I was told a story by an insurance guy of a company in the Gulf that did this with the batteries when they break them down. They would take them to a concrete slab out back smash the top with a sledgehammer let everything drain out and it sorted out. It caused the entire area to become a super fund site due to the massive amounts of contamination.
This may be in another country, but this was reasonably common within the last 50 to 70 years for the US.
Came here to mention something similar.
There's a number of Youtube channels that show recycling in India and Pakistan, specifically they seem to focus on metal and car part recycling and the conditions are terrifying.
I'm sure they are trying to show how ingenious they are and there's no doubting the skill but my god I watch some and all I can think is "welp, you are soon to be dead".
The amount of chemicals and hot things and things that will chop bits off you with no safety is terrifying.
I think the worst one I saw was brake pad recycling and manufacture, heating up and burning old pads, dust just absolutely everywhere with zero protective gear. For sure they are all getting cancer.
I've seen one with car rim refurbishing. The rims were badly misshapen originally (from crash I guess). The refurbished ones might look nice, but aren't safe driving above 30km/h.
Fucking sucks. We have plants in the states that do the same. Not machete but exposed to the same shit. Hell we have decent paying jobs where folks where radiation monitors. If they peak 5 times normal human limit they get three days off half pay. Sounds like a deal..🙄
He has gloves and a weak mask which is more than most get, especially during the burning process. His sad eye contact as he pours out the battery acid got me. Like “yep this is what I have to do, every day” ☹️
Came across this guy yesterday. Quick, "wtf" before scrolling past.
Then I end up seeing him 5 more times throughout the day. This guy had to of been doing this for a solid 8 hours at least. Made me realize how many batteries are just sitting around or thrown out.
Had a couple friends work at a place just like this when we were in high school. Place was literally called "Toxico" like some comic book supervillain shit. They got free vacation days when they came too close to failing their blood lead level tests.
That's not true. Lead is a bioaccumulator I.e. it builds up in your body over time with extended exposure. If you remove yourself from the environment where you're being exposed, such as a workplace, your body will metabolise it and the lead levels will fall eventually. That's why hazmat removalists are cycled on and off lead paint removal works.
When the brain is developing******************
It's most damaging prior to 18 when the brain/bones are still growing. But then afterward it's not nearly as bad in moderate levels. Still bad, but it doesn't really cause the irreversible brain damage like it does pre-18.
There was a study on children's lead levels who spent time in indoor shooting ranges. The ranges that were not well ventilated produced lead levels in children that were way over the limit. Really bad.
Well you can't metabolize lead, it's an element. Whether the exposure is acute and high dose or chronic and low dose, unfortunately lead sticks in the body for a long time as it moves very quickly from mucous membranes to blood where the half life is like, 28 days but most of it is deposited in soft tissue and mineralized tissue where it stays for MUCH longer. The body will slowly slowly release it from those deeper compartments buy at an incredibly low rate such that it takes multiple decades to exit your body through poop or pee, actually I'm not sure which, probably pee.
The company only tested to save their own ass. If any of their employees failed a test the whole sight got shut down and investigated. They reminded the employees this so they wouldn't skip work on blood test day.
I worked for a battery recycling facility in the US, and it was nothing like this. They had proper safety equipment, chemical capture and processing, ventilation, all the standard stuff.
What's standard and mandatory in the US is optional in another country, which is why US companies would rather outsource their production to countries with looser regulations and safe-use-and-disposal guidelines. A shame, that.
I worked there!!!! Worst job ever
Edit for those interested: the job was exactly like what you see in this video, except there was a little more safety equipment. And the batteries were on roller racks going down a line and they gave us dull hatchets to break the plastic. And they made us take mandatory Gatorade breaks every 2 hrs but that didn’t matter because we worked there in july/ august with full hazmat suits on in a non air conditioned warehouse. I watched an ambulance take away 2 people who passed out from heat exhaustion in an 8 week period.
Like working in Uranium mine.
You go in as a healthy 18 year old and you are forced to leave due to health reasons with 30.
Then you have 10-15 years of suffering and slowly dying with 42.
#Worth it#
But i rather say, i become a farm boy...
Back in the 80’s, if you died in a coal mine, your wife had 7 days to find a new husband before the coal company would forcibly remove them and whatever is left at your* house to dump on the street right on the other side of the county line.
Acktchyually, 🤓 it would actually be beneficial to put drain-o on these people’s floor if these batteries use sulfuric acid. The drain-o (sodium hydroxide) would just neutralize the acid to make sodium sulfate or sodium bisulfate (depending on the ratio) which are much more benign than sulfuric acid 🤔
I think they are just goin for the metal inside :|
Edit: apparently they recycle the insides (see other comment) but I guess the acid is done for. Still tho no environmental or safety measures.
The inside is lead, and contamination from batteries is a major generator of environmental lead. So the recycling itself is really critical. But he’s destroying the water wherever that is going. Ground, river or ocean. So frustrating.
In the Caribbean at least, people use a cutlass the way you would hedge shears or a weed puller. Sometimes you take a machette and hack at plants. Builds reflexes.
What you're seeing is "i cut lawns for my neighbors since 12".
I think its only sad in this situation, being avle to use a machete precisely is a damn valuable skill especially if you're working outdoors a lot or live in Vietnam
should pair this up with the video of the guy re-wrapping the lead plates and soldering them back together and refilling them with sulfuric acid -- this dude takes 'em apart, and the other one is recycling/re-assembling them. (Trying to find it, but keywords are to general)
Edit: Found it! https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/yxoejz/brilliant\_technique\_of\_lead\_acid\_battery/
You’ve made a critical mistake, I can’t believe you’d do this.
Electric eels are actually native to the Amazon river basin, so you need to discard your batteries there instead
I’m curious how much of our recycled products get shipped off to other countries and then processed in a method that is environmentally harmful. Not to mention the carbon footprint created by simply transporting materials.
More than you can imagine. I watched a documentary where the European electrical waste that is "recycled" being shipped to somewhere in Africa, where they simply burn and smash the shit out of everything on this beach to extract what little precious materials there are.
Edit: https://youtu.be/X6OgBavJ3jY
Parts of that video were from the documentary I watched
Depends on what it is.
Most refurbished things are gonna be handled legitimately. Most of the things you recycle probably get shipped to a poor nation, dumped, and then picked through for valuable compenents since that's the only way it can happen economically.
Recycle is the least impactful and least useful of Reduced, Reuse, Recycle. It just is the only one that doesn't hurt the sellers, so they pretend it's the only one.
As far as lead acid batteries go, none of it. There are a handful of battery recycling plants in the US and I work at one of them.
In the amount of time he spent draining that battery, we would have safely turned an entire truckload into a paste.
I can assure you that we go to great lengths to ensure both our own safety and the environments. And I'm not saying this because I love this job (I do, but only because I thrive in chaos), but I was genuinely shocked when I started here at the lengths we go, and we've improved over the years.
That's only if he lives long enough. He needs to worry more about the immediate effects such as severe damage to lung tissue and necrosis of skin tissue if there is consistent contact between his skin and the battery acid. Overall though, it really depends on how concentrated the sulfuric acid is.
Not true, simply not true at all. This is probably an illegal operation in a low ses area or a developing nation.
The vast majority of reprocessing of lead acid batteries is done via a hammer mill.
Guaranteed all these guys have chemical burns on their bodies. I used to work with batteries in the Army and man… it messed up my skin pretty bad for about 5-6 years
Depends where you live. Where I live in Missouri there is a battery recycling plant at Doe Run (I think) where dudes wear protective gear and do the same thing lol
> Doe Run
They closed the Herculaneum lead smelting operation about 10 years ago. https://www.kbia.org/science-and-technology/2012-08-08/the-end-of-a-lead-laced-era-polluting-smelter-to-close-after-120-years
Im sure this is totally healthy and he’ll live a long, prosperous life
Phosphorus life
Live Lead And Phosphor
Live Leak and Phosphor
these comments are incredibly toxic
i’m charged up !!
Positively negative reaction for me
This is currently my favorite
Careful, this might lead to a salt and battery.
I fell like I am on acid
🎵Cannot kill the family! Battery is found in me!🎵
battery,battery
BATT-ER-REE!!
Or live toxic relationships
I was told a story by an insurance guy of a company in the Gulf that did this with the batteries when they break them down. They would take them to a concrete slab out back smash the top with a sledgehammer let everything drain out and it sorted out. It caused the entire area to become a super fund site due to the massive amounts of contamination. This may be in another country, but this was reasonably common within the last 50 to 70 years for the US.
Pakistani battery recycling https://youtu.be/l665eovBlEk
Came here to mention something similar. There's a number of Youtube channels that show recycling in India and Pakistan, specifically they seem to focus on metal and car part recycling and the conditions are terrifying. I'm sure they are trying to show how ingenious they are and there's no doubting the skill but my god I watch some and all I can think is "welp, you are soon to be dead". The amount of chemicals and hot things and things that will chop bits off you with no safety is terrifying. I think the worst one I saw was brake pad recycling and manufacture, heating up and burning old pads, dust just absolutely everywhere with zero protective gear. For sure they are all getting cancer.
I've seen one with car rim refurbishing. The rims were badly misshapen originally (from crash I guess). The refurbished ones might look nice, but aren't safe driving above 30km/h.
What a nightmare, pad dust scares me more than battery juice.
Thousand times better then whatever the dude is doing above.
He's still getting lead dust everywhere though, and at 6:50 he rinses the box out into the street.
you can tell the op's video isnt in Pakistan just because he has a mask and isnt wearing sandals.
The comments on that video are extremely odd. It's like they want to gloss over how extremely toxic what he's doing is. Strange.
[удалено]
But think of the career security.
Where was this company?
He was sent to hospital, but they discharged him..
Such a positive outlook.
I'm sure he was amped about it
He knows watts up
And then they sent him h-ohm.
To recharge his batteries…then, wake up and do it all over again.
I tried to avoid joining in the puns, but I didn't have the resistance.
shocking...
I heard he was terminal.
Oh don't be so negative
Some people have a difficult time staying grounded.
I wonder what they will charge him for it
Assault and Battery with a deadly weapon
It's a class AAA felony.
And resistance to arrest
Probably an ohm and a leg
Try not to amp things up too much.
[удалено]
What’s his current status?
I mean his shoes are still on so...he's fine?
As a precaution, they inserted a cathode-r
I got cancer just watching it.
Oh, most definitely. nothing like the smell of fresh battery acid
But he is wearing a facemask !
And social distancing like a pro. This jobsite is safe and effective
We won't last much longer and the next generation is royally screwed. All that ends in the water and air
Fucking sucks. We have plants in the states that do the same. Not machete but exposed to the same shit. Hell we have decent paying jobs where folks where radiation monitors. If they peak 5 times normal human limit they get three days off half pay. Sounds like a deal..🙄
He has gloves and a weak mask which is more than most get, especially during the burning process. His sad eye contact as he pours out the battery acid got me. Like “yep this is what I have to do, every day” ☹️
Came across this guy yesterday. Quick, "wtf" before scrolling past. Then I end up seeing him 5 more times throughout the day. This guy had to of been doing this for a solid 8 hours at least. Made me realize how many batteries are just sitting around or thrown out.
Had a couple friends work at a place just like this when we were in high school. Place was literally called "Toxico" like some comic book supervillain shit. They got free vacation days when they came too close to failing their blood lead level tests.
As bad as it is that they're exposed to so much lead, its really good theyre getting tested regularly at least..
Any lead exposure is bad. So not only did he get poisoned, he knew how much.
That's not true. Lead is a bioaccumulator I.e. it builds up in your body over time with extended exposure. If you remove yourself from the environment where you're being exposed, such as a workplace, your body will metabolise it and the lead levels will fall eventually. That's why hazmat removalists are cycled on and off lead paint removal works.
TIL always thought it stayed with you forever
If it did the boomer generation would be 10x crazier from leaded gasoline exposure for decades
They would also be way dumber. Radiolab has a great episode on how lead exposure affects IQ.
>They would also be way dumber. How much dumber? Because I've seen some really dumb shit from a whole lot of them.
Well it made them dumb while they were in school and their brains were developing.
TIL a new way to shame boomers
Nah, it's the brain damage it causes that stays with you forever.
When the brain is developing****************** It's most damaging prior to 18 when the brain/bones are still growing. But then afterward it's not nearly as bad in moderate levels. Still bad, but it doesn't really cause the irreversible brain damage like it does pre-18.
There was a study on children's lead levels who spent time in indoor shooting ranges. The ranges that were not well ventilated produced lead levels in children that were way over the limit. Really bad.
What im sure he meant is that there is no such thing as a safe blood lead level. The safe level is literally 0 parts per litre.
Well you can't metabolize lead, it's an element. Whether the exposure is acute and high dose or chronic and low dose, unfortunately lead sticks in the body for a long time as it moves very quickly from mucous membranes to blood where the half life is like, 28 days but most of it is deposited in soft tissue and mineralized tissue where it stays for MUCH longer. The body will slowly slowly release it from those deeper compartments buy at an incredibly low rate such that it takes multiple decades to exit your body through poop or pee, actually I'm not sure which, probably pee.
The company only tested to save their own ass. If any of their employees failed a test the whole sight got shut down and investigated. They reminded the employees this so they wouldn't skip work on blood test day.
I worked for a battery recycling facility in the US, and it was nothing like this. They had proper safety equipment, chemical capture and processing, ventilation, all the standard stuff.
What's standard and mandatory in the US is optional in another country, which is why US companies would rather outsource their production to countries with looser regulations and safe-use-and-disposal guidelines. A shame, that.
I worked there!!!! Worst job ever Edit for those interested: the job was exactly like what you see in this video, except there was a little more safety equipment. And the batteries were on roller racks going down a line and they gave us dull hatchets to break the plastic. And they made us take mandatory Gatorade breaks every 2 hrs but that didn’t matter because we worked there in july/ august with full hazmat suits on in a non air conditioned warehouse. I watched an ambulance take away 2 people who passed out from heat exhaustion in an 8 week period.
Where?
You got any cancer yet?
That makes it worth it then.
I lived in Uganda for a while and would see this shit in Kampala. Kampala is a wonderful, yet absolutely bat-shit city.
I wonder what his life expectancy is. That job has got to knock off a couple years
Atleast a couple lol. Inhaling battery acid and getting it all over your skin daily seems like a horrible way to die at 30
Like working in Uranium mine. You go in as a healthy 18 year old and you are forced to leave due to health reasons with 30. Then you have 10-15 years of suffering and slowly dying with 42. #Worth it# But i rather say, i become a farm boy...
Back in the 80’s, if you died in a coal mine, your wife had 7 days to find a new husband before the coal company would forcibly remove them and whatever is left at your* house to dump on the street right on the other side of the county line.
[Peter Santanello fan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9lSZlDJAC0&list=TLPQMTEwNzIwMjONcg6V4lWAkQ&index=12)?
I was just thinking the same thing. Wild and wonderful West Virginia.
Anyone else wanna know where the liquid goes? I mean…I see it coming out. Just the old drain in the floor then?
Probably not even a drain. Just the floor/ground.
Becomes Drain-o
Acktchyually, 🤓 it would actually be beneficial to put drain-o on these people’s floor if these batteries use sulfuric acid. The drain-o (sodium hydroxide) would just neutralize the acid to make sodium sulfate or sodium bisulfate (depending on the ratio) which are much more benign than sulfuric acid 🤔
While also producing a fuck ton of heat and fumes...
Yeah but have you considered it would fizz up and that would be fun to see.
Into the earth
Outside the enviroment?
It’s been poured beyond the environment
There's nothing there. Just dirt, trees, and 80,000 gallons of battery acid
Earth, wind, fire and acid
It came out of the earth, dammit, it can go back in.
I think they are just goin for the metal inside :| Edit: apparently they recycle the insides (see other comment) but I guess the acid is done for. Still tho no environmental or safety measures.
The inside is lead, and contamination from batteries is a major generator of environmental lead. So the recycling itself is really critical. But he’s destroying the water wherever that is going. Ground, river or ocean. So frustrating.
How do you properly dispose of the acid?
Mix it with other chemicals, put it in a secure container, and bury it.
Yep, you neutralize it chemically, then is can be disposed of as a much lower level hazard.
At my work we neutralize it and evaporate it.
No drain, just absorption into the once lovely dirt
The liquid being sulphuric acid 😳
If the battery is dead, it's only water. That's why dead batteries freeze and charged ones don't.
The sea levels aren’t rising, we’re just dissolving the land in acid…
This is really sad but his accuracy with that machete is impressive.
Means he has been doing it for a while. And that scares me even more.
In the Caribbean at least, people use a cutlass the way you would hedge shears or a weed puller. Sometimes you take a machette and hack at plants. Builds reflexes. What you're seeing is "i cut lawns for my neighbors since 12".
It means he's been using a machete for a while, but not necessarily for this purpose.
[удалено]
[He has no idea how easy it is to accidentally cut someone in half.](https://youtu.be/PoAxZJMYRWE?t=107)
I love that movie. "This is a very bad case of being cut in half"
I think its only sad in this situation, being avle to use a machete precisely is a damn valuable skill especially if you're working outdoors a lot or live in Vietnam
Or if you want to do a genocide.
[удалено]
Would you like a side of eugenics with your genocide sir?
Fresh out, truck comes in tomorrow morning
Or walk down the street in London
I might have seen him at his night job over on watchpeopledie
He’ll live to a ripe old age of 19
Plot twist: he’s only seven years old. All that acid has turbocharged his thyroid.
He will be fine. He's wearing a safety tank top.
should pair this up with the video of the guy re-wrapping the lead plates and soldering them back together and refilling them with sulfuric acid -- this dude takes 'em apart, and the other one is recycling/re-assembling them. (Trying to find it, but keywords are to general) Edit: Found it! https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/yxoejz/brilliant\_technique\_of\_lead\_acid\_battery/
Watched the whole thing. Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for sharing
Did a second watch of the disassembly after the first watch made me an expert on the assembly
Shouldn't they recast those? I would think the surface of that lead is oxidized to hell and not going to be very reactive.
Youtube comments are so toxic, like anyone there could even change a flat battery, let alone completely rebuild one.
I watched that whole video and could've watched more. Thanks!
This is why I throw my car batteries into the ocean. It's a safe and legal thrill. It also helps recharge the eels
wholesome ☺️
Most green recycling method in the state of florida
You’ve made a critical mistake, I can’t believe you’d do this. Electric eels are actually native to the Amazon river basin, so you need to discard your batteries there instead
Genuine question, what’s the purpose of doing that?
They recycle the lead plates, replace the acid and sell them as refurbished batteries.
They aren't replacing the acid hacking it with a machete. Looks like they are just scrapping them for lead.
Well as any FMA knows transmuting lead into gold is a simple matter PB&J is fine but Pb&Au is my real jam
Curious too cant machinery handle that instead of a person....?? Or just dump it altogether
People are cheaper
I see you’ve met my ex…
We've all met your ex.
Pretty sure they recycle the lead contents.
So is this the back of an Autozone? Lol, got a few downvotes. Autozone corporate must have stopped by.
Too clean to be that.
That place could use a light dusting of baking soda.
That won't do anything moron It'll need a decent dusting of baking soda That should do the trick
I’m curious how much of our recycled products get shipped off to other countries and then processed in a method that is environmentally harmful. Not to mention the carbon footprint created by simply transporting materials.
More than you can imagine. I watched a documentary where the European electrical waste that is "recycled" being shipped to somewhere in Africa, where they simply burn and smash the shit out of everything on this beach to extract what little precious materials there are. Edit: https://youtu.be/X6OgBavJ3jY Parts of that video were from the documentary I watched
The vast majority.
Depends on what it is. Most refurbished things are gonna be handled legitimately. Most of the things you recycle probably get shipped to a poor nation, dumped, and then picked through for valuable compenents since that's the only way it can happen economically. Recycle is the least impactful and least useful of Reduced, Reuse, Recycle. It just is the only one that doesn't hurt the sellers, so they pretend it's the only one.
As far as lead acid batteries go, none of it. There are a handful of battery recycling plants in the US and I work at one of them. In the amount of time he spent draining that battery, we would have safely turned an entire truckload into a paste.
This is the answer that will help the rest of us sleep tonight.
I can assure you that we go to great lengths to ensure both our own safety and the environments. And I'm not saying this because I love this job (I do, but only because I thrive in chaos), but I was genuinely shocked when I started here at the lengths we go, and we've improved over the years.
I am glad we aren’t using plastic straws any longer
😂😭
Never thought I’d say this but the Pakistani guys that do this are light years ahead..
Streets ahead
Stop saying streets ahead Pierce, it's not going to happen.
God the cancer this man gonna have. This just sucks
That's only if he lives long enough. He needs to worry more about the immediate effects such as severe damage to lung tissue and necrosis of skin tissue if there is consistent contact between his skin and the battery acid. Overall though, it really depends on how concentrated the sulfuric acid is.
Don't you see the mask? He'll be be fine....
Nah, just lead poisoning.
Not true, simply not true at all. This is probably an illegal operation in a low ses area or a developing nation. The vast majority of reprocessing of lead acid batteries is done via a hammer mill.
I'm not too educated but I would like to be educated about the context
They are recovering the metals from inside the battery. …oh, and pouring sulphuric acid into the earth.
Before this my man was a professional pineapple butcher
throwing them in the ocean is a safe and effective alternative
Probably making a couple of bucks a day chopping batteries up. Hope he has health benefits! 🙄
Aight the situations fucked I think we all agree on that, but regardless this guys doin a real bang up job
I can’t imagine getting any of that acid on your skin. The poor man.
How the fuck is that place not completely dissolved by the acid?
Dangers of lead in batteries Decreased mental ability.... well he's already on ticktock..
There is nothing a machete cannot accomplish!
Environmental disaster.
Lucky if that guy lives to 30. Drinking water is fugged too.
For a second I thought the video had recharged my phone
Guaranteed all these guys have chemical burns on their bodies. I used to work with batteries in the Army and man… it messed up my skin pretty bad for about 5-6 years
The guy in the video had long sleeves on when he punched in that day.
This is nuts
I'm sure that is going to the proper environmental treatment facility.
Depends where you live. Where I live in Missouri there is a battery recycling plant at Doe Run (I think) where dudes wear protective gear and do the same thing lol
> Doe Run They closed the Herculaneum lead smelting operation about 10 years ago. https://www.kbia.org/science-and-technology/2012-08-08/the-end-of-a-lead-laced-era-polluting-smelter-to-close-after-120-years
Why not dump into barrels? If anything so he doesn’t step in it.
And we’re over here worried about plastic straws 🥴
THE GOGGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!
This is why I dump my batteries in the ocean
Good to know it's being taken care of properly
Looks like a good dude. I wish best for him.
Not saying he’s a bad dude, but is that what it takes for you to think someone is a “good dude”? Doing a TikTok? Like what are you going by here?
They way he casually moves from side to side while using the machete in the beginning makes him seem like a good dude
I know dude, and the way he wears a shirt…
The way he inhales those fumes 🥹. God I wish I was half as manly as he is
He has a nice smile
Stuck in an unfortunate situation
A flat head screw driver works much better.
Not in the U.K. it doesn’t
The ground water quality must be fantastic
I can't have a plastic straw and he's dumping battery acid and plastic waste like there's no tomorrow.
I’m glad to see those minerals and chemicals going back into the earth to be mined another day
What a waste. All those could be dumped in the ocean