The Battery Bandwagon: How to Thwart the Flow of Used Car Batteries to Mexico

Posted 28 Oct 2011

www.americanrecycler.com

Each year, more than 520 million pounds of spent lead acid batteries (SLABs) generated in the United States are trucked across our southern border into Mexico. Sent by profit-hungry corporations, these batteries are destined for recycling facilities with sub-par emissions controls and lax worker safety protections.

SLAB exports have grown dramatically in recent years, due largely to the implementation of stricter environmental and worker safety regulations enacted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Seeking to maximize profit, battery brokers and recyclers are taking advantage of Mexico’s weaker environmental regulations, occupational safety standards and cheaper wages at the expense of the environment, worker safety and the health of local communities.

SLABs, or used car batteries, are made of lead, plastic and sulfuric acid – a toxic combination that can cause health problems and environmental harm when not recycled correctly. Sulfuric acid can seep into groundwater, while lead emissions can affect workers and settle in surrounding communities, causing developmental disabilities in children, loss of neurological functioning in adults and even coma or death in the most extreme cases.

In June 2011, a new study conducted by Occupational Knowledge International and Fronteras Comunes underscored the critical importance of recycling SLABs domestically. Titled, “Exporting Hazards”, the report finds that ULABs, an acronym used interchangeably with SLABs, are being exported to and recycled in Mexico under less stringent standards, resulting in significantly higher occupational and environmental exposures. The report also highlights the fact that the problem is growing exponentially. In 2010, imports to Mexico increased 112 percent from the previous year.

In one instance, the report cites an unlicensed and unregulated battery recycling facility operating next to an open air market. Because the emissions from lead battery recycling plants in Mexico are nearly 20 times higher than in the United States, and lead emissions do not travel far, it is logical to assume that families who buy and sell from this market are at greater risk of lead exposure.

Also, with the Permissible Exposure Limit for airborne lead three times higher in Mexican recycling facilities, workers at these plants are at greater risk from significant workplace exposure. While this data is alarming, it may not be the worst case scenario. The report also found that less than half of all approved Mexican recyclers report any lead emissions to authorities. The logical conclusion is that other recyclers do not report at all because their emissions far exceed permissible levels.

Given all of the apparent risks associated with battery recycling, why not ship them outside the States? The answer is simple: domestic recyclers can do it better and safer here, and maintain the green jobs so vital to our own economy.

Battery recycling in the United States is largely considered an environmental success story, with 95 to 97 percent of States-produced batteries domestically recycled every year. The United States also has enacted some of the world’s strictest emissions standards, requiring battery recyclers to upgrade their technology to comply with new regulations. To safeguard worker health and minimize community impact, recycling facilities across the nation are implementing some of the world’s most advanced recycling technology, which all but eliminates worker and community exposure.

It is also important to remember that every battery shipped across our borders impacts the number of jobs this industry can sustain. With a national unemployment rate above nine percent, every job counts in this recovering economy.

Recycling batteries here at home ensures that lead will be efficiently recycled; environmental impact will be minimized; worker and community health will be protected; and, American jobs will be maintained. As a nation, we have the knowledge, the state-of-the-art technology and the skilled work force to do the job. There is simply no excuse for dumping American waste on our international neighbors who lack the infrastructure, technology and regulatory oversight to dispose of the toxic materials safely and effectively.

*For more information go to www.americanrecycler.com

EPA Marks 25th Anniversary of EPCRA

CONTACTS:


Stacy Kika (News Media Only)
Kika.stacy@epa.gov
202-564-0906
202-564-4355
Latisha Petteway (News Media Only)

petteway.latisha@epa.gov
202-564-3191
202-564-4355

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 17, 2011
EPA Marks 25th Anniversary of EPCRA
WASHINGTON - This year marks 25 years since the passage of the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). The act was passed in 1986 as a part of the reauthorization for Superfund. EPCRA has played a significant role in protecting people’s health and the environment by providing communities and emergency planners with area-specific information on toxic chemical releases.

“This law is important to safeguarding our communities from chemical emergencies,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Twenty-five years after EPCRA was made into law, EPA continues to improve and advance our community right-to-know programs, so that we can ensure the best possible chemical safety protection for every community across the country.”

Public demand for information about chemical releases skyrocketed in the mid-1980s after a deadly cloud of highly toxic pesticide killed thousands of people in Bhopal, India. Shortly thereafter, a serious chemical release at a plant in West Virginia hospitalized 100 people. These events led to the implementation of EPCRA in 1986.

Under EPCRA, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) collects information on toxic releases through the Toxic Release Inventory program (TRI), a public database containing information regarding the industrial releases of over 600 toxic chemicals from more than 20,000 facilities throughout the nation. TRI was the first publicly available database in the world that contained information on pollutant releases. Many other countries have since followed EPA’s lead, recognizing the value of making toxic chemical data readily available to the public. TRI information enables every American to make informed decisions on the consequences of toxic releases and empowers communities to take action.

EPCRA has made the lives of every American safer from toxic emergencies by establishing emergency planning groups at the state, tribal, and local levels. EPCRA brings together emergency responders from fire and police departments, medical personnel, emergency planners, elected officials, environmental group representatives and local citizens to develop plans to respond to chemical emergencies.

More information on EPCRA and the 25th anniversary: http://www.epa.gov/emergencies/content/epcra/epcra25.htm



My Right-to-Know mobile application for easily accessible TRI data: http://www.epa.gov/tri/myrtk/

Report finds fault with college labs over poor safety record

From USA Today:

An explosion that severely burned a Texas Tech graduate student last year suggests safety problems plague college labs nationwide, a federal watchdog agency warned.

A report released Wednesday by the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), an independent safety agency, examines the Jan. 7, 2010, detonation at Texas Tech University in Lubbock that cost the student, Preston Brown, three fingers and caused severe burns and eye damage. Brown had set out to produce 10 grams of an explosive compound — 100 times more than an informal lab limit — for research sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security.

"The report serves as a cautionary tale for universities across the country," CSB's Daniel Horowitz says. (More....)

Training grant

Photo courtesy UW Extension

Good news about "one of ours" recently receiving good news in the form of a $134,000 grant award from OSHA's Susan Harwood Training Grant Program. UW-River Falls Risk Manager Connie Smith, along with Cheryl Skjolaas at UW-Extension, wrote the grant to build long term health and safety capacity and provide training sessions to farmers and workers in the dairy industry. Training will include a train-the-trainer component and will be offered at 16 locations throughout Wisconsin. Training and materials will be provided in Spanish.

While looking over the other grant recipients, I noticed that the Consortium for Advanced Research in Gas Industries at UW-Milwaukee received an award from the same program. Congratulations to both.

MIT Fined $175,000 for Air Cargo Package Fire

Lithium batteries in electronic devices cause fire at FedEx facility. Read article here.

Mobile Phone Use Does Not Raise Cancer Risk in Children and Adolescents

August 9, 2011

The first-ever study of mobile phone use by children and adolescents carried out in four European countries found no increased risk of brain cancer, according to a report published online July 27 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI).

Investigators in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland conducted a multicenter case-control study involving children and adolescents 7 to 19 years of age who were diagnosed with a brain tumor between 2004 and 2008. The investigators, led by Dr. Denis Aydin of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, conducted interviews with 352 brain tumor case patients, 646 healthy control subjects, and their parents.

The children who regularly used mobile phones were not statistically significantly more likely to have been diagnosed with brain tumors than nonusers, the researchers reported. In addition, those who used mobile phones for at least 5 years did not have a statistically significantly higher risk of developing brain tumors. Moreover, the investigators found no increased risk of brain tumors in the parts of the brain that typically receive the highest levels of mobile-phone radiation exposure.

For some of the children, the investigators were also able to obtain data from mobile phone service providers. In these children, brain tumor risk rose with the amount of time since the family began its mobile phone subscription but not with the amount of mobile phone use as recorded by the service providers, the researchers added.

Previous epidemiologic studies among adult users have found no overall increased risk of brain cancer from mobile phone use. This study addressed concerns that the developing brains and nervous systems of children and adolescents might be more vulnerable to the potential adverse health effects of mobile phone use.

“Researchers continue to monitor trends in brain cancer and mobile phone use,” commented Dr. Martha Linet, chief of the Radiation Epidemiology Branch in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. “Other ongoing research includes a large study of rodents exposed to mobile phone frequencies that is being conducted by the National Toxicology Program; a prospective study recruiting 250,000 mobile phone users in five European countries; and a case-control study comparing 2,000 young people between the ages of 10 and 24 who were diagnosed with brain tumors and an equal number of control subjects from 13 countries.”

Further reading: “A Conversation with Dr. Martha Linet on Cell Phone Use and Cancer Risk”

Mad as a Hatter

Mercury and Other Occupational Hazards at the Movies

By day, I conduct occupational safety and health research at NIOSH. But on Tuesday nights, I join my friends from NIOSH and the outside world as we head for one of Cincinnati's local art cinema houses to watch and then discuss movies. Most the time we seek out smaller foreign or independent films. But we made an exception when we recently saw Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland. We were drawn, not only to the promise of sumptuously creative visuals and evaporating cats, but also, in a small way, a reference to our vocation in the movie.

Why is the Mad Hatter mad? His erratic agitated behavior in this classic story refers to a real industrial hazard in Lewis Carroll's Britain of 1865 (hat-making was the main trade in Stockport, near where Carroll grew up). In those days, hatters commonly exhibited slurred speech, tremors, irritability, shyness, depression, and other neurological symptoms; ergo the expression "mad as a hatter." (Clearly, Carroll's Mad Hatter does not express all these symptoms; he is not shy.) The symptoms were caused by chronic occupational exposure to mercury. Hatters toiled in poorly ventilated rooms, using hot solutions of mercuric nitrate to shape and convert fur into felt hats. (More...)