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US Hazardous Waste Sent To Mexico Makes ‘Toxic Cocktail’ Of Pollution

"A Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab investigation finds very high levels of lead and arsenic in homes near a factory processing US toxic waste"

"Raquel Villarreal lives in a bright-yellow house in Mexico’s Monterrey metropolitan area with her family and nine cats. Here, the emergency medicine doctor has raised three daughters, one of whom died at the age of 14.

Just steps away is an industrial plant that operates 24 hours a day, emitting pollution that neighbors say blankets the neighborhood and which Villarreal says is hard to remove from her car.

In 2023, a prominent toxicology researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Unam), Martín Soto Jiménez, came to her gate and asked to test the soil and dust in and around her home.

Recently, Soto Jiménez and his team returned with bleak findings.

Samples taken by wiping the home’s indoor window sills found lead, which is neurotoxic, at levels 60 times higher than the level at which the US says action should be taken to fix the problem to avoid health consequences."

Erin McCormick reports for the Guardian, and Verónica García de León for Quinto Elemento Lab, January 14, 2025.

Source: Guardian/Quinto Env. Lab, 01/15/2025