Peter S. Goodman

And then I went there with Will to nail down the real-life consequences for the people living in villages right next to these places.

plants and also to go talk to people in Lagos who could tell us about the Nigeria supply chain part of it before this lead gets put into shipping containers and sent across the water for ports around the world.

So I went to a place called Ogijo, which is just north of Lagos, which is a sprawling, you know, enormous metropolitan area.

And Ogijo is sort of a combination of an industrial and rural where there are a bunch of smelters, including the one that we wound up focusing on called True Metals.

And we picked it not only because it's really bad in terms of the pollution that it puts out,

but also because it only deals in lead.

And these are large factories where people are feeding this lead into these giant furnaces that send smoke wafting throughout the area, including in these villages that are right next to the factories.

So I spent a lot of time just sitting with families, talking to them about the struggle of living next door to these plants.

People were coughing.

People were complaining of all sorts of ailments that are linked in the literature to lead poisoning, you know, indigestion and various gastrointestinal distress, unrelenting headaches.

And I saw children in schools that were literally next to these factories.

So I was just blown away and really horrified by what I was seeing up close.

And it gave me a real sense of, this story's really important.

Sure.

So, you know, it's important to note that virtually every car on the road has a lead battery under there somewhere, even electric vehicles.

And if we didn't have lead batteries, we'd notice real fast.

happens to be one of the most recyclable elements on earth and the auto industry has really leaned into that in promoting itself as the exemplar of the circular economy they do recycle most of these old batteries and have very sophisticated plants that recycle they have you know

automated processes that break apart the old batteries and extract the lead safely.

They dispose of the acid that's in there.

They have emissions controls that prevent lead dust and smoke from spewing out into communities.