According to a report by Bloomberg, the Ford F-150 electric car and the aluminum required for its manufacture are generating high levels of pollution in the Amazon that are already affecting the resident population.
Bloomberg located the company Hydro Alunorte, owned by Norks Hydro and with capital from the Norwegian Government, in the region of Barcarena, in the Amazon jungle.
The company is responsible for extracting alumina bauxite, the raw material used to manufacture the aluminum required for this electric car.
According to the media, the Ford F-150 is the best-selling electric truck in the United States.
The price, however, is being paid by one of the world’s largest natural reserves: the great lung of Latin America.
The Ford-related mining and refining operations have generated high pollution levels near the Amazon River, home to thousands of people who report high levels of aluminum, lead, and other minerals.
A study by the Laboratory of Analytical and Environmental Chemistry of the Federal University of Pará detected that one of Hydro’s refineries contaminated the drinking water of 26 nearby communities in which lead, aluminum, phosphorus, and other metals were detected.
The results found that the fish in these waters had 57 times more aluminum than the accepted levels and that the hair of about 90% of the population living in the area had three times the aluminum limit.
Meanwhile, researchers from the Evandro Chagas Institute, linked to the Brazilian Ministry of Health, carried out a study that showed the inhabitants of the industrial zone of Barcarena have levels of lead in their blood 10 times higher than those reported by inhabitants of more distant areas.
Similar situations are reported with other minerals such as aluminum, cadmium, manganese, and barium.
For this reason, the organization Associação dos Caboclos, Indígenas e Quilombolas da Amazônia is promoting a class action signed by 11,000 inhabitants against Hydro Alunorte for the direct affectation and the serious irreversible health problems they suffer as a consequence, according to their legal recourse, of the company’s pollutants.
The plaintiffs have compiled at least 10 concrete cases where people have been affected by Hydro Alunorte’s pollutants.
Both Ford and Hydro Alunorte claim that they work under the pollution standards set by the Brazilian government.
The activists and inhabitants claim that the information from the environmental impact studies has never been released.
Bloomberg reported that, upon requesting these studies, it received a link asking for a username and password.
The company never provided the access data or the information that, in theory, could be consulted on that page.
With information from Sputnik