Old car batteries: Toxic export
New report finds significantly high levels of lead at Mexico facilities that recycle them
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 the shipment of used American batteries to Mexico, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The increase in batteries from the United States comes as a report released Monday found significantly high levels of lead at many facilities, leaving workers vulnerable to a toxic metal that poses severe risks to human health.
Soil samples taken outside six battery recycling plants in Monterrey in 2022 revealed lead levels far above the legal limit in Mexico, according to the report by Occupational Knowledge International, a San Francisco-based public health nonprofit, and Casa Cem, a Mexican environmental group.
While Mexico’s regulations stipulate that facilities must remove lead from contaminated soil and can be shut down for violating environmental standards, Mexican government records show that in recent years few plants have been closed.
Mexico’s lax environmental laws and enforcement encourages American companies to offload used car batteries to the country, where labor is cheaper and unions are weaker, according to experts in labor rights and occupational health.
“Workers in these plants are being poisoned day in and day out, and often without even their own knowledge of that,’’ said Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International. “They don’t get the training, they don’t get the equipment, and they don’t get to operate in facilities that have adequate ventilation.”
Over the past 10 years the number of car batteries shipped to Mexico from the United States has grown by nearly 20%, according to EPA records included in the study by the two groups. In 2021, more than 75% of all used U.S. batteries were exported there, EPA records showed.
At recycling plants, lead is removed from batteries, ground up, melted and turned into ingots used to make new batteries.
The world’s largest car battery maker, Clarios, based in Milwaukee, bought two plants in Monterrey in 2019, and the report found lead levels in soil outside its facilities that were well above the legal limit in Mexico of 800 parts per million.
The samples in the report were tested and analyzed by an independent laboratory.
At one Clarios plant, a soil sample showed lead levels of 15,000 parts per million, while at the other Clarios facility, a sample showed 3,800 parts per million of lead. Clarios closed its last U.S.-based car battery recycling facility, in South Carolina, in 2021, following a series of fines by the EPA for violations involving air pollution, hazardous waste and the improper transportation of lead batteries.
Shipping batteries to Mexico would save the company 25% in recycling costs, according to a filing by Clarios with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Certainly there is cost savings if you don’t have to worry about upgrading your facility to meet the standards that are in place in the U.S.,” Gottesfeld said.
A Clarios spokesman said the company’s facilities use “strict safety protocols and we provide our employees with state of the art protective safety gear.”