The Guardian: Mexico is facing a "toxic crisis" and has become a "garbage sink" for the US, exposing Mexican communities to dangerous pollution, a UN expert has warned. In an interview with the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, an investigative outlet, Marcos Orellana, an environmental specialist, said pollutants ranging from imported waste to dangerous pesticides were affecting people's right to live healthy lives. Orellana, whose title is UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, conducted an 11-day investigative mission in Mexico last month to learn about toxic threats facing its population. He said he found lax environmental standards and a lack of oversight, which have allowed pollution to accumulate over the years.
The rapporteur said there were more than 1,000 contaminated locations officially recorded in Mexico's National Inventory of Contaminated Sites, many of which he said had become "sacrifice zones," where diseases such as cancer, and medical events such as miscarriages, were normalized.
In a preliminary report summarizing his visit, he cited factories spewing hazardous waste into the Atoyac River in Puebla, huge industrial pig farms contaminating drinking water on the Yucatan peninsula and a decade-old mining chemical spill that continued to affect health in communities around the Sonora River.
He said many of these situations left residents struggling with dire health effects.
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