After returning home from work at an automotive battery recycling plant in northern Mexico one evening in 2019, Azael Mateo González Ramírez said he felt dizzy, aching bones and a hoarse throat. Then there were stomach pains, he said, followed by bouts of diarrhea.
The plant in Monterrey where he works processes used car batteries, many from the United States, extracting lead as part of the process. Mr. González, 39, stacks batteries near large containers of lead dust.
Mr. González said medical tests showed high levels of lead in his body; Experts agree that no level of lead is safe and that over time it can lead to nerve and gastrointestinal damage.
His supervisor at the facility, he said, insists he continues to work.
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 shipments of used batteries. US applications to Mexico, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
The battery surge from the United States came as a report released Monday showed significantly high levels of lead at many facilities, leaving workers vulnerable to toxic metals that pose serious risks to human health.
Soil samples taken outside six battery recycling plants in Monterrey in 2021 showed lead levels far above the legal limit in Mexico, as reported by the International Knowledge Occupation, a health nonprofit organization. San Francisco-based public health and Casa Cem, a Mexican environmental group.
While Mexican regulations stipulate that facilities must remove lead from contaminated soil and could be closed for violating environmental standards, Mexican government records show in recent years , very few factories are closed.
Mexico’s lax environmental laws and even looser enforcement encourage US companies to ship used car batteries to the country, according to labor rights and occupational health experts. cheaper labor and weaker unions.
“Workers in these factories are being poisoned day in and day out without them being aware of it,” said Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of the International Organization for Professional Knowledge. “They have no training, no equipment, and are not operated in adequately ventilated facilities.”
Over the past 10 years, the number of automotive batteries shipped to Mexico from the United States has increased by nearly 20%, according to EPA records included in the study by the two groups. In 2021, more than 75% of all US used batteries were exported there in 2021, EPA filings show.
At recycling plants, lead is removed from batteries, crushed, melted and turned into ingots that are used to make new batteries.
The world’s largest car battery maker, Clarios, based in Milwaukee, Wis., bought two plants in Monterrey in 2019 and reported levels of lead in the soil outside of its facilities. they are much higher than the legal limit in Mexico of 800 parts per battery. million. (The samples in the report were tested and analyzed by an independent laboratory.)
At one Clarios plant, one soil sample showed lead levels of 15,000 parts per million, while at another Clarios facility, one soil sample showed 3,800 parts per million.
Clarios closed its last U.S.-based auto battery recycling facility, in South Carolina, in 2021, following a series of EPA fines for violations related to air pollution and waste. hazardous and improper handling of lead batteries.
Shipping the battery to Mexico will save the company 25% on recycling costs, according to Clarios filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“It certainly saves money if you don’t have to worry about upgrading your facility to meet the standards that are in place in the US,” said Mr. Gottesfeld said.
A spokesperson for Clarios said the company’s facilities use “strict safety procedures and we provide our employees with the most up-to-date protective equipment.”
“We work with local health, safety and environmental authorities to ensure our facilities are not only compliant, but also setting standards for compliance,” said spokeswoman Ana Margarita Garza-Villarreal. our industry”.
Although Mexico’s federal environment agency has the power to close factories that violate environmental standards, agency documents show that officials temporarily shut down parts of the battery recycling plant for just four days. times because of air and soil pollution in the past 23 years.
Mexican law requires factories to have filtration systems in place to eliminate the spread of lead dust, and companies must provide workers with face masks. However, some filtration systems are outdated or broken, mask wearing is not strictly enforced, and lead dust containers in work areas are not properly ventilated, according to interviews with The Company. Times with 15 current and former workers at battery recycling plants in Ho Chi Minh City. Monterrey.
Óscar Nuñez, 32, said he worked at a recycling plant owned by a Mexican company, where the ventilation wasn’t working properly and lead dust seeped into his gloves.
Mr Nuñez, who quit his job after three months due to concerns about his health, said: “It was like a prison.
Elizabeth Coronado is a nurse at a plant in Monterrey owned by Grupo Gonher where González used to work and is responsible for monitoring the health of workers in areas of high lead exposure.
Of the roughly 300 workers whose blood samples she tests every three months, she says a third of them have 50 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood in their system. According to a battery trade group, the average for battery recycling workers in the United States in 2022 is 9 micrograms.
Lead experts in the United States say workers with lead levels of up to 30 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood should be removed from the metal source.
“It is alarming,” said Ms. Coronado, who left the factory in 2021 and now works at a local medical clinic.
Ms. Coronado said the company often supplies workers with multivitamins and high-lead milk, both of which experts say will do little to improve lead exposure. Instead, they say, the most effective treatments include giving patients drugs that specifically target lead in the body and remove it.
Grupo Gonher did not respond to a request for comment.
Michael Kosnett, an expert on lead exposure in the workplace and an associate professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, said that while no amount of lead in the body is safe, levels like those in found in workers at the Gonher plant can have serious consequences. .
“That should not be tolerated,” he said. “Among the most significant long-term side effects associated with blood lead levels in adolescents and older is the documented increased risk of death from heart disease.”
As for Mr. González, he said he had suggested closing the lead dust bins. But his supervisor told him that was not a priority.
Mr. González said he was fired from the factory in 2021 because part of what the company told him was restructuring. He said that in his five years at the factory, he has never missed a day at work, and believes he was fired at least in part because of concerns he has repeatedly raised. about lead exposure.
Mr. González, who currently rents out musical equipment for private events, said friends who work at the recycling plant say little has changed.
“There’s a lot of venom there,” he said.
Chantal Flores and Lorena Ríos contributed reporting from Monterrey.
