St. Louis-based Doe Run is the world's second largest lead mining and smelting company. The company is one of several heavily polluting companies owned by reclusive Long Island billionaire Ira Rennert, who has been called "the biggest private polluter in America."

According to the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, Doe Run is the biggest polluter in the state of Missouri, due in large part to toxic emissions from its 110-year old lead smelter in the town of Herculaneum (near St. Louis).

A similar, though even more toxic, smelting operation in the Peruvian town of La Oroya has made the area Peru's most polluted. In Missouri, Doe Run has come under intense pressure from environmentalists, the EPA and state government to clean up its operations. In Peru, even though environmental enforcement is much weaker, public outcry has grown as Doe Run's pollution has increased.

Toxic emissions from Doe Run's Herculaneum smelter have caused, according to data collected by Missouri Department of Health and Human Services, lead poisoning in 30% of the town's children. In 2000 the EPA ordered the company to clean up lead contamination in the town and pay to relocate families living in the most polluted areas. U.S. House of Representatives minority leader Richard Gephardt, whose district includes Herculaneum, has called the situation a "public health emergency" and has called for the smelter to be shut down if Doe Run cannot clean up the town adequately.

The situation at Doe Run's smelter at La Oroya, in Peru's central Andean region, is even worse. Pollution at La Oroya is so intense it has precipitated an emergency situation in which, according to Peruvian government figures, 90% of children in the city have blood-lead levels above acceptable international standards; nearly 20% have lead levels that should require hospitalization. Emissions of sulfur dioxide, cadmium, arsenic and lead all greatly exceed World Health Organization standards --- according to the company's own data. Long term exposure to these substances can have potentially fatal impacts on human health.

Contamination levels at La Oroya have increased dramatically since Doe Run bought the Doe Run operation from the Peruvian government in 1997. When Doe Run purchased the complex, it agreed to undertake an investment program to modernize the plant and equipment and to meet the requirements of the Environmental Management and Remediation Plan (PAMA in Spanish, a legal requirement in Peru).

However, because of the decline in the prices of most metals since 1997 and the company's desire to pay for its investment program from income generated by the refinery itself, it has decided to delay until the end of the period of the PAMA (2006) the largest single investment: scrubbers to reduce SO2 emissions from the smoke stack.

Townspeople and surrounding peasant communities are being required to suffer the health and other impacts from the refinery for several more years in order to enable the company to generate the income to finance the required investment. Production levels have risen with the ironic result that air pollution levels have also risen.

The local population has not been passive in the face of this situation. A coordinating committee has been formed to link the town of La Oroya to immediately surrounding communities and to those further away but affected by streams and the pattern of the winds that carry the fumes. Attempts are being made to document the nature, levels and trends of contamination in order to build a case for requiring the company to advance the date of its investment in scrubbers.

However, they are discovering that the company is legally protected by the PAMA that has been approved by the Ministry and an environmental audit company selected and paid by Doe Run itself is supervising the implementation.

If Doe Run had fully and publicly disclosed in an easily accessible manner all information related to its toxic emissions in La Oroya, local residents would have been aware sooner of the public health crisis affecting their community. Residents and public health officials could have pressed the company to begin remediation and cleanup measures more quickly.

A corporate accountability framework - like International Right to Know here in the US - would require Doe Run to disclose:

· The amounts of toxic pollutants released into air, land and water

· Make available to the public in an easily accessible manner information on toxic releases

· Disclose when companies have applied to foreign governments for the right to increase pollutant emissions from an overseas facility

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