Lead poisoning has been a serious public health issue in Bangladesh since early 1990s affecting mostly children. Suspecting that burning of leaded-gasoline was a source of lead pollution in the environment, in 1999, the government of the time banned the use of leaded gasoline. Now, informal lead-battery recycling plants are found to be the worst source of lead pollution in the soil, water and air. And since children can absorb lead in their body more readily than adults, they are more vulnerable to lead poisoning and in greater numbers. In a 2022 study high 'blood lead levels' (BLLs) could be detected in 40 per cent of the children under the study.
Studies by Pure Earth, Global Alliance on Health supported by USAID and others found that more than 36 million children, about 60 per cent of all children in Bangladesh, have high BLLs due to exposure to the hazardous heavy metal arising from unsafe battery recycling practices. But now it is not only humans, farm animals are also not immune from lead poisoning. A recent report says that chemical wastes from an illegal battery recycling plant in Digri Char area under Sadar upazila of Jamalpur have for the last one month polluting local environment including croplands and grazing pastures for farm animals. According to reports, tragedy struck farm animals owned by landless farmer, Hekmat Ali, when on the morning of October 28, he found that four of his cows had died while eight others fell critically ill.
It is suspected that the animals ate grass and water contaminated by acid waste from the battery recycling plant dumped on the local grazing fields. Locals further reported that their farm animals including goats and poultry birds such as ducks and hens had also died for similar reasons. The poor farmer who, as could be learnt, sold milk of the cows as part of his family's livelihood. But what was the Department of Environment (DoE)'s office in Jamalpur doing all the while when toxic acid and burnt materials from the illegal battery recycling plant in the Mirzapur village had been leaving a devastating impact on the animal and plant lives or, in other words, the ecology of the village and its surrounding areas including the river Brahmaputra? It could be further learnt that the battery recycling plant in question has not obtained any clearance from the district's DoE office. Strangely, the DoE officials of Jamalpur were not even aware of the illegal battery recycling plant's existence until the deaths of the farm animals were reported. But then what was the local administration doing? Jamalpur Sadar UNO under whose jurisdictions the illegal plant operates was also reportedly not aware about the battery recycling plant as she was attending a training course. But then one wonders how the illegal battery recycling plant's month-long operation that was severely affecting public health as well as the health of livestock population of Digri char area escaped notice of Sadar upazila UNO office's other members.
It is clearly an instance of gross negligence on the part of both DoE and the local administration. And if this is the story of a single informal battery recycling plant, then who knows where the used batteries of some 7 million three wheelers, according to a government estimate, running across the country are being dumped? Is there any policy to monitor those unregulated battery recycling plants in the country?
In April 2025, according to the Bangladesh's Department of Environment (DoE), it reportedly shut down 16 illegal lead smelting sites and destroyed six furnaces near Dhaka. This is about only a few illegal lead smelting sites around the capital city. One can only hope that the government would be able to track and take necessary action against all the unreported and unregulated battery recycling plants spread across the country.
sfalim.ds@gmail.com
