On 27 Dec 2013 at 0:25, Bill Dube wrote: > (Where is half of the lead going? Why must we mine so much?)... What > happened to the 26 (at least) pounds of lead? The answer is that it is > lost to the environment.
With all due respect, I have to say that without further evidence I'd have to say this answer looks to me like speculation. At the very least, I don't think we should lay this loss at the door of the battery manufacturers. Obviously there other products besides batteries that contain lead. Some examples are bullets, fishing sinkers, and auto wheel balancing weights. Some others that are infamous from news reports are cheap imported toys and jewelry. Cosmetics have been found with lead in them. There was an infamous case a dozen or so years ago in which Chinese suppliers were caught dumping lead into whole fish they exported, to increase the weight and get more money for them. How much of that 26% goes into these non-battery products? If you answered that question, I missed it. Some lead products release all their lead right into the environment almost by definition. Bullets are one example. When my gun-collector neighbor obliterates the target on the hill in his back yard on a Saturday afternoon (and Sunday, and Monday, and ...), all that lead ends up in the ground. I don't really like to think about the fact that some of the rainwater that eventually feeds my house's spring filters down through the hill where he shoots. (One person's bullets probably don't contribute that much, but he's not the only person around here who shoots regularly.) Some items that lead goes into are more durable than bullets. At least they don't go right into the ground. OK, yeah, they'll end up in the landfill eventually. That's not a good thing, but you can't blame either that or my neighbor's leaded-up back yard on the battery industry. And sure, some lead batteries aren't properly recycled. Some of this is just ignorance and/or thoughtlessness. Years ago I tore down a termite- ridden garage on another property I owned. When I cleaned it out I found a half-dozen old SLI batteries (which I took to the recycling center). I found another one chucked in the dirt under the back porch! Who knows how many other batteries have just sat like that for years? Here's another example. For years the US Coast Guard just dumped the batteries from buoys and other marine lighting devices into the drink when changing them. There are countless tons of lead lying in the mud of rivers, lakes, and oceans. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/02/us/coast-guard-faces-suit-over-toxic- batteries-it-dumped-in-lakes-and-rivers.html http://tinyurl.com/m3el8sk So, yeah, not all lead batteries are recycled. Is the 95-99% figure usually cited accurate? The data I have to the contrary is totally anecdotal. It doesn't prove those numbers wrong. It's intuitive that using lithium batteries (or NiMH batteries) in your EV should be environmentally more benign than using lead batteries. But intuition never tells the whole story, nor do incomplete figures. Again, all that proves is that recycling isn't 100%. It doesn't disprove the 95- 99% claim. There may be enough data somewhere to draw some valid conclusions about where that allegedly unaccounted-for lead is going, and how much of the loss can be laid to the manufacture of lead batteries. But I haven't yet seen those data in these posts. In fact I haven't yet seen anything that truly refutes the claims of 95-99% recycling. Maybe I'm missing something? David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
