Lead Poisoning from Doe Run Smelter in La Oroya Peru

It Just Might Be The Smelter

Tnis smelting plant is locted in the middle of La Oroya, Peru, an Andean town not far from Lima. Built in 1922, the massive complex processes copper, lead and zinc, and in the process emits lead, cadmium, arsenic, antimony and sulfur dioxide. That's why the people, soil, air and water around here. But the plant is also the main source of jobs.

The question is: is this necessary? The owner since 1997 is Doe Run- Peru, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Doe Run (in turn owned by a good looking fellow named Ira. At the time of the purchase in 1997, Doe Run agreed to modernize the plants and bring emissions down to acceptable levels by 2006. At present, according to the St. Louis Dispatch, the plant generates annual discharges of roughly 32 tons of lead, 36 tons of poisonous arsenic and 69,000 tons of the toxic metal cadmium into the nearby Mantaro River. Between 2002 and 2004, lead emissions through the main smokestack at La Oroya increased by 33 percent. In February 2004, the company requested a five-year extension on its obligations.

Highlights:

In 2000-2001, a study commissioned by Doe Run Peru showed the average lead levels in the blood of 1,198 residents were 2.5 times above World Health Organization limits. An earlier study commissioned by the Ministry of Health showed that 99 percent of 346 children studied had lead poisoning, and 67 percent had lead levels so high that they should have been medically treated.

Visit another Doe Run smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri, the state's largest source of pollution.

Let's visit Ira Rennert owner of Doe Run and American Magnesium, Utah's largest polluter.

In December 2005, 13 members of Peru’s congress formally called on the Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Ministry of Health to declare a state of emergency in the area.

In August 2005, members of the St. Louis University Environmental Health Study teams were attacked by workers at the Doe Run plant. The University and the Center for Disease Control were documenting the high levels of heavy metal contamination in the Andean city of La Oroya. Assaults were verbal and physical.