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57 Comments
- slunktoday, on 01/05/2009, -1/+17I can't help but laugh that "Fainting Goats" is a related link.
- Bowie, on 01/05/2009, -1/+14"For years, the town's blacksmiths extracted lead from car batteries and remolded it into weights for fishing nets. It's a dangerous, messy process in which workers crack open the batteries with a hatchet and pull small pieces of lead out of skin-burning acid. The work left the dirt of Thiaroye dense with small lead particles."
...Sorry, but has anyone stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, the people who were poisoning themselves, their families, their livestock, their communities, were a bunch of careless ***** idiots WHO TOOK HATCHETS TO CAR BATTERIES?
Quit babying Africa.The manufacturers of products that contain lead and other dangerous substances have no control over whether or not someone chooses to violate the safety warnings they give. They violated the warnings, and this is what they have to show for it. Trust me, I've been to Africa. Scrap dealers know about the warnings. They just choose not to care, because they know if it's really bad enough, someone will eventually step in to help.
This is like blaming Kingsford charcoal for your decision to barbecue indoors, and kill your whole family from carbon monoxide exposure, and burn half your house down. Its not Kingsford's fault you're a careless idiot who ignored common sense, logic, and widely known safety information. - Bowie, on 01/05/2009, -0/+10This has nothing to do with regulation.
"For years, the town's blacksmiths extracted lead from car batteries and remolded it into weights for fishing nets. It's a dangerous, messy process in which workers crack open the batteries with a hatchet and pull small pieces of lead out of skin-burning acid. The work left the dirt of Thiaroye dense with small lead particles."
This has to do with Africans ignoring health and safety warnings and taking apart car batteries WITH HATCHETS. Gee, I wonder if that will cause a problem? - rolf, on 01/05/2009, -0/+10Any viable electric car will probably not even have a lead acid battery at all. Just not enough juice to keep going any long distanc at a reasonable weight. Although I'm not sure if any newer technology batteries aren't going to be toxic.
Here's hoping for some really good ultra-capacitors in the future. - Renton, on 01/05/2009, -0/+7Non-electric cars have lead-acid batteries because they're cheaper. Electric cars have to use nickel-metal hydride (or nickel-cadmium for the older ones) because lead-acid batteries can't do that type of work. Electric cars would solve this problem.
- Barackalypse, on 01/05/2009, -0/+6No, they reclaim the valuable metals, the techniques they use to do it are what causes the horrible groundwater and soil pollution. Just because the recycling isn't environmentally friendly doesn't mean it isn't recycling (just like organic food doesn't necessarily mean healthy).
- BruB, on 01/05/2009, -1/+7I actually felt bad reading it until I read "The government wants to relocate the entire neighborhood. But Demba Diaw says the government just wants to profit from the lead in their earth". At what point must we help if they don't want to help themselves. You stay there you die, you move you survive with a chance to recover. A no brainer.
- Bowie, on 01/05/2009, -3/+9...How is it my fault that they suffer?
I don't have more kids than I can feed, or my civilization can support. Amazingly, i'm not suffering. - Atario, on 01/04/2009, -11/+17That's what a lack of environmental regulation gets you. Heed the lesson well, laissez-faire proponents...
- TheMachine1, on 01/05/2009, -1/+6"LEAD AND TERRORISM"
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individu ...
"Another place where a massive lead-abatement really needs to happen is in the developing world. In Pakistan, some 80 percent of children have dangerous levels of lead in their bloodstream, which in turn affects childhood development and, presumably, intelligence."
Lead could be playing a role in violence. - inactive, on 01/05/2009, -3/+8That's what letting people suffer to the point of having to dig up batteries gets you.
- Barackalypse, on 01/05/2009, -1/+5I Dugg you up, but I really dislike the specific wording "letting people suffer", as if some external force is either the cause or ought to be responsible for the salvation of these people. I take the point to be, dirt poor people do things that aren't desireable and wouldn't be done if not for poverty.
- 1hrSleep, on 01/05/2009, -1/+5There
Their
They're
Thurr - SpiffyStiffy, on 01/05/2009, -0/+3"mommy, do they mean FROM car batteries?"
"yes honey, now eat your lead so you can grow up smart and be an editor for the main stream media" - Bowie, on 01/05/2009, -1/+4If the batteries were stored or processed appropriately, there wouldn't be a problem.
Instead, you have a bunch of people taking them apart with hatchets. Read the article.
Do you feel sorry for people who intentionally ***** themselves and other people over? Repeatedly? - grumpyrain, on 01/05/2009, -1/+4Anyone who owns a vehicle that runs on an oil derivative needs to consider the environmental and health consequences of drilling, refining, transporting and disposing processes; and it will only get worse as the harder to refine stuff becomes more cost effective (sands, shale, coal). Now add to this all the lubrication oils your petrol engine needs to have changed every 6 months.
Also, Lead acid batteries are extremely heavy and have one of the worst energy/KG ratio at 180W/KG. They are however capable of delivering a surge current (good for starting say turning an engine), and are very cheap to produce. Consequently, they are used for petrol and diesel engine vehicles.
EVs need something with much less weight to store much more energy so that the battery lasts more than 10 minutes. Currently they are mostly NiMH (up to 1000W/KG) and Li-Ion (up to 1800W/KG) are becoming more popular as their price comes down and as certain problems like operating in cold weather are resolved. - inactive, on 01/05/2009, -1/+4THAN!
- synik, on 01/05/2009, -1/+4Lead and Islam, a dangerous mix.
- MightyMik, on 01/05/2009, -1/+4That almost happened to *ME*. I live right here in the good old US of A, and local governments turned their backs on this for YEARS. I know of a place that operated from 1948 - 1981. i used to PLAY on that property. There was NO fence. It was a NEIGHBOR. there are tags on Google Earth for it, if you know where to look. It was an EPA Superfund site. No amount of yelling and screaming by us locals could get them to shut it down. You can't recycle it this way *now*, but there's still the issue ...what will you do with 'car batteries' when they won't hold a charge anymore? Anyone that owns a hybrid needs to think about this a little. It's not just lead anymore. If you think that's a mess, try 100,000 cubic yards of 'landfill'. It is a breading place for mosquitoes. (the place is in southwest Ohio, just north of Dayton)
- DavidYeah, on 01/05/2009, -1/+3I think what you just defined was an unregulated environmental hazard, guy.
- GreatSunJester, on 01/05/2009, -0/+2Bbuuu.....Buuu...But the lawyer says we have a case against Kingsford! And last week, Billy-Ray shot Jenny-Sue with Tommy-Joe's huntin' AK-47. Grampa-Jim's lawyer says twarn't Billy-Ray's fault and we should sue the gun maker and the shop that sold it. Timmy-Jane says it was Billy-Ray's fault cause Jenny-Sue wouldn't put out anymore but we don't listen to him since that operation.
OK..... that rambled just a little! - wunksta, on 01/05/2009, -0/+2i think its just an indication of the desperation going on, its not like these are isolated cases of idiots but people struggling to survive and get by. rock and a hard place and all that
- Bowie, on 01/06/2009, -0/+1You can't regulate human stupidity, Einstein.
It's no more the fault of companies that make car batteries than it is the fault of companies that make the hatchets these geniuses are using to take apart the batteries with.
Yeah, your right. We should stop making car batteries, since a bunch of ***** in Africa are taking them apart with hatchets. I say we stop producing food, too. Food chokes people. You don't want to choke to death, do you?
The degree of sheer stupidity in generations younger than my own is on the brink of being nearly unfathomable. Common sense has been replaced with Barney & Friends logic.
Here's a hint. If Barney were real, and had friends, he wouldn't be friends with a ***** hacking apart batteries with a hatchet. - wunksta, on 01/06/2009, -0/+1"Maybe they're at that point of desparation because of doing stupid ***** like hacking car batteries to pieces with a hatchet?"
its all about necessity i believe. if they DID know about those problems then its not something they did "just to do it" as you are presuming i think. - kimbja98, on 01/06/2009, -0/+1Even if you're poor, you still like to know where the next meal comes from. Presumably, by the fact this hypothetical person is still alive, he has food to survive. If he moves, who's to say when he's next going to eat? That uncertainty means he'd probably stay put with the lead poisoning and food rather than move.
- lornali, on 01/06/2009, -0/+1Not very good to read
- lucas22, on 01/11/2009, -0/+1News just in........ ***** off and die emily
- apeweek, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1Hybrids do not use lead-acid batteries. They typically use environmentally-friendly NIMHs.
In fact, it's your GAS vehicle that uses lead-acid batteries. So to borrow your words, "...Anyone that *doesn't* own a hybrid needs to think about this a little." - Bowie, on 01/06/2009, -0/+1Maybe they shouldn't have had kids that can't support, educate, or even feed.
- elementop, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1@Coolkid11: Your claim would be much more convincing had you bothered to follow it with even a shred of supporting argumentation.
- DoctorFaust, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1Hang on. I'll get Chris Redfield to check it out.
- apeweek, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1New technology batteries (NIMH and Li-Ion) are not very toxic to the environment. Older types (lead-acid and NI-CD) are environmental problems.
We need to move away from these old battery chemistries. Lead-acid batteries are not very good in electric cars, anyway (it's 100-year-old technology.) - megostylez, on 01/05/2009, -1/+2Right that they do undesireable jobs, but is it ethical to allow for that system, there are women walking in fields of E-waste to which you so may have previously enjoyed your diggs from, salvaging the metals that can be... but that is their job every day just to get food.
http://www.sflorg.com/ear/wp-content/uploads/2008/ ...
http://static.huddler.com/imgrepo/thumbs/d/db/BAN2 ...
http://i.treehugger.com/images/2007/5/24/does-this ...
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_liana/ewa ...
Try raising YOUR children like this and tell me how much you love the government for not infringing on free markets
There ARE external forces that caused these situations, and you can start learning by reading some history books. - Pookatooka, on 01/05/2009, -0/+1Must link to a submission by Vroom101.
- jasongbc, on 01/06/2009, -0/+1You might have got dugg up if you were more literate.
- Bowie, on 01/06/2009, -0/+1Maybe they're at that point of desparation because of doing stupid ***** like hacking car batteries to pieces with a hatchet?
- inactive, on 01/05/2009, -2/+2You both suck.
- patch6, on 01/05/2009, -2/+2You should at least try the mosquito bread before knocking it.
- notadiggtard, on 01/05/2009, -2/+2Too bad it wasn't Berkley CA instead!
- xero69, on 01/05/2009, -1/+1"Like many other families, the Diaws are too poor and too rooted to move. So they will stay where the lead poisons the earth."
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I blame their corrupt government which has been ignoring the needs of it's people for decades. - jasongbc, on 01/06/2009, -0/+0At least they had batteries to whack open. They could have been REALLY poor. I think that neighbourhood needs some sweatshops.
- Mockylock, on 01/06/2009, -1/+1I always wondered what the ***** happened to those things. Now I know.
- jasongbc, on 01/06/2009, -0/+0When I was a kid I thought Africa was all tribes in the jungle and majestic plains with rhinos and elephants. Turns out that it's all genocide, scrub forest and desert.
- jasongbc, on 01/06/2009, -0/+0They should be saving the sulphuric acid and selling that as well instead of just dumping it into the ground. Surely someone can use that too? Or they could just mix it with some nitric acid and make some bombs and really get noticed.
- jasongbc, on 01/06/2009, -0/+0If you're THAT poor, what do you have to lose by picking up your belongings and moving to another town?
- jasongbc, on 01/06/2009, -0/+0No more dangerous than lead and christianity.
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