US-run smelter in Peru harming children

LIMA (Reuters) – Children in Peru’s La Oroya mining town
have harmful levels of toxic heavy metals, such as lead and
arsenic, in their bodies, a study by U.S. scientists showed on
Tuesday, in the first independent health probe into toxic gases
pumped out by the U.S.-owned Doe Run metal refinery.

Scientists from St. Louis University said that, along with
the high blood lead levels established by earlier studies, some
children younger than six years old have dangerously high
levels of arsenic and cadmium, substances linked to lung and
skin diseases.

“Everyone in La Oroya is being poisoned by a cocktail of
toxic metals, such as lead, arsenic, cadmium and other heavy
metals,” said Fernando Serrano, head of the study group at St.
Louis health faculty.

The study showed that 97 percent of children in La Oroya
younger than six have harmful levels of lead in their blood.
Around 18 percent of the children have high arsenic levels and
nearly 1 percent have cadmium levels.

Executives at The Doe Run Co.’s smelter in Peru’s central
Andes were not immediately available for comment.

Doe Run Peru says it has spent $78 million on modernization
and by 2006 will have invested $94 million in steps to meet
government environmental regulations, cutting workers’ blood
lead levels by a third.

But a recent study by Doe Run and Peru’s Health Ministry
showed 99.9 percent of children up to age six in La Oroya have
abnormally high blood lead levels.

Children have been measured in both studies because they
are considered most susceptible to heavy metal poisoning,
scientists said.

Missouri-based Doe Run says it is doing all it can to
modernize the aging, blackened smelter, built in 1922 without
environmental safeguards. The company plans to build a $100
million sulfuric acid plant to capture all toxic gases by 2009.