From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Americans’ Old Car Batteries Are Making Mexican Workers Sick   
   By Steve Fisher, March 20, 2023, NY Times   
      
   After returning home from his job at a car battery recycling plant in northern   
   Mexico one evening in 2019, Azael Mateo González Ramírez said he felt dizzy,   
   his bones ‌ach‌ed and his throat was raspy. Then came ‌stomach pain, he   
   said, followed by    
   bouts of diarrhea.   
      
   The plant in Monterrey where he worked handled used car batteries, many from   
   the United States, extracting lead as part of the process. Mr. González, 39,   
   stacked the batteries, he said, near large containers of lead dust.   
      
   Medical tests, Mr. González said, showed high levels of lead in his body;   
   experts agree that no level of lead is safe and over time it can result in   
   neurological and gastrointestinal damage.   
      
   His superviso‌r at the facility, he said, insisted he keep working.   
      
   The city of Monterrey, a three-hour drive from Texas, has become the largest   
   source of used car batteries from the United States, with steady growth over   
   the past decade in the shipment of used American batteries to Mexico,   
   according to the U.S.    
   Environmental Protection Agency.   
      
   The increase in batteries from the United States comes as a report released   
   Monday found significantly high levels of lead at many facilities, leaving   
   workers vulnerable to a toxic metal that poses severe risks to human health.   
      
   Soil samples taken outside six battery recycling plants in Monterrey in 2022   
   revealed lead levels far above the legal limit in Mexico, according to the   
   report by Occupational Knowledge International, a San Francisco-based public   
   health nonprofit, and    
   Casa Cem, a Mexican environmental group.   
      
   While Mexico’s regulations stipulate that facilities must remove lead from   
   contaminated soil and can be shut down for violating environmental standards,   
   Mexican government records show that in recent years few plants have been   
   closed.   
      
   Mexico’s lax environmental laws and even more lax enforcement encourages   
   American companies to offload used car batteries to the country, wh‌ere   
   labor is cheaper and unions are weaker, according to experts in labor rights   
   and occupational health.   
      
   “Workers in these plants are being poisoned day in and day out, and often   
   without even their own knowledge of that,’’ said Perry Gottesfeld,   
   executive director of Occupational Knowledge International. “They don’t   
   get the training, they don’t    
   get the equipment and they don’t get to operate in facilities that have   
   adequate ventilation.”   
      
   Over the past 10 years the number of car batteries shipped to Mexico from the   
   United States has grown by nearly 20 percent, according to E.P.A. records   
   included in the study by the two groups. In 2021, more than 75 percent of all   
   used U.S. batteries were    
   exported there, E.P.A. records showed.   
      
   At recycling plants, lead is removed from batteries, ground up, melted and   
   turned into ingots that are used to make new batteries.   
      
   The world’s largest car battery ‌maker, Clarios, which is based in   
   Milwaukee, Wis., bought two ‌plants in Monterrey ‌in 2019, and the   
   ‌report found lead levels in soil outside ‌its facilities that were well   
   above the legal limit in Mexico of    
   800 parts per million. (The samples in the report were tested and analyzed by   
   an independent laboratory.)   
      
   At one Clarios plant, 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.-based car battery recycling facility, in South   
   Carolina, in 2021, following a series of ‌fines by the E.P.A. for violations   
   involving air pollution, hazardous waste and the improper transportation of   
   lead batteries.   
      
   Shipping batteries to Mexico would save the company 25 percent in recycling   
   costs, according to a filing by Clarios with the Securities and Exchange   
   Commission.   
      
   “Certainly there is cost savings if you don’t have to worry about   
   upgrading your facility to meet the standards that are in place in the   
   U.S.,” ‌‌Mr. Gottesfeld said.   
      
   A spokeswoman for Clarios said the company’s facilities use “strict safety   
   protocols and we provide our employees with state of the art protective safety   
   gear.”   
      
   “We work with local health, safety, and environmental authorities to ensure   
   our facilities are not only in compliance, but set the benchmark for our   
   industry,” said the spokeswoman, Ana Margarita Garza-Villarreal.   
      
   Though Mexico’s ‌federal ‌environmental ‌agency has the power to shut   
   down plants that violate environmental standards, agency documents show that   
   officials temporarily closed parts of battery recycling plants ‌just four   
   times for air and soil    
   contamination‌‌ in the past 23 years.   
      
   Mexican law requires plants to have filtration systems to eliminate the spread   
   of lead dust and companies must provide workers with face masks. But some   
   filter systems are outdated or break down, the wearing of face masks is not   
   strictly enforced and    
   lead dust containers are in work areas that are not properly ventilated,   
   according to interviews by The Times with 15 current and former workers at   
   battery recycling plants in Monterrey.   
      
   Óscar Nuñez, 32, said he worked at a recycling plant owned by a Mexican   
   company where the ventilation did not work well and lead dust penetrated his   
   gloves.   
      
   “It was like prison in there,” said Mr. Nuñez, who quit after three   
   months over concerns for his health.   
      
   Elizabeth Coronado‌ was a nurse at a Monterrey plant owned by Grupo Gonher,   
   where Mr. González had worked, and was responsible for monitoring the health   
   of workers in high lead exposure areas.   
      
   Of the ‌roughly 300 workers whose blood samples she tested every three   
   months, she said a third of them had ‌50 micrograms of lead per deciliter of   
   blood in their system. The average for battery recycling workers in the United   
   States in 2022 was nine    
   micrograms, according to a battery trade group.   
      
   Lead experts in the United States say workers whose lead level reaches 30   
   micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood should be removed from the source of   
   the metal.   
      
   “It’s alarming,” said Ms. Coronado, who left the plant in 2021 and now   
   works at a local health clinic.   
      
      
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