In the mountains of Peru, a smokestack towers over a bustling city of one-room tin houses, where women carry babies on their backs and hang laundry to dry in the wind. On another continent, in a small Missouri town clinging to the bank of the Mississippi River, more gray lead dust rains down from another gray smelter.
These two cities, separated by distance, culture and some 3,000 miles, are intimately linked by one company and one mineral unearthed from the ground. Both La Oroya, Peru and Herculaneum, Mo. are home to lead smelters operated by the Doe Run Co., one of the largest lead producers in the world.
CIR correspondents Sara Shipley Hiles and Marina Walker Guevara reveal how the St. Louis-based firm expanded its operations abroad at a time when it was facing increasing scrutiny and regulation in the United States, milking money from its Peruvian operation while claiming it couldn't afford to finish its mandatory cleanup plan there. Meanwhile, ninety-nine percent of La Oroya's children are lead-poisoned -- a price some families think they have to pay to put food on the table.
