An unregulated global market repeatedly leads national environmental regulations toward the same outcome: pollution shifting to where it’s cheaper to pollute. Whether it’s European limits on carbon dioxide emissions shifting industrial production (and the associated emissions) to China or American battery lead pollution being transferred to Mexico, it’s difficult to see a way towards a global reduction of pollution besides global treaties that do not seem forthcoming.
The spent batteries Americans turn in for recycling are increasingly being sent to Mexico, where their lead is often extracted by crude methods that are illegal in the United States, exposing plant workers and local residents to dangerous levels of a toxic metal.
The rising flow of batteries is a result of strict new Environmental Protection Agency standards on lead pollution, which make domestic recycling more difficult and expensive, but do not prohibit companies from exporting the work and the danger to countries where standards are low and enforcement is lax.