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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/14/mexico-canada-us-toxic-waste-shipments>
"US companies ship more than 1m tons of hazardous waste to other countries each
year, raising questions over possible impacts on health and the environment, an
investigation by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab has found.
Exports of toxic waste, most of which is shipped to Mexico and Canada, have
climbed 17% since 2018, US records show. And while sending it away for
recycling and disposal is legal, some experts are concerned that more and more
of America’s most dangerous discards are leaving the country.
In the Monterrey metropolitan area in Mexico, the investigation has uncovered
high levels of lead, cadmium, and arsenic in homes and schools around a plant
that recycles toxic dust produced by the US steel industry. Other huge
quantities of waste go to Mexico to battery-recycling plants that experts worry
are fouling the air and exposing workers to dangerous heavy metals.
In Quebec, Canada, children and adults who live near a smelter that processes
electronic waste, including materials from Silicon Valley and other US
locations, have been found to have high levels of arsenic in their fingernails.
At another Quebec site, some of the toxic waste is buried in giant cells near a
peat bog.
Allowing hazardous waste to cross US borders and move out of the country’s
regulatory control is particularly a problem, experts say, when the waste ends
up going to places where environmental management is outdated, inadequate or
nonexistent. That is the case in Mexico, environmentalists there argue.
But there are even examples in more tightly regulated Canada that raise
questions about whether it is environmentally responsible for US companies to
send waste there.
“How can we accept being the trash can for the United States?” said Martine
Ouellet, a former natural resources minister for Quebec who now heads the
political party Climat Québec. She is fighting to stop the expansion of a
landfill near Montreal which received 47,000 tons of US hazardous waste in
2022.
“We think it’s crazy that we import all this toxic waste.”
“We call it ‘waste colonialism’,” said Marisa Jacott, director of Fronteras
Comunes, a non-profit focusing on chemical and industrial pollution in Mexico.
“It’s a form of exploitation and environmental injustice that comes through the
shipment of hazardous waste from richer countries to less affluent ones. It’s
the United States treating Mexico as its back yard.”
Companies processing the waste in Canada and Mexico argue that it is possible
to dispose of it or recycle it responsibly.
This investigation examines the underbelly of US industry by following its
hazardous waste streams out of the country using export records. It is based on
documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, as well as
thousands of pages of environmental records, health studies, and soil and dust
sampling.
The data shows that the total quantity of hazardous waste exports has increased
by 17% percent from 1.2m tons in 2018 to 1.4m tons in 2022."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
