael Mateo González Ramírez said he felt dizzy, his bones ached and his throat was scratchy.

Then came stomach pain, she said, followed by bouts of diarrhea.

The Monterrey plant where he worked dealt with used car batteries, many from the United States, lead mining as part of the process. González, 39, stacked the batteries next to large containers of lead powder.

Medical tests, according to González, showed high levels of lead in his body; Experts agree that no level of lead is safe and over time it can cause lead neurological and gastrointestinal damage.

His supervisor insisted that he continue working.

The city of Monterey, a three-hour drive from Texas, has become the main source of used batteries of cars coming from the United States, with shipments of used American batteries to Mexico steadily growing over the past decade, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

The surge in batteries from the US comes as noted by a report released on Monday significantly elevated lead levels in many facilities, leaving workers exposed to a toxic metal that poses serious risks to human health.

Soil samples taken outside six battery recycling plants in Monterrey in 2022 revealed lead levels well above the legal limit in Mexico, according to the report by Occupational Knowledge International, a non-profit public health organization based in Mexico. environmental group.

Although Mexican regulations state that facilities must remove lead from contaminated soil and can be closed for violating environmental regulations, Mexican government records show that few plants have closed in recent years.

Mexico’s lax environmental laws and their even looser enforcement are encouraging US companies to discharge used car batteries in the country, where labor is cheaper and unions weaker, according to labor rights and occupational health experts. .

Workers in these plants are being poisoned day after day, often without even knowing it,” says Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International.

“They don’t receive proper training, don’t have the necessary equipment, and don’t operate in facilities with adequate ventilation.”

Over the past 10 years, the number of car batteries shipped to Mexico from the United States has increased grew nearly 20%according to EPA records included in the study for both groups.

In 2021, more than 75 percent of all used U.S. batteries were exported to that country, EPA records showed.

In recycling plants, lead is extracted from batteries, crushed, melted down and turned into ingots used to make new batteries.

The world’s largest auto battery maker, Milwaukee-based Clarios, bought two plants in Monterrey in 2019 and the report found levels of lead in the soil outside its facilities that were well above the legal limit. of Mexico by 800 parts per million.

(The samples in the report were tested and analyzed by an independent laboratory.)

At one Clarios facility, a soil sample showed lead levels of 15,000 parts per million, while at the other Clarios facility, a sample showed 3,800 parts per million of lead.

Clarios closed its last U.S. auto battery recycling facility, in South Carolina, in 2021 following a series of EPA fines for violations related to air pollution, hazardous waste, and improper transportation of lead-acid batteries. .

Shipping batteries to Mexico would save the company 25% en Laundering costs, according to a Clarios filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“There’s definitely a cost savings if you don’t have to worry about upgrading your facility to meet current U.S. standards,” Gottesfeld says.

A Clarios spokesperson said the company’s facilities use “strict safety protocols and we provide our employees with state-of-the-art protective equipment.”

“We work with local health, safety and environmental authorities to ensure our facilities are not only compliant, but are a benchmark for our industry,” said spokeswoman Ana Margarita Garza-Villarreal.

Although Mexico’s federal environment agency has the power to shut down facilities that don’t meet environmental standards, agency documents show that authorities have temporarily shut down parts of its battery recycling facilities just four times in the last 23 years for air and soil pollution.

Rules

Mexican law requires plants to have filter systems to eliminate the spread of lead dust, and companies must provide workers with masks.

But some filter systems are outdated or broken, mask wearing isn’t strictly enforced, and lead dust containers are in inadequately ventilated work areas, according to Times interviews with 15 current and old workers at recycling plants. batteries in Monterrey.

Óscar Nuñez, 32, testified that he worked in a recycling plant owned by a Mexican company where the ventilation was not working well and lead dust penetrated his gloves.

“It was like being in prison,” says Núñez, who resigned after three months for health reasons.

Elizabeth Coronado was a nurse at a Monterrey plant owned by Grupo Gonher, where González had worked, and was in charge of monitoring the health of workers in areas with high lead exposure.

Of the roughly 300 workers whose blood samples he tested every three months, he said one third of them had 50 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood in their system.

The average for battery recyclers in the United States in 2022 was 9 micrograms, according to a battery trade group.

Leading experts in the US say workers whose lead level reaches 30 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood should be away from the metal source.

“It’s alarming,” says Coronado, who left the plant in 2021 and now works at a local health clinic.

Coronado said the company typically supplied workers with high levels of lead multivitamins and milkneither of which experts say will do anything to improve lead exposure.

Instead, they say, the most effective treatments include giving patients drugs that specifically target the lead in the body and remove it.

The Gonher Group did not respond to a request for comment.

While no amount of lead in the body is safe, levels like those found in workers at the Gonher plant can have serious consequences, said Dr. Michael Kosnett, an expert on lead exposure in the workplace and an adjunct associate professor at the Colorado School of Public Health.

“It shouldn’t be tolerated,” he said.

“Among the most significant long-term adverse effects associated with blood lead at adolescent levels and above is a documented risk of death from heart disease.”

As for González, he said he had offered to cover the containers that contained lead powder. But her supervisor told her it wasn’t a priority.

González said he was fired from the plant in 2021 as part of what the company called a restructuring on him. In his five years at the plant, he had never missed a day of work, he said, and believes he was fired at least in part because of concerns he repeatedly raised about lead exposure.

González, who now works renting out stereos for private events, said friends who work at the recycling plant say little has changed.

“There’s a lot of hard feelings,” she said.

c.2023 The New York Times Society