LA OROYA, PERU — Angel Jesus Pacotaype is a child of lead, one of hundreds of youngsters in this Andean town suffering from what a U.S. health study has labeled an "epidemic" of exposure to the toxic metal. The 3-year-old is lethargic and exhibits signs of sluggish development, classic symptoms of lead poisoning.
"We are desperate," said Luisa Pacotaype, 39, a mother of five who lives with her family in an adobe house in the old part of town, La Oroya Antigua. "We don't know who to turn to."
Looming just across the sullied Mantaro River is the poison's apparent source: La Oroya's 85-year-old smelter complex, its smokestack a dark sentinel in the mountain sky.
The facility is at the center of a bitter environmental dispute that pits townsfolk against townsfolk and activists against the smelter's owner, Doe Run Peru, an affiliate of the St. Louis-based Doe Run Resources Corp.
In the process, isolated La Oroya has become the unlikely setting for a fiercely polarizing struggle over U.S. corporate responsibility in the Third World.
On the twisting streets of the Old Town, air laced with sulfur dioxide spewing from the smokestack irritates the eyes, befouls the mouth and stings the lungs. Fine dust coats furniture and clothes, residents say.
In 2006, the Blacksmith Institute, a New York-based environmental advocacy group, named La Oroya among the world's 10 most-polluted places, a list that includes Chernobyl, Ukraine.
This is a community where parents recite their children's blood-lead readings the way moms and dads elsewhere recall their kids' birthdays.
"They said Angel's lead level was close to 50, but we fear it may be higher," said his father, Mariano Pacotaype. In children, a measurement one-fifth of Angel's, 10 micrograms a deciliter, is considered elevated by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Officials at Doe Run acknowledge that almost every child tested in the Old Town has a blood-lead reading at least double that level.
Peruvian and U.S. activists allege that the smelter's daily release of lead, arsenic and other toxic substances has stunted childhood development and caused an array of illnesses, including cancer. A St. Louis University research team said La Oroya faces a "daily toxic cocktail" and labeled the situation "an environmental health crisis."
However, epidemiological and statistical studies definitively linking the emissions to illness are lacking.
