La Oroya high up in the Andes in Peru has been a mining town since the eighteenth century. It has the unenviable reputation of being one of the top 10 most polluted places on the planet. There are so many places that the Capitalists and rogue governments have ruined that it would be difficult to name one as “the dirtiest place on earth’.
La Oroya though takes some beating. It boasts a dirty American-owned smelter that has operated there since 1922. The metal smelter is run by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation and the company has reneged on it’s contractual promises to clean up it’s processes.
As you can see from the photo the city is shrouded in a toxic smog.
Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:
“With the acquisition of La Oroya, Doe Run inherited a complicated and partially semi-obsolescent smelter complex. The operation had suffered from disrepair, previous owners had invested little in modernization or clean operations. As a result of years of pollution, the hills immediately around the smelter became completely denuded, the river became more toxic, and the health of area inhabitants suffered. Residents have been found to have alarmingly high concentrations of lead in their blood and in the drinking water, and many have bronchial troubles. A 1999 study (conducted two years after Doe Run’s acquisition) showed high levels of air pollution, with 85 times more arsenic, 41 times more cadmium, and 13 times more lead than amounts generally considered safe.”
In 2007 it was found that the smelter’s polluted emissions have led to dangerously high blood lead levels in 99% of La Oroya’s children. With air pollution at these dangerous levels lung disorders are widespread and there is also a high incident of premature death. Within a very short exposure the dense air stings the eyes and throat.
The hills around the city are denuded of vegetation by acid rain and there is very little farming in the area because of the pollutants saturated soil.
The president of Doe Run Peru, Juan Carlos Huyhua, says the company is doing much to improve the health of workers at the plant and claims their blood lead levels were reduced by 34 percent by 2006. What he didn’t mention was that Doe Run’s lead smelter in the U.S. state of Missouri produces emissions twenty times lower than it’s plant in Peru.
Profit always comes before peoples health and well-being. Doe Run doesn’t give damn about the environment or the people who live in this area. They wouldn’t get away with it in the United States or Europe but in a ‘third-world’ country anything goes. Capitalism has no morality!
Instead of cleaning up the pollution as promised the American billionaire owner, Ira Rennert, used the profits to help build one of the world’s most expensive houses.
Further reading:
Aida-Americas.org
WikiPedia
Time
Related posts:
- The Unacceptable Face Of Capitalism: IBM & The Holocaust Edwin Black an award-winning New York Times bestselling author...
- The Unacceptable Face Of Capitalism: Shell Oil, Polluter & Human Rights Violator Despite the billions of dollars Shell has made from it's...
- “The Unacceptable Face Of Capitalism” “The unacceptable face of capitalism,” was first coined in 1973...
- The Unacceptable Face Of Capitalism: Bhopal And Union Carbide It is the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Nothing will happen till the constitutions of all the developed (sic) countries are amended to remove corporate citizenship. This is the main reason for all the troubles the world’s population is facing for the past three centuries. Corporations have become huge monsters to kill the mankind once and for all.
Efforts from all those who feel sorry for the common people, must come to combine their strength of global population against these countries to amend the constitutions. Else, this dance of monster will continue endlessly till the last man on this earth is dead. In case of Bhopal, the Indian government has not cared to follow the inquiry to arrest and punish the owners and management people of Union Carbide for the past 25 tears. One can suspect the link of the government and the industrialists. Supreme Court of USA has now authorized corporations and trade unions to spend unlimited amounts for funding the elections by political parties to elect their representatives and also for propagating the cause by spending for advertisements. For whom the courts are working in a democratic countries: common people or corporate people? Why should we call these countries democratic instead of demoncratic?
This is typical of these greedy capitalists they exploit the poor to make themselves rich. The company and the owner are criminals.