Lead recycled in unsafe factories is entering global supply chains and poisoning children worldwide. The Poisonous Lead Trade, a new investigative series from The Examination and The New York Times, documents how recycled lead from substandard used lead-acid battery (ULAB) operations in Nigeria ends up in batteries powering cars, trucks, and motorcycles in high-income countries. Their reporting makes the human cost impossible to ignore.
In Ogijo, Nigeria, the reporters tested 70 residents who live near or work in battery-recycling factories. Every worker had been poisoned. More than half the children tested had blood lead levels high enough to cause lifelong cognitive harm. As the authors write, “The poisoning of Ogijo is representative of a preventable public health disaster unfolding across Africa.”
The consequences are global. Lead exposure contributes to an estimated 3.5–5.5 million deaths each year, driven mostly by cardiovascular disease. It causes the loss of more than 765 million IQ points annually and imposes an economic burden of up to $6 trillion per year. What is happening in Ogijo is not an isolated failure. It is a breakdown in the global battery supply chain that links communities in low- and middle-income countries to consumers and companies in wealthier nations.
What the Investigation Shows Clearly
The reporting captures three essential points:
- Unsafe recyclers thrive because they avoid the costs of pollution control, taxes, and compliance;
- Lead from these facilities moves easily into global markets; and
- The health and economic consequences fall overwhelmingly on people with the least power to protect themselves.
These findings reinforce what Pure Earth has seen for decades. Informal and substandard recycling persists not because it is hidden, but because the market rewards it. Durable solutions must include structural changes that align market incentives with safety standards.
Common Sense Solutions Exist
Countries that have made real progress — including Brazil, China, and several in Southeast Asia — did so by shifting the economic incentives that shape the battery market. While each country’s context differs, the most effective strategies share a common pattern:
- Shut down unsafe recycling and enforce environmental laws.
Use coordinated, multi-agency inspections with real penalties to close illegal recyclers, stop smuggling, and target the highest-risk hotspots. - Consolidate recycling into a small number of high-standard facilities.
Set minimum capacity, technology, siting, and safety requirements that eliminate small, low-standard operators and make oversight manageable. - Require producers to run nationwide reverse-logistics systems.
Mandate that manufacturers and importers collect and return ULABs to formal recyclers, tying compliance to licensing and continued market access. - Remove taxes and barriers that disadvantage formal recyclers.
Eliminate VAT or sales taxes on ULABs and scrap. Streamline permitting and transport requirements. Improve access to capital for high-standard plants. - Reduce the profitability and market access of informal recyclers.
Increase legal and social risks, tighten controls on buyers, restrict lead sales channels, and use EPR systems to create strong demand for formal-sector scrap. - Strengthen traceability and transparency.
Require tracking of battery flows. Use digital manifests, third-party compliance entities (such as Brazil’s IBER model), and regular public reporting to detect leakage and fraud. - Build efficient national collection and transport systems.
Use reverse logistics through retailers, distributors, and manufacturers to lower costs and keep ULABs out of informal channels. - Integrate environmental and health monitoring.
Use emissions monitoring, hotspot assessments, and occupational blood lead surveillance to guide inspections and regulate plant siting. - Use alternative pathways for low-volume countries.
Where domestic scrap volumes are too small for safe recycling, rely on export-only models or shared regional facilities instead of building local smelters. - Establish durable governance structures.
Create long-term coordination mechanisms across environment ministries, customs, industry, labor, and law enforcement to sustain oversight.
Brazil provides one of the clearest proof points. Through a set of coordinated reforms, including extended producer responsibility mandates, strict licensing, targeted inspections, distributor-level take-back requirements, and digital monitoring of transport manifests, Brazil enabled the formal sector to out-compete the informal sector.
Pure Earth Applies These Solutions Around the World
For more than 20 years, Pure Earth has helped governments, recyclers, and communities reduce exposure and build safer national systems:
In Bangladesh, we are designing economic models and policy mechanisms that enable formal recyclers to lead the market, restrict informal high-emission operators, and enhance government oversight, compliance, and revenue through better traceability and regulation. In Indonesia, our teams are working with national ministries, the Basel and Stockholm Conventions Regional Center for Southeast Asia and leading Indonesian universities to estimate the true scale of unsafe recycling, improve battery collection and transportation systems, develop regulatory guidance, promote engagement from private sectors, and strengthen enforcement frameworks. In Ghana, we are remediating a former ULAB recycling and scrap smelting site to reduce exposure in surrounding communities. In multiple countries, we have provided technical assistance to factory owners to upgrade pollution controls, supported regulators in closing highly polluting facilities, and conducted soil and home remediation around abandoned contaminated sites.
ULAB recycling problems rarely require new technology or new science. They require coherent national systems, predictable rules, and alignment across the supply chain.
Every Actor Has a Role
Ending this crisis requires more than national reforms. It requires a whole-of-supply-chain response, backed by sustained international coordination and financing. Companies in high-income countries benefit directly from recycled lead. They also bear responsibility for ensuring their supply chains are not built on toxic, illegal, or exploitative practices.
This includes:
- Automotive and telecom companies
- Battery manufacturers
- Commodity traders
- Recyclers
- Investors and financiers
No company can claim its supply chain is responsible unless it knows where its recycled lead comes from and verifies that it was produced safely.
Donations from partners like you enable Pure Earth to continue and expand this life-saving work. We stand ready to work with governments, industry, and civil society to build safe, modern recycling systems that protect health, safeguard markets, and ensure that the batteries powering the global economy do not come at the cost of human lives.
