Recycling lead for US car batteries is poisoning people

While the US auto industry touts battery recycling as an environmental success story, Nigeria’s booming lead-recycling hubs reveal a grim, poisonous underbelly

Poisonous dust falls from the sky over the town of Ogijo, 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 United States 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.

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.

Dust and soil samples showed lead levels up to 186 times as high as what is generally recognized as hazardous. More than 20,000 people live within a mile of Ogijo’s factories. Experts say the test results indicate many of them are probably being poisoned.

Lead poisoning worldwide is estimated to cause far more deaths each year than malaria and HIV/AIDS combined. It causes seizures, strokes, blindness and lifelong intellectual disabilities. The World Health Organisation makes clear that no level of lead in the body is safe.

Factories in and around Ogijo recycle more lead than anywhere else in Africa. Manufacturers that use Nigerian lead make batteries for major carmakers and retailers such as Amazon, Lowe’s and Walmart.

The auto industry touts battery recycling as an environmental success story. Lead from old batteries, when recycled cleanly and safely, can be melted down and reused again and again with minimal pollution.

But companies have rejected proposals to use only lead that is certified as safely produced.

Battery makers rely on the assurances of trading companies that lead is recycled cleanly. These intermediaries rely on perfunctory audits that make recommendations, not demands.

The industry, in effect, built a global supply system in which everyone involved can say someone else is responsible for oversight.

Nigeria is among the fastest-growing sources of recycled lead for American companies.

Ogijo and the communities nearby make up the heart of the industry, home to at least seven lead recyclers. Two factories are near boarding schools. Another faces a seminary. Others are surrounded by homes, hotels and restaurants.

Among the largest and dirtiest lead recyclers in Ogijo is True Metals. It has supplied lead to factories that make batteries for Ford, General Motors, Tesla and other automakers, records show. True Metals did not respond to questions about its practices or the lead test results.

Most major car companies did not address the Times and Examination findings about tainted lead from Nigeria. Volkswagen and BMW said they would look into it. Subaru said it did not use recycled lead from anywhere in Africa.

Because the supply chain is opaque and diffuse, car companies and battery makers are unlikely to know the precise origins of the lead they use. They rely on international trading companies to supply it.

One such company, Trafigura, has sent recycled lead to U.S. companies from True Metals and six other Nigerian smelters in the past four years, records show. Last year, Trafigura reported $243 billion in revenue by trading oil, gas and metals worldwide.

Until recently, Trafigura’s Nigerian suppliers included one factory, Green Recycling Industries, that tried to live up to its name.

International experts from nonprofit research groups and the metals industry visited Green Recycling last year as part of an effort to strengthen Nigeria’s weak inspection of battery recyclers. The country has laws to protect the environment but struggles to enforce them.

The experts marveled at Green Recycling’s antipollution technology and the machinery that safely broke apart batteries.

“The equipment and recycling processes are significantly different and of a remarkably higher standard than observed in any other plant in Nigeria,” the experts wrote.

But operating cleanly put Green Recycling at a disadvantage. It had to make up for its high machinery costs by offering less money for dead batteries. Outbid by competitors with crude operations, Green Recycling had nothing to recycle.

Ali Fawaz, the company’s general manager, said his competitors were essentially making money by harming locals. “If killing people is OK, why would I not kill more and more?” he said.

The company shut down this year.

The same experts who praised the conditions at Green Recycling also visited its competitors. What they found most likely amounted to “severe human rights abuses,” they wrote. They concluded that seven plants in and around Ogijo were “in clear violation of international common practice.”

True Metals stood out as especially hazardous.

Workers there mishandled materials and unnecessarily subjected the surrounding area to toxic smoke, inspectors wrote. A thick layer of lead sludge and dust covered the floor. True Metals’ managers told inspectors they conducted blood tests on their workers. Yet the company’s records showed only weight, pulse and blood pressure, according to the report.

Trafigura hires contractors to audit suppliers to ensure they meet government and industry standards. But people involved in lead recycling said those audits had little effect.

One True Metals worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job, said visits were announced in advance and that most workers were sent home. Those remaining were given new overalls and goggles and coached on how to respond to questions, he said.

After such audits, consultants issue recommendations that include simple fixes, such as handing out safety gear, and expensive ones, like installing new equipment. The smelters typically do what’s affordable and skip the rest, according to interviews with a Lagos-based consultant who conducts audits, the owner of a Nigerian smelter and a former Trafigura trader who has visited plants throughout Africa. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they remain in the metals industry and feared reprisals.

In a written statement, a Trafigura spokesperson, Neil Hume, said the company followed all regulations and worked with the Nigerian government and outside experts to assess its lead suppliers. It is standard practice to notify plants before visits, he said.

“Our approach to responsible sourcing seeks to improve standards by providing clear expectations, training and capacity-building matched with monitoring,” Hume wrote. He said Trafigura dropped suppliers that “consistently” failed to improve.

The company declined to discuss what it knew about the conditions at suppliers such as True Metals.

A handful of companies dominate auto battery manufacturing in the United States. The largest manufacturer, Clarios, said it does not buy lead from West Africa. The second-largest, East Penn Manufacturing, has.

East Penn, a family-owned company, operates the largest battery plant in the world, in tiny Lyon Station, Pennsylvania.

The company has called itself “the most progressive manufacturer in environmental protection in the entire industry.” On the company’s website, it says, “Green is good.”

In an interview, East Penn executives said lead shortages forced it to rely on brokers. “Under 5%” came from Nigeria, said Chris Pruitt, East Penn’s executive chair of the board.

Pruitt said the company had paid little attention to the provenance of its lead until the Times and The Examination asked questions. East Penn relied on its brokers’ assurances that everything was fine.

“Could that be me being too trusting?” Pruitt said. “I’ll take that shot.”

East Penn stopped buying Nigerian lead and began tightening its supplier code of conduct after receiving the questions, Pruitt said. Lead purchases are now subjected to extra scrutiny, and executives receive monthly reports about overseas purchases, he added.

In September, researchers who conducted the blood and soil testing for the Times and The Examination concluded in a report that most people with high blood-lead levels had breathed in particles emitted by the factories. They wrote that the government needed to move quickly to address the poisoning and begin a comprehensive cleanup.

That month, Nigerian officials closed five smelters, including True Metals.

“Tests have revealed the presence of lead in residents, resulting in illnesses and deaths,” said Innocent Barikor, director general of Nigeria’s environmental protection agency.

Authorities said those factories had broken the law by failing to operate required pollution control equipment, to conduct blood tests on staff and to prepare environmental impact assessments. The government also cited the factories for breaking batteries apart by hand rather than with machines.

But days later, the factories were running again.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.