GIIAZ1ABAD India. June 5: Toxh tumes rose into Mangay Ram s face as his acetylene torch cqt uilo a car battery In a lew seconds, the teen ager sjilil open (lie casing and pulled out the lead plates with hands mottled by acid burns, reports AP

Weanim no mask or protec live clothing Rain risks brain damage from the fumes and serious injury Irani the battery acid Yet alongside four other boys he works up to 10 hours a day breaking open old batter les shipped mostly from Australia

They need the work, however awful the job And highly developed First World" countries are glad to give it to them

Mislead ol reprocessing their own waste, many compa-iiks ship it here where environmental standards are lower and enforcement is lax. Envi ronmentalists say India and oilier South Asia countries are becoming die world s dumping ground for toxa waste

Plastic bags and bottles , used car batteries lead cadmium metal scrap and even radioactive waste come from the United Stales Germany. Britain and Canada

In the United Slates, supermarkets tell customers that the soda bullies will be recy i led But they don t tell them that the bottles are being exported to poor countries with rotten work saiety and environmental regulations said

Ann Leonard, ol Greenpeace the worldwide environmental

group

"Just bv ( losing down these factories we < an I say the problem is solved said Indian Environment Minister Kamal Nath

TTiere s the question of demand and employment. We must integrate iliese concerns while banning I tie import of these things he said in an interview

Nath said the import of toxa waste like flatteries was allowed so king as they were recycled saiely But tie admit ted enforcement Is difficult

Iqbal Malik an Indian envi ronmeiilaiisi the silua non m darker stiades The re

t v< hug is (lone under the most primitive < oiichtiotis Yet the government .s not concerned la-cause ii generates jobs "

In hundreds ol makeshift lac lories mostly Illegal — workers earn as little as 10 rupees (30 cents) a day work ing under appalling conditions to melt the plastic bags for new bottles, toys buc kets and other goods

The production of plastic emits dangerous chemicals into the air. such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide compounds which can cause ' cancer birth defects and dam- J age the kidneys, nervous and I immune systems, and blood

Health hazards go beyond just those who work with waste products Sulfuric acid

from recycled batteries is dumped Into gutters or rivers Lead based ash from other re cyclers fouls the air

No one knows how much loxic waste reaches India, since it is usually categorised as raw material for recycling. But a Greenpeace analysis of export documents from many countries revealed that Aus tralia alone exported nearly half a million tons of used bat teries to India in 1993. and the United States sent nearly half ita plastic waste exports to the subcontinent

Much of the US import was in the form of soft drink bot ties. Greenpeace said 23 ahipl oads of plastic bottles were sent to India to be melted

The high quality of US plas tic bags and bottles, in turn, means recyclers are loath to work with low quality Indian products, and cities are be corning choked with mountains of plastic rubbish

And the massive amounts of foreign waste pouring into India have driven down prices for recycled products.

"1 used to get up to five rupees a kilogram (7 cents a pound), but now few people buy Indian plastic said a 12 year old named Mohammed one of the estimated 10.000 people who try to make a living by scavenging recyclable goods from the huge heaps of waste in New Delhi.