Workers described regular tasks that left them caked with dust, as though they’d been dunked in powdered sugar. At times, the concentration was considered life-threatening. Gopher exposed workers for years to levels of lead in the air that were hundreds of times higher than the federal limit.
#The bay 2012 part 1 series
The following investigative findings will be detailed in a series of stories starting today: They interviewed more than 80 current and former workers, 20 of whom shared their medical records. Tampa Bay Times reporters spent 18 months examining thousands of pages of regulatory reports and company documents, including data tracking the amount of lead in the air and in workers’ blood. They've inhaled it, been burned by it, been covered in it. The amount of lead in the air was seven times what Autery’s company-issued respirator could handle.Īutery is among hundreds of workers at Gopher who have been exposed to extreme amounts of lead. Co-workers and supervisors told him he needed to wash better before breaks, or after his shift.īut the poison was bound to enter his body.
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The level of lead in his blood shot up weeks after he started. He’d smell the metallic stench, like old coins, creeping in. He’d feel his respirator slide on his face, the seal separating from his pooling sweat. He moved fast in suffocating heat against a steady mist of fumes. He worked in the furnace department, skimming impurities off the top of gleaming, molten lead.
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An Army vet from Virginia, he dodged bullets and mine explosions in Afghanistan and Iraq but faced new dangers inside Florida’s lone lead smelter. They extract lead from used car batteries, melt it down and turn it into blocks of metal to resell.Įric Autery, 43, came to the plant in the summer of 2017 looking for a fresh start. Workers, hundreds of them, sweat through 12-hour shifts at Gopher Resource in Tampa. The poison hangs so thick in the air, sometimes the only thing visible is the warm, orange glow from the furnace. Plumes of dust, laced with lead, blow across the factory like a sandstorm.