Bangladesh’s economy has evolved rapidly from one based primarily on agriculture to a more diversified service and manufacturing economy. While this evolution has helped Bangladesh move up the income scale, it has also created new pollution control and environmental health challenges that may be outpacing the government’s capacity to regulate industries and mitigate environmental health risks. This challenge is particularly acute with respect to the used lead acid battery (ULAB) recycling industry and the exposures to toxic lead pollution that result from informal and substandard recycling.
Bangladesh is believed to have more than 1,100 informal and illegal ULAB recycling operations across the country. To date, 270 of these locations have been identified and assessed by environmental health professionals from the non-profit organization Pure Earth and the Department of Geology of the University of Dhaka (see site list in Annex A). These assessments reveal high concentrations of lead surrounding informal ULAB recycling operations and severe public health risks to nearby residents. Based on these findings, informal and unsound ULAB recycling is believed to be a significant contributor to lead exposures across the country and the primary contributor to lead pollution hotspots.
The average concentration of lead in children’s blood in Bangladesh is estimated to be among the highest in the world at approximately 8 micrograms per deciliter (μg/dL) .This concentration is significantly above the “reference level” of 5 μg/dL that triggers government intervention and case management for a child in the United States. A recent meta-analysis suggests that nearly 28.5 million children in Bangladesh have blood lead levels above 5 μg/dL, and that more than 21 million have BLLs above 10 μg/dL (Ericson, 2020). At these levels, it would be reasonable to expect significant IQ reductions among the tens of millions of chronically exposed children. In 2017, exposures to lead were responsible for 4.3% of deaths in the country.
A study on economic impacts from lead exposures estimates that each year Bangladesh loses US $15.9 billion in GDP from reduced lifetime earning potential among the exposed population. This figure includes only lost earning potential due to IQ decrements, and does not include healthcare costs, lost earnings from premature death, or lost taxes from illegal ULAB recycling operations.
