"A Dangerous Export"

"America's Car-Battery Waste Is Making Mexican Communities Sick".

"DOCTOR GONZALEZ, Mexico — After the initial headaches and nausea, Juan Gonzalez Mendoza’s physical deterioration came swiftly: deep pain in his bones, elbows and knees that refused to bend, then numbness throughout his left side, steady loss of control over his arms and legs, and finally an inability to walk or even stand.

Company doctors where he worked — a battery recycling plant set amid thornbush hills near Monterrey — told him he had a fever. He soon became too sick to do his job feeding used U.S. car batteries into giant ovens. Private medical tests eventually confirmed the problem: acute lead poisoning.

“I lost my equilibrium,” said the 50-year-old Gonzalez, steadying himself against the front gate of his home a few blocks from the Eléctrica Automotriz Omega plant. “I lost everything.”"

Joshua Partlow and Joby Warrick report for the Washington Post February 26, 2016.