Peruvian cardinal hails $150m lead poisoning settlement for 1,300 people as a ‘historic milestone’

A Peruvian cardinal who received a barrage of death threats when he challenged the firm behind a toxic smelter has called a $150m (£111m) out-of-court settlement to more than 1,000 people who were allegedly poisoned by the plant as children “a historic milestone”.

Cardinal Pedro Barreto, 82, was in Rome meeting Pope Leo XIV and other cardinals in June when he received news that the firm that ran the smelter, the Doe Run Company, a subsidiary of Renco Group, would pay $150m to 1,373 Peruvians who have suffered health impacts since childhood.

The news came as Barreto – the former archbishop of Huancayo, a city in the Peruvian Andes – was preparing to travel to the US to testify in the first of four civil trials in St Louis, Missouri, as part of a 19-year legal battle against Doe Run, which is owned by US billionaire Ira Rennert, who also serves as chair of the Renco Group.

“This is a historic milestone,” said Barreto, speaking to the Guardian. “But this long-awaited justice doesn’t solve the problem faced by many children who were personally affected, especially neurologically. The money will not compensate for the harm they have suffered, but it is a sign that justice has been served.”

Barreto led a nearly two-decade campaign to hold the US company to account for the severe health impacts on the population of the Andean town of La Oroya, which the Blacksmith Institute, a US-based environmental NGO now known as Pure Earth, in 2007 listed as one of the world’s 10 most polluted places.

The settlement brought to a close one of the longest-running civil lawsuits against a multinational corporation in one country for environmental pollution or toxic exposure that caused injury or damage in another country.

Schlichter Bogard, a St Louis-based law firm, alleged that Doe Run failed to reduce lead emissions at the Peruvian multi-metal smelter, resulting in permanent injuries and harm. Doe Run Resources Corporation, which has its headquarters in St Louis, did not admit wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement.

What began in 2007 in state court on behalf of 17 Peruvian children grew into a federal court case with more than 1,373 plaintiffs, now young adults. Each could receive at least $100,000 from the payout.

Jerry Schlichter, the founder and co-managing partner of the law firm, described the payout as a “historic tipping point in that the American companies in this case have been held responsible for their actions in another country to foreign citizens who are not US residents”.

Schlichter said his team of lawyers and religious leaders such as Barreto won the settlement because of their “passion and conviction that this was a just cause, this was a righteous battle”, and that the individuals deserved their compensation for the exposure to lead emissions.

“This will be a life-changing event for every one of these 1,373 children,” Schlichter said. “It will enable them to have a new path in their life, whatever that might be.”

During his time as archbishop of Huancayo, Barreto had contacted the Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice, which sent researchers to assess the affected children in La Oroya in 2005 and found they had among some of the highest blood lead levels ever recorded. The university also found that lead, arsenic, cadmium and sulphur dioxide emissions had increased since Doe Run took over the smelting complex in 1997.

Nearly 100% of children under the age of six in La Oroya had blood-lead levels above 10 μg/dL (10 micrograms of lead in every tenth of a litre of blood), well in excess of levels that can cause growth impairment and lower IQs in children, according to a 2004 study by Peru’s environmental health office.

Barreto faced death threats and harassment, often from employees at the smelter who feared losing their livelihoods, after he began his activism in 2004, soon after taking on the archdiocese of Huancayo that includes La Oroya.

“It was an irrefutable fact that I was threatened in various ways,” said Barreto, one of three Peruvian cardinals. He said it was often done publicly and through messages that indicated that “if I kept speaking out, they were going to take much more drastic measures”.

But he stressed that it was the local population who deserved recognition.

“We have had to endure just a little of the immense suffering they constantly face,” he said.

“Before settlement, it was the longest-running case in the federal court system,” said Schlichter, who said it had been a David v Goliath fight against Rennert. “Tens of thousands of attorney hours were spent on the case and we had five national law firms who were opposing us,” he said.

The Department of Justice joined the defendants in asking that the lawsuit be transferred to Peru, but Schlichter resolutely opposed. “If the case had gone to Peru, the children would have got nothing,” he said. Winning the settlement was “very gratifying after such a long and risky fight”, he added.

The New York-based Renco Group and its founder, Rennert, 92, made a fortune in the 1980s junk-bond market before developing an empire of mining companies, smelting plants and industrial firms. According to Forbes in 2024, his worth is estimated at $3.8bn (£2.8bn).

In a statement, Doe Run’s chief executive, Matt Wohl, said: “We elected to put this behind us and focus on what matters – running our business, serving our customers and investing in new technologies.”