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Public Health Impacts
Exide creates lead batteries for automobiles and other industrial purposes. Lead is a neurotoxin that causes harm to most organs, but it most commonly causes cognitive deficits, neurodevelopmental delays, and psychological impairments. Throughout history, lead exposure has lead to public health problems, specifically for workers in factories or other industrial entities. While past measures that prevent lead exposure in the first place have been successful, “secondary prevention” is emphasized by public health agencies now, leaving the people who have already been exposed or who will continually be exposed at risk because lead is still used in the manufacture of batteries, buses, trucks, tractors, and motorcycles. As a result, Low income communities and communities of color face a major gap in the public health system for lead exposure prevention.

According to “Industrial Lead Poisoning in Los Angeles: Anatomy of a Public Health Failure” in the Journal of Environmental Justice, Southeastern Los Angeles has similar gaps and failures of lead prevention as in the Flint Michigan Water Crisis. Since the 1970’s, Exide had been operating in Vernon. In 2013, AQMD explained that upwards of 250,000 residents in East Los Angeles face a chronic health hazard from lead and arsenic exposure from Exide. Communities living near Exide such as Boyle Heights and Maywood are more than 90% Latino and rank among the top 10% of most environmentally burdened areas in California. Lead exposure is especially prevalent in soil, water, and dust; it has the most impact on the children and workers around Vernon.

In 2019, a study conducted by the University of Southern California found a high amount of lead in baby teeth of children in Boyle Heights, Maywood, East Los Angeles, Commerce, and Huntington park. The lead in the baby teeth matched with soil contamination data from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. The Truth Fairy study revealed that children in Boyle Heights and East L.A. have the highest exposure to lead, which most likely came through winds carrying soil in utero from their mother or post birth. The study urges legislators to create initiatives to prevent lead exposure. Jill Johnston, co author of the study and professor of preventive medicine explains, “higher lead in teeth means higher lead in the brain, kidney and bones. Testing women for lead during pregnancy, or even earlier, as they enter child-bearing age, may be needed to decrease lead exposure to their future offspring.”