What to do with your old car battery

Lead: health consequences
In 2004, lead batteries for automobiles accounted for 53 percent of all the lead used worldwide. Therefore, it is vital to recycle lead to prevent it from finding its way into the environment and affecting people's health. In your body, lead only has noxious effects; it can cause anaemia, sterility, an increase in blood pressure, a disruption of the nervous system as well as damages to the brain, among other things.

Negative effects on the environment
While lead is naturally found in the environment, its concentrations are only the result of human activity. In some countries, lead is still being used in gasoline. Lead combustion in thermal engines creates toxic emissions that damage the atmosphere. Bigger particles fall back on the ground and pollute the soil or groundwaters. As for smaller particles, they remain in the air and spread over longer distances. A portion of these lead particles find their way back to earth with the rain and affect humans' health. Lead can be found in water for many reasons, most notably the corrosion of lead pipes and the wear of lead paints. That's not all : not only does lead can accumulate in one's body or an animal's body, but it can spread across the entire food chain.

In conclusion, we can assume that batteries will multiply at the same rate as vehicles, as long as we'll be needing batteries to start our internal combustion engines and to power our electric gadgets. Furthermore, with the introduction and proliferation of hybrid vehicles, the number of used batteries will most likely increase exponentially in the next 10 or 15 years. So, for all these reasons, recycling old batteries is a matter of public health and common sense.