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Summary: Clouds of black dust from smelters in the northern Mexican town of Torreón, home to the largest non-ferrous smelter in Latin America, has caused lead poisoning in many children, with levels six times higher than the minimum to prompt public action. Yet the true extent of the problem is still unknown as the company refuses to make its environmental audits public, despite a Supreme Court order to do so.
[3 September 2011] - Dusty brown mountains surround Torreón, a big industrial city in the north of Mexico. But one sandy desert hillside shines jet-black. The cerro negro (“black hill”), as it is known locally, is composed of deposits from Latin America’s largest non-ferrous metal smelter, which has blackened the air for more than a century. The plant has created not just an ugly slag heap but a public-health problem whose true extent is still unknown. The smelter, owned by Met-Mex Peñoles, part of a big Mexican mining group, ran without a roof from 1901 until 2000, blanketing the surrounding area with layers of fine black powder. That mattered less when the smelter was isolated in the desert. But in the 1970s Mexico’s government sold plots of land it owned next to the plant for housing. Even then, the dirt was seen as an inconvenience, outweighed by the jobs that the plant brought. But in 1998 Manuel Velasco, a local paediatrician, noticed a pattern among his patients. Many children had more than 60 micrograms of lead per decilitre of blood, six times the level that the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), an American government agency, says should prompt public action. “After the fourth case, I knew something was very wrong,” Dr Velasco says. Met-Mex, one of a string of mining, retail and finance companies controlled by Alberto Baillères, one of Mexico’s richest men, was eventually asked by the government to lower its emissions and contribute to the treatment of its victims. The company put a roof over the slag heaps and set up a 60m peso ($6.4m) medical fund. Yet a decade on the problems have not been resolved. Somehow the dust continues to fall: Met-Mex employees can be seen on vacuuming errands in many neighbourhoods of the city. In a study carried out in 2005-06 by the University of California and Mexico’s National University, nearly half of the children in the sample still had blood-lead levels above the CDC limit. This can lead to learning difficulties and behavioural problems. Met-Mex insists that none of the children in its database of previously exposed patients exhibits long-term effects associated with lead poisoning. The company says that there are few new cases and that most are related to pica (roughly, “the nibbles”). This refers both to the habit of children of eating earth and similar cravings among pregnant women. Russ Flegal, an environmental toxicologist at the University of California, says the pica theory is “unsubstantiated at best”. Treatment for the smelter’s victims is limited. The programme funded by Met-Mex consists only of doses of milk and vitamin supplements. People over 15, including pregnant women, do not qualify even for that, because “their bodies eliminate lead naturally”, according to Fernando Alanis, Met-Mex’s managing director. Torreón’s public schools provide remedial teaching for fewer than half of the 11,000 children whom the CDC determined were poisoned when it tested in 2001 at the behest of Mexico’s government. The health authorities’ efforts are being hampered by insecurity: roadblocks by drug-trafficking gangs have forced the suspension in 15 neighbourhoods of home visits for lead-poisoning victims. Mr Alanis says there has been a big improvement, but admits “we cannot say the problem is resolved.” The secrecy surrounding the black dust of Torreón means that nobody can be sure about the severity of the problem. In 2006 citizens demanded access to the smelter’s environmental audits from Mexico’s federal environmental protection agency. The agency deemed the records “reserved and confidential”. Last year the Supreme Court ordered that the data be released, but the people of Torreón are still waiting. Further Information: