EL SALVADOR: A Battery of Charges Over Lead Poisoning

Raúl Gutiérrez

SITIO DEL NIÑO, El Salvador, Oct 8 2007 (IPS) – Environmentalists and residents of this Salvadoran city are demanding the closure of a car battery factory that has been contaminating them with lead for 12 years.
Two teenagers on a protest march against the company, Baterías de El Salvador, carried a placard reading Justice for the children poisoned by Record, the trademark name of the company s products.

The protesters accused the government of negligence. In Sitio del Niño, which translates as Children s Place , ironically it is the children who suffer most from the pollution. Tests carried out by the Health Ministry in April found high levels of lead in their blood.

But adults as well as children endure headaches, bone pain, diarrhoea, urinary and respiratory infections, kidney failure, and even cancer.

Hugo González, 37, lives 400 metres away from the factory, which is located 31 km from the capital city.

His voice breaks as he tells IPS that his wife, María Antonia, aged 30, is eight months pregnant and her doctor has told her she has lead in her blood. This means the baby is also contaminated and may suffer complications.
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And tests on their other five-year-old son Hugo found 16 micrograms of lead per decilitre of blood (mcg/dl).

The World Health Organisation (WHO) regards lead levels of up to 10 mcg/dl in a 16-year-old as acceptable . Up to 12 mcg/dl represents a low level of risk, while levels between 12 and 20 mcg/dl represent significant risk.

When the level of lead in blood is over 20 mcg/dl, it can cause irreversible neurological damage and disability for life.

Lorena de González told IPS that when Dr. Blanca Estela Aguilar from the Health Ministry carried out a census of the community, the doctor told de González that her lead contamination was her fault, because of the kind of pots I use and my tiled floors.

We have visited the factory, and it s not a source of pollution, the doctor said, according to de González.

We may be poor, but we know where the contamination is coming from, said de González.

Eva Peñate, a teacher at the Sitio del Niño Rural Community School Centre, lives less than 200 metres from the factory. She said that the children s academic performance has fallen considerably in recent years. At least 25 percent of the students do not attend classes regularly because of health problems.

Their attention span in the classroom has dropped, they fall asleep, they complain of eye pain, and many have to repeat a school year several times because their intellectual capacity has diminished, the teacher said. She herself is affected too: she finds it hard to get her ideas together, and she will soon go blind.

Baterías de El Salvador, which employs about 350 workers, is owned by the family of Miguel Lacayo, a former economy minister, and produces and recycles over 20,000 batteries a day. Although it was established in Sitio del Niño 12 years ago, a sign identifying it was only put up three years ago.

The Record , as the factory is known locally, has been a focus of controversy ever since. Two months ago, the issue heated up when a newspaper article reported a confrontation between the health and environment ministries, which were each trying to pass the buck for responsibility in the case.

Some weeks ago Health Minister Guillermo Maza told the people they should leave the area in order to avoid further toxic effects.

On Sept. 24 Maza ordered the closure of the factory. Residents regard this as an important measure, but say it is not sufficient: the order is not definitive, and the reason given is the lack of a current permit for installation and operation, without making any mention of the lead pollution.

The human rights ombudsman, Oscar Luna, urged Attorney General Félix Safie to initiate criminal proceedings against the company, but Safie said that he cannot act until he has evidence that local residents are being poisoned.

Carlos Mejía of the non-governmental anti-lead poisoning organisation Movimiento Sin Plomo (MSP) accused the government of behaving irresponsibly, since the problem has been known about for years.

Mejía pointed out that the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia carried out blood tests on 370 workers of the company in 2005.

They found lead levels of 40 mcg/dl of blood in 128 workers, 52 mcg/dl in 59 workers, and so on up to results of 70 mcg/dl in 36 workers, said Mejía, an anthropologist in charge of the museum in the city of Santa Tecla.

The CDC reported the case of Angelita Ester Gámez. When she was 11 years old, her analysis results showed she had nearly 12 mcg/dl of lead in her blood. Her most recent results found the concentration of lead to be 72 mcg/dl.

Mejía has lived in the local area for three years. He has a list of 85 children with lead poisoning, including Geovany, a 14-month-old baby with a blood level of 22 mcg/dl.

The list includes Mejía s own children, six-year-old Yale and 10-year-old Gamaliel, who wake up at dawn crying, vomiting and with bone pain, he said.

This is indiscriminate contamination, Mejía said.

Sitio del Niño, in the northwest of El Salvador, is part of a vast plain that the government has been promoting for years as an agricultural and livestock rearing area.

The Zapotitán irrigation project was established here, as was the National School for Agriculture, where vegetables, sugarcane, flowers and maize are grown. Large herds of cattle can be seen on both sides of the highway.

According to environmentalists, lead from The Record does not only endanger local people. The pollution radius may be up to 10 kilometres, affecting the health of at least 20,000 people.

Lead may also have contaminated much of the agricultural production in the area, although concrete proof is lacking. Many local crops are sold in the capital, environmentalists point out.

Josseline Acevedo, a nine-year-old girl living 150 metres from the factory, suffers from bone pain and fever. She became a symbol for the press when she took part in a march organised by the MSP in mid-September, from Sitio del Niño to the presidential palace in San Salvador.

Josseline refused several offers of a lift because, she said, I want to show the president, Antonio Saca, what I m going through.

Raquel Cruz, a lawyer with the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CESTA), told IPS that CESTA would go on demanding the permanent closure of the company, a clean-up of the area, medical treatment for the children and compensation for the victims.

If Saca has a sense of humanity , a phrase often used in official publicity about the president, then he should close the factory, said a resident of this community. The truth is, it s killing us.