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Published in Spring 2002
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Taking the poison out of pottery
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By Elisabeth Malkin
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Photo: Helene Kahn, www.helenekahn.com
Markets like this one in western Michoacán are full of pottery containing lead |
In the entryway of the small house Bertha Barajas shares with seven relatives in central Michoacán, she sells lead oxide that the indigenous Purépecha women use to make glaze for their pottery. In the past, she typically left the 25-kilo bags open, unconcerned about the yellow dust that wafted from room to room, blanketing areas where the children played and the family ate. Her pottery workshop was in the kitchen, the kiln and stove side by side.
But since last year, Barajas has been well versed in the dangers of lead exposure, and she has made simple changes to her home and workshop that minimize the risk for her family. As part of a health project designed by the Appropriate Rural Technology Interdisciplinary Group (GIRA), Barajas learned to keep the lead oxide bags in closed containers and to hang a plastic sheet around her makeshift store, so the lead dust wouldn’t drift. She convinced her parents to construct a wall in the kitchen, separating the kiln and stove, and she now makes sure that the children stay out of the workshop.
“We can’t leave the artisans unprotected, without information and training in health and workplace safety,” says Jaime Navia, who runs GIRA’s handicraft eco-production program in Santa Fe de la Laguna, where Barajas lives. “They will continue to use lead, and we have to do something.” Even without systematic blood monitoring, he says, there is evidence of the insidious effects of exposure among the town’s 650 families. “There are reports of miscarriages, a high incidence of epilepsy.”
Although the long-term hope is that potters will stop using lead glazes, GIRA’s project deals with reality: the resources and technology to use safer substitutes are still out of reach for many of them. |
Barajas is one of eight Purépecha “promoters”—all women—trained by GIRA to reduce lead exposure among potters and their children, to promote workshop safety, to limit smoke in the workshop and particle emissions into the environment, and to manage waste disposal. A US$25,000 grant from the CEC pays for four of the promoters, who earn just over US$100 a month, while funding from Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (Semarnat) supports the other four. The CEC project focuses on the health of the potters and their families, and Semarnat’s emphasis is on waste disposal, but each of the women is trained in all the issues.
Although the long-term hope is that Mexico’s traditional potters will stop using lead-based glazes, GIRA’s project deals with reality: the resources and technology to use safer substitutes are still out of reach for impoverished groups like the Purépecha.
The government-run National Fund for Handicraft Development (FONART) has spent 10 years promoting such a switch, with little success. Now it is working through organizations like GIRA. “They realized that you have to work from the bottom up and not from the top down,” says Navia.
A downdraft kiln that GIRA developed allows the firing of lead-free glaze and also saves wood fuel. But at US$1,500, it is not yet a viable option. GIRA is negotiating with government agencies to secure soft loans for the potters. Even then, production costs would go up with the safer glazes, because the pieces can’t touch during firing. Fewer pots can be finished at once—making the new kilns that much harder to sell.
Lead exposure is a very serious problem for Mexico’s indigenous potters. Children are at high risk for neurological damage that can cause behavioral problems, learning disorders, and depressed IQ. Rural children, who are likely to be malnourished, are even more vulnerable. Lead competes with calcium and other minerals in the body to attach itself to enzymes for transport to the bones, according to Dr. Irma Rosas, coordinator of the University Environment Program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. With children whose only source of calcium is tortillas, the lead has little competition. “The children are less protected,” says Dr. Rosas, who also serves on the CEC’s expert advisory board on children’s environmental health.
The first step toward stemming the damage is to educate potters and their families. GIRA is beginning with the eight promoters, using part of the CEC grant to install a separate faucet in each of their workshops for washing work clothes and tools, and to cover dirt floors—where children play on the lead-laced ground—with cement. The group has designed a work apron, which remains in the workshop, and a simple washing and recycling system to collect and reuse glaze that dusts the pails, sponges, and rags in the workshop. “The most complicated thing is to ensure that the potter does everything every day,” says Navia. Where possible, GIRA will also help raise workshop roofs, so smoke from the kiln doesn’t remain in the house.
Training began last September, and since then the eight women have been teaching their own extended families, using their revamped workshops as examples. They started making presentations in schools this spring. “We will do workshops lasting several days to explain what lead is and what craftswomen can do to protect themselves,” Navia says. “The children will be catalysts to sensitize the rest of their families.”
After that, the promoters will bring their message to community groups and the local clinic, and will distribute calendars and brochures outlining basic safety measures, like ‘Don’t eat and work at the same time.’
“We can’t work miracles with $25,000,” sighs Navia. “But at least we can do something about health.”
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