Peter S. Goodman

Eventually, I was able to persuade Chris Pruitt and other executives at East Penn to talk to us.

Well, he said that our reporting had caused him to do a lot more thinking that he'd previously done about the origins of the lead and that previously he had talked to trading companies like Trafigura and had said, you know, I need this particular purification.

And, oh, by the way, of course, you're guaranteeing that this is not causing social or environmental problems.

Oh, no, of course not.

The trading company would say, you know, we have audit processes.

You know, all this is good.

Okay, then, just as long as you can deliver the quantity and the purity that we need at the guaranteed price, all good.

And since our reporting, he'd actually dug into his own supply chain, had become concerned about the process of due diligence the trading companies were doing.

And as he put it,

out of the utmost of caution, decided that he didn't want to buy any more lead from Nigeria.

So I did ask him at one point about moral culpability.

And I said, well, given that we now know that Trafagura's due diligence leaves a lot to be desired and we can see with our own eyes and

what was playing out in these villages next to these smelters.

Where do you fit in terms of the moral culpability for this?

And he said, look, you know, was I too trusting?

I'll take that shot.

What did you make of that?

I thought that summed up the reality of complicated supply chains.

There's so much sort of

plausible deniability built in that any given participant can say plausibly, oh, I thought somebody else was looking out.