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Recycling Lead for U.S. Car Batteries Is Poisoning People
Poisonous dust falls from the sky over the town of Ogijo, near Lagos, Nigeria. It coats kitchen floors, vegetable gardens, churchyards and schoolyards. The toxic soot billows from crude factories that recycle lead for American companies. With every breath, people inhale invisible lead particles and absorb them into their bloodstream. The metal seeps into their brains, wreaking havoc on their nervous systems. It damages livers and kidneys. Toddlers ingest the dust by crawling across floors, playgrounds and backyards, then putting their hands in their mouths.
Lead is an essential element in car batteries. But mining and processing it is expensive. So companies have turned to recycling as a cheaper, seemingly sustainable source of this hazardous metal. As the U.S. tightened regulations on lead processing to protect Americans over the past three decades, finding domestic lead became a challenge. So the auto industry looked overseas to supplement its supply. In doing so, car and battery manufacturers pushed the health consequences of lead recycling onto countries where enforcement is lax, testing is rare and workers are desperate for jobs.
Seventy people living near and working in factories around Ogijo volunteered to have their blood tested by The New York Times and The Examination, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health. Seven out of 10 had harmful levels of lead. Every worker had been poisoned. More than half the children tested in Ogijo had levels that could cause lifelong brain damage.
Baby Food Fears: Are Pesticides and Other Contaminants Posing Threats to Children?
From botulism spores in infant formula to arsenic and insecticides in baby food, concerns are swirling over contamination in foods marketed as essential nutrition for young children. A U.S. recall of infant formula tied to multiple cases of babies sickened with botulism has sparked fears in households around the country in recent weeks. But health and legal experts say other types of contaminants such as heavy metals and pesticides could be posing additional threats.
An analysis unveiled Tuesday by the public health watchdog Friends of the Earth said more than two dozen types of pesticides have been detected in “Good & Gather” baby food made and sold by Target. The analysis is the latest among many testing projects conducted in recent years showing the prevalence of pesticide residues in foods commonly fed to children and generally considered healthy.
The group said it found residues of 29 pesticides in Apple Fruit Puree and Pear Fruit Puree baby food, including 16 pesticides that are classified as “highly hazardous” to human or environmental health.
Ten of the pesticides detected are banned in the European Union, the report found, and eight are linked to hormone disruption, posing potential risks to brain development and a child’s immune system. Six of the pesticides found in the baby food are classified as “probable” or “likely” carcinogens by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to the report.
California Farms Applied Millions of Pounds of PFAS to Key Crops, Study Finds
California farms applied an average of 2.5M lb of PFAS “forever chemicals” per year on cropland from 2018 to 2023, or a total of about 15M lb, a new review of state records shows. The chemicals are added to pesticides that are sprayed on crops such as almonds, pistachios, wine grapes, alfalfa and tomatoes, the review of California department of pesticide regulation data found. The Environmental Working Group non-profit put together the report.
The risk for uptake of PFAS is likely higher in water-rich fruits and vegetables, because water attracts the chemicals, and research has shown PFAS may concentrate at dangerous levels in some produce. The chemicals also pollute water supplies and present a higher risk to the often low-income and Latino farm workers.
The review’s findings reveal an “obvious problem”, said Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice-president of California for EWG. “We know of every pound of forever chemicals presents a risk of contamination of our food, water and soil, so it doesn’t make sense to deliberately be spraying these on California’s food,” Del Chiaro said.
Agriculture Linked to Melanoma Cluster in Pennsylvania
A melanoma cluster found in the heart of Pennsylvania farm country has highlighted potential links between agriculture and skin cancer. Adults 50 and older living in a 15-county stretch of south-central Pennsylvania were 57% more likely to develop melanoma than people living elsewhere in the state, researchers reported Nov. 14 in the journal JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics.
The risk wasn’t limited to farm workers who spend their days toiling in the sun, either.
Risk was higher in both rural and metropolitan areas located near active farmland, and the risk remained even after researchers accounted for residents’ exposure to ultraviolet radiation. For the study, researchers analyzed five years of cancer registry data from 2017 through 2021 in Pennsylvania.
They found that counties in the melanoma clusters had more cultivated farmland — an average of 20% versus 7% for non-cluster counties. For every 10% in the amount of cultivated land in a region, melanoma cases rose by 14%, results show. Melanoma also coincided with more use of herbicides, researchers said, with an average 17% of herbicide-treated land in cluster counties versus less than 7% in non-cluster counties.
Every 9% increase in herbicide use corresponded to a 14% increase in melanoma cases, researchers said.
“Pesticides and herbicides are designed to alter biological systems,” senior researcher Eugene Lengerich, a professor of public health sciences at Penn State in State College, Pennsylvania said in a news release. “Some of those same mechanisms, like increasing photosensitivity or causing oxidative stress, could theoretically contribute to melanoma development.”
Georgia to Include Forever Chemicals in State Drinking Water Regulations
Savannah Morning News reported:
Last week, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division proposed a draft update to its Rules for Safe Drinking Water that includes two types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into its regulation of drinking water contaminants.
PFAS are a class of synthetic molecules known as “forever chemicals” designed to endure in the environment. They provide heat and chemical resistance and also disperse substances in fire-fighting foams, non-stick cookware, grease-resistant paper, fast food containers, shine-boosting shampoos, and more.
Manufactured by chemical companies since early 1940s, PFAS are now found at low levels both in the environment and in the blood of the general American population, confirmed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But they can accumulate in human bodies for years, and are listed by the National Institute of Health as responsible for liver damage, endocrine disruption, weakened immune systems and increased risk of cancers.
Nurdle Nightmare Brings Environmental and Economic Woes
Pesky plastic pellets have infested rivers and beaches along the Gulf Coast. They’re called nurdles, and while they’ve bedeviled environmental organizations for years, there are now fears that they could cause serious economic harm as well. The beads are used to make most plastic products. They’re made as part of a preproduction process at several facilities around the state and often end up escaping the factories that produce them, entering the environment. That puts more plastic in Texas waterways and in the animals that inhabit or depend them.
Recently, almost a dozen organizations — some of them activists, and others representing Gulf Coast tourism and fishing industries — have written a letter to Gov. Greg Abbot asking for his help on the matter. This time, it’s not just about the pollution; their appeal emphasizes the monetary impact Nurdles could have if the contamination continues.
Chris Gray is the Gulf Coast Reporter for Chron.com. He sat down with the Standard to talk about nurdles, where they come from, and what activists say could happen if they continue to proliferate.
