The finding raises troubling questions about how to effectively eliminate the poison from children’s bodies.
The battery recycling industry is responsible for much of the lead soil contamination in poor and middle-income countries.
Decades after the industrialized world largely eliminated lead poisoning in children, the potent neurotoxin still lurks in one in three children globally.
“Once the lead is in the environment, it stays there pretty much indefinitely without remediation,” says study lead author Jenna Forsyth, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Ultimately, we want to work toward a world in which battery recycling is done safely, and lead never makes it into the soil or people’s bodies in the first place.”
Decades after the industrialized world largely eliminated lead poisoning in children, the potent neurotoxin still lurks in one in three children globally. A new study in Bangladesh by researchers at Stanford University and other institutions finds that a relatively affordable remediation process can almost entirely remove lead left behind by unregulated battery recycling – an industry responsible for much of the lead soil contamination in poor and middle-income countries – and raises troubling questions about how to effectively eliminate the poison from children’s bodies.
Workers dig up contaminated soil and waste at the site of a former lead battery recycling operation in Kathgora, Bangladesh. (Image credit: Pure Earth)