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by Kayou 3069 days ago
Honestly, if all car today and in the last 70 years had huge lead batteries, I don't think it would be a good thing. Battery recycling is a fair problem for today's electric cars and people at the time used to throw away anywhere what they didn't need any more, including their car batteries.
4 comments
wahern 3069 days ago 

  Residents of southeast L.A. County rejoiced this year at
  news that a battery recycling plant that had long emitted
  lead, arsenic and other dangerous pollutants would be
  closed.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-exide-cleanup-story...

When I worked as a stock boy at K-Mart in the 1990s I remember a whole corner of the loading dock was kept stacked with used and returned batteries, many of them leaking all over the place. I was just a kid and didn't know much, but I knew enough to not want to go anywhere near them. Thankfully only those working at the return counter and on the loading dock handled the batteries.

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patrickg_zill 3069 days ago
Not sure what you mean exactly, but lead acid battery recycling is something like 95% effective in terms of what is recovered, and lead can be easily recycled multiple times. Lithium being more expensive is also well known for being able to be recycled.
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Kayou 3069 days ago
What I meant was that back in the old days, people didn't bother as much to recycle things, so lead batteries ended up thrown away in the nature. Of course today we recycle a lot more, so it would be less of a problem.
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pbhjpbhj 3069 days ago
In what geography, any evidence? Those who lived through the wars and depression(s), and baby-boomers, are notorious for their frugality and reuse.
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Kayou 3069 days ago
Where I live (european country) people used to throw away things in a big dump and then it would be burned or something, but now you have to separate things. I don't have any evidence of it though. Maybe they were recycling it themselves for all this time!
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mempko 3069 days ago
probably better than literally shooting the lead out of the exhaust ... Did we forget about leaded gasoline?
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WillReplyfFood 3069 days ago
They do that today too. My dad owns a farm- the stuff we fished out of roadside ditch- including lead batterys - you would vomit knowing about the details.
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