Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe by Niall Ferguson review
(Evening Standard) – From plagues and volcanic eruptions to the current Covid pandemic, mankind has always been faced with catastrophes.
Thought Leader: Niall Ferguson
Each night, laborers work in a sort of bucket brigade to load batteries for delivery to the factories.
At these factories, known as smelters, lead from the batteries is melted and purified inside a furnace and then shaped into bars. This is the source of the poisonous smoke that drifts over Ogijo.
About a half-hour away from True Metals, the king of Ogijo, Kazeem Kashimawo Olaonipekun Gbadamosi, sat atop a carved wooden throne and leaned back into red velvet cushions. “I just want to close them all down,” the king said.
His subjects have complained for years about the factories, which sit among other metals plants. In surveys commissioned by The Times and The Examination, people reported common symptoms of lead poisoning: headaches, stomachaches, seizures, learning delays and other neurological complaints.
“Sometimes, she coughs, and black particles come out of her mouth,” her mother, Fumilayo Ajibayo, said.
“I tell the smaller kids not to play outside when the smoke is bad.”
“The walls of my house are black.”
When she plays outside in the dirt, “I try to chase her away,” her grandmother, Tope Adebayo, said.
Residents recounted efforts to pressure the factories to improve — visits made, complaints lodged. As far back as 2018, the local newspaper Business Day wrote about lead pollution in Ogijo. Factory managers often apologized and promised improvements, residents said. Sometimes, the companies would string up electrical lines and add streetlights to make amends. But the pollution continued.
Despite the king’s exasperation, the real power resides with leaders in the capital, Abuja. “The government always says, ‘No, no, no, just give them time. Let’s get them to change,’” the king said.
Besides, his subjects wanted the factories clean, not closed. Ogijo is full of people who spend their days coaxing sustenance from meager opportunities. Children gather shreds of plastic that their mothers wash and sell to recyclers. Men squat in the dirt, using rocks to split open old wiring to extract copper.
Across Africa, governments have had little awareness of the harms of battery recycling, instead focusing on jobs and foreign investment, said Andreas Manhart, a senior researcher at Oeko-Institut, a German environmental organization. He has visited at least 20 African factories.
“We see investors coming in, setting up new, substandard operations,” he said. “And every time, this leaves a highly polluted site.”
As environmental regulations in the United States and Canada have driven dirty smelters out of business, buyers have searched the world for new suppliers. In recent years, companies in the United States have imported recycled lead from at least eight countries in Africa.
Corporations rely on intermediaries that buy from dirty factories.
Because the supply chain is opaque and diffuse, car companies and battery makers are unlikely to know the precise origins of the lead they use. They rely on international trading companies to supply it.
One such company, Trafigura, has sent recycled lead to U.S. companies from True Metals and six other Nigerian smelters in the past four years, records show. Last year, Trafigura reported $243 billion in revenue by trading oil, gas and metals worldwide.
Until recently, Trafigura’s Nigerian suppliers included one factory, Green Recycling Industries, that tried to live up to its name.
International experts from nonprofit research groups and the metals industry visited Green Recycling last year as part of an effort to strengthen Nigeria’s weak inspection of battery recyclers. The country has laws to protect the environment but struggles to enforce them.
The experts marveled at Green Recycling’s antipollution technology and the machinery that safely broke apart batteries — the sort of equipment featured in promotional videos by American battery makers.
“The equipment and recycling processes are significantly different and of a remarkably higher standard than observed in any other plant in Nigeria,” the experts wrote.
But operating cleanly put Green Recycling at a disadvantage. It had to make up for its high machinery costs by offering less money for dead batteries. Outbid by competitors with crude operations, Green Recycling had nothing to recycle.
Ali Fawaz, the company’s general manager, said his competitors were essentially making money by harming locals. “If killing people is OK, why would I not kill more and more?” he said.
The company shut down this year.
“Healthwise, we made a correct decision, but businesswise, we made a very bad decision,” Mr. Fawaz said. “It’s a bad investment unless you’re dirty.”
The same experts who praised the conditions at Green Recycling also visited its competitors. What they found most likely amounted to “severe human rights abuses,” they wrote. They concluded that seven plants in and around Ogijo were “in clear violation of international common practice.”
One factory was “shabby” and covered in lead dust. A few months later, records show, that plant shipped lead to the Port of Baltimore, the primary gateway for recycled lead from Africa to the United States.
At another factory, experts wrote that “lead emissions to the workplace and the nearby environment are considered as something normal.” One week later, that plant sent lead to Newark.
At a third factory, experts observed “thick smoke,” broken equipment and “woefully desolate” conditions. About a month later, that plant also shipped lead to the Port of Baltimore.
True Metals stood out as especially hazardous.
Workers there mishandled materials and unnecessarily subjected the surrounding area to toxic smoke, inspectors wrote. A thick layer of lead sludge and dust covered the floor. True Metals’ managers told inspectors that they conducted blood tests on their workers. Yet the company’s records showed only weight, pulse and blood pressure, according to the report.
Some of the hazards cited in the report would have been obvious to anyone inspecting the factories.
Trafigura hires contractors to audit suppliers to ensure they meet government and industry standards. But people involved in lead recycling said those audits had little effect.
One True Metals worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his job, said that visits were announced in advance and that most workers were sent home. Those remaining were given new overalls and goggles and coached on how to respond to questions, he said.
After such audits, consultants issue recommendations that include simple fixes, such as handing out safety gear, and expensive ones, like installing new equipment. The smelters typically do what’s affordable and skip the rest, according to interviews with a Lagos-based consultant who conducts audits, the owner of a Nigerian smelter and a former Trafigura trader who has visited plants throughout Africa. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they remain in the metals industry and feared reprisals.
In a written statement, a Trafigura spokesman, Neil Hume, said that the company followed all regulations and worked with the Nigerian government and outside experts to assess its lead suppliers. It is standard practice to notify plants before visits, he said.
“Our approach to responsible sourcing seeks to improve standards by providing clear expectations, training and capacity-building matched with monitoring,” Mr. Hume wrote. He said that Trafigura dropped suppliers that “consistently” failed to improve.
The company declined to discuss what it knew about the conditions at suppliers such as True Metals.
Dirty lead ends up in American batteries.
Exactly who buys lead from Trafigura and other trading companies is not public.
“It’s just a much murkier and unknown industry,” said Samuel Basi, a former lead trader with Trafigura. “It essentially becomes confidential once it comes into the U.S.”
A handful of companies dominate auto battery manufacturing in the United States. The largest manufacturer, Clarios, says that it does not buy lead from West Africa. The second-largest, East Penn Manufacturing, has.
East Penn, a family-owned company, says its recycling roots go back 80 years. It operates the largest battery plant in the world, in tiny Lyon Station, Pa.
The company has called itself “the most progressive manufacturer in environmental protection in the entire industry.” On the company’s website, it says, “Green is good.”
In an interview, East Penn executives said that lead shortages forced it to rely on brokers. “Under 5 percent” came from Nigeria, said Chris Pruitt, East Penn’s executive chairman of the board.
Mr. Pruitt said that the company had paid little attention to the provenance of its lead until The Times and The Examination asked questions. East Penn relied on its brokers’ assurances that everything was fine.
“Could that be me being too trusting?” Mr. Pruitt said. “I’ll take that shot.”
East Penn stopped buying Nigerian lead and began tightening its supplier code of conduct after receiving the questions, Mr. Pruitt said. Lead purchases are now subjected to extra scrutiny and executives receive monthly reports about overseas purchases, he added.
IN SEPTEMBER, researchers who conducted the blood and soil testing for The Times and The Examination concluded in a report that most people with high blood-lead levels had breathed in particles emitted by the factories. They wrote that the government needed to move quickly to address the poisoning and begin a comprehensive cleanup.
That month, Nigerian officials closed five smelters, including True Metals.
“Tests have revealed the presence of lead in residents, resulting in illnesses and deaths,” Innocent Barikor, director general of Nigeria’s environmental protection agency, said in a written statement.
The authorities said that those factories had broken the law by failing to operate required pollution control equipment, to conduct blood tests on staff and to prepare environmental impact assessments. The government also cited the factories for breaking batteries apart by hand rather than with machines.
But days later, the factories were running again.
Though Mr. Barikor had threatened to revoke the factories’ licenses, he didn’t. In an interview, he said that he had met with leaders of the factories. He said that they had agreed to properly dispose of waste, upgrade to cleaner technology and, within six months, install automated battery-breaking machines. “Our meeting was very, very fruitful,” he said.
The waste-disposal promise has already been delayed as state authorities look for a dump site. A copy of the agreement, signed by True Metals and reviewed by The Times and The Examination, says nothing about automated breaking systems. The company agreed to a timeline of two to three years to “transition to cleaner recycling technologies.”
The Times and The Examination sought comments from all the recyclers. Two responded. BPL Nigeria said it was making health, safety and environmental improvements. “The evolution of industry practices requires time,” the company said in a statement.
Anand Singh, a manager at another factory, African Nonferrous Industries, denied breaking any laws but said that the company was making improvements nevertheless. “Compared to others in Nigeria, my company is the best,” he said.
In October, researchers gathered residents to disclose their test results. Anxious workers and parents lined up to speak to nurses and to collect multivitamins and calcium tablets, which can limit lead absorption.
But those treatments are just part of what experts recommend in lead poisoning cases. Generally speaking, the first thing doctors advise is to reduce exposure. Cover or seal chipped lead paint. Replace lead water pipes. Put clean topsoil over contaminated dirt.
There is no playbook for reducing exposure when people’s homes are being sprinkled with lead dust from the sky.
Thomas Ede said he didn’t have the money to move. “I don’t know the way out,” he said. “There’s nothing from the government. They’re saying, ‘Just go away.’”
The morning after he received the test results, Mr. Ede stepped outside the room that he shares with his three children, all of them sleeping together on a crumbling mattress.
He looked past his clothesline toward True Metals. At the front gates stood two shipping containers, ready for their loads.
This article was reported in collaboration with The Examination, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health. Fernanda Aguirre, Romina Colman and Mago Torres contributed research and data analysis. The videos of the lead recycling plants in Nigeria at the beginning of this article are by Finbarr O’Reilly, and the portraits are by Carmen Abd Ali.
