http://archive.today/2025.11.18-095712/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/lead-poisoning-car-battery.html
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. 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.
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 that many of them are probably being poisoned.
Lead poisoning worldwide is estimated to cause far more deaths each year than malaria and H.I.V./AIDS combined. It causes seizures, strokes, blindness and lifelong intellectual disabilities. The World Health Organization makes clear that no level of lead in the body is safe.
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. Automakers have excluded lead from their environmental policies.
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.
All this is avoidable. Lead batteries can indeed be recycled as cleanly as advertised. In Europe, experts say, some recycling factories are spotless. But that requires millions of dollars in technology.
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.
The experts marveled at Green Recycling’s antipollution technology and the machinery that safely broke apart batteries — the sort of equipment featured in promotional videos by American battery makers.
“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.”
One factory was “shabby” and covered in lead dust. A few months later, records show, that plant shipped lead to the Port of Baltimore, the primary gateway for recycled lead from Africa to the United States.
At another factory, experts wrote that “lead emissions to the workplace and the nearby environment are considered as something normal.” One week later, that plant sent lead to Newark.
At a third factory, experts observed “thick smoke,” broken equipment and “woefully desolate” conditions. About a month later, that plant also shipped lead to the Port of Baltimore.
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 that they conducted blood tests on their workers. Yet the company’s records showed only weight, pulse and blood pressure, according to the report.
Some of the hazards cited in the report would have been obvious to anyone inspecting the factories.
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 condition of anonymity to protect his job, said that 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 condition of anonymity because they remain in the metals industry and feared reprisals.
Exactly who buys lead from Trafigura and other trading companies is not public.
“It’s just a much murkier and unknown industry,” said Samuel Basi, a former lead trader with Trafigura. “It essentially becomes confidential once it comes into the U.S.”
A handful of companies dominate auto battery manufacturing in the United States. The largest manufacturer, Clarios, says that it does not buy lead from West Africa. The second-largest, East Penn Manufacturing, has.
East Penn, a family-owned company, says its recycling roots go back 80 years. It operates the largest battery plant in the world, in tiny Lyon Station, Pa.
In an interview, East Penn executives said that lead shortages forced it to rely on brokers. “Under 5 percent” came from Nigeria, said Chris Pruitt, East Penn’s executive chairman of the board.
Mr. Pruitt said that 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.
East Penn stopped buying Nigerian lead and began tightening its supplier code of conduct after receiving the questions, Mr. 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,” Innocent Barikor, director general of Nigeria’s environmental protection agency, said in a written statement.
The authorities said that 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.
Though Mr. Barikor had threatened to revoke the factories’ licenses, he didn’t. In an interview, he said that he had met with leaders of the factories. He said that they had agreed to properly dispose of waste, upgrade to cleaner technology and, within six months, install automated battery-breaking machines. “Our meeting was very, very fruitful,” he said.
The waste-disposal promise has already been delayed as state authorities look for a dump site. A copy of the agreement, signed by True Metals and reviewed by The Times and The Examination, says nothing about automated breaking systems. The company agreed to a timeline of two to three years to “transition to cleaner recycling technologies.”
In October, researchers gathered residents to disclose their test results. Anxious workers and parents lined up to speak to nurses and to collect multivitamins and calcium tablets, which can limit lead absorption.
But those treatments are just part of what experts recommend in lead poisoning cases. Generally speaking, the first thing doctors advise is to reduce exposure. Cover or seal chipped lead paint. Replace lead water pipes. Put clean topsoil over contaminated dirt.
There is no playbook for reducing exposure when people’s homes are being sprinkled with lead dust from the sky.
