MEXICO .- A chemistry student at the Autonomous University of Baja California played video games with his brother from 12 years when he was shot and killed in his living room. Juan Manuel Delgado Cárdenas, of 24 years, had refused to work in the elaboration of synthetic drugs – methamphetamine – in Tijuana, Baja California.
The cartels of the drugs dot the border regions of the entire country with chemical laboratories elaborating methamphetamine in a bid to multiply volumes and facilitate the crossing to the United States, reported the state prosecutor’s office, the past 18 of July, and recognized Juan Manuel’s refusal as a motive for the attack.
Mexican federal authorities acknowledge that the increase in the demand for methamphetamine in recent years has led to a boom in houses, warehouses, forests, fields , jacales and outdoor sites dedicated to designer drugs headed or supervised by professionals using chemical precursors.
Sosa cá ustica, phenyl acetic acid, benzyl chloride, zinc sulfate, acetone, sodium cyanide and nitric acid, among others, whose care is focused on processing but not on proper handling for the environment.
The Mexican Navy reported in 2019, after dismantling 31 clandestine laboratories throughout the country, that the drug cartels discarded the precursors in rivers and water courses as drains once they were used, “generating damage that affects the ecosystem.”
The military who participate in the dismantling of these types of laboratories usually destroy the precursors in accordance with a public health protocol, but the increase in the consumption of this drug in recent years (the US recognizes that in some areas up to the 70%) reveals that most of the chemical wastes go to the aquifers to pollute.
A report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) detailed last Thursday that around 275 million people used drugs during the last year globally, a 22% more than in 2010, and the largest increase is from synthetic drugs.
The damage
Eleven narcotics laboratories were dismantled during the last year in Mexico between the months of May of 2020 and 2021, allegedly set up by the Sinaloa Cartel headed by Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, and led by Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar in another of its factions , known as “Los Chapitos” and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel.
For strategic reasons, the states of Sinaloa, Durango, Michoacán, Jalisco and Baja California are among the p main territories in which drugs are manufactured for black market consumption and for export to the United States, so environmentalists and security analysts have put their finger on the issue of looking at the problem also from a health point of view.
The 21 June, the Secretary of National Defense, General Luis Crescencio Sandoval González, announced that, in the period from January 1 to 20 June, The Mexican Army has secured 17 drug laboratories throughout the country, and seized almost 29 tons of methamphetamine and a ton 33 kilograms of fentanyl, which gives an idea of the manufacture of various illicit substances.
“In these laboratories chemicals are handled so dangerous that the United States two consider them small radioactive bombs ”, alerted Alberto Islas, director of the Risk-Evaluation consultancy
“Doing those cleanings is not something trivial, it may take time 15 or 20 years to leave an area as it was before, depending on how long they have worked there ”
The damages are generally not immediate but in the long term, prolonged contact causes severe health problems, according to the DEA, and for this reason, when a methamphetamine laboratory is dismantled in the United States, it is completely isolated, and in cases extreme, the buildings or houses where they are located are destroyed to the foundations.
However, what Mexico does in the seizures is that the precursors are destroyed or it is sheltered for a few months, and then the place is usually abandoned that later can be inhabited by families, in addition of the pollutant that has already been discharged to the drain.
In the case of open-air laboratories, the local situation is more complex. Only in the raid of 2019 when the army reported the discovery of the 31 laboratories, reported the seizure of 49, 300 liters of chemical precursor waste that could have been dumped anywhere to discard them.
The then Deputy Federal Attorney Guillermo Rodríguez, A biochemical engineer, he explained that what the soldiers do is look for solutions in situ such as incinerating the confiscated items if they do not represent a greater risk when doing so; neutralize them with other elements to minimize their toxicity or confine them in a pit in special containers, when available.
“The procedures depend on the safety in the environment where the military destroy the laboratories. ”
Little is known about the precursors that have already been dumped into the water. There are no official figures in this regard or unofficial calculations, but it is estimated that the increase in the demand for methamphetamine will sooner or later bring a high cost to the health of Mexicans.
According to the information booklet on dangerous substances of the United Nations, acid Nitric, for example, can cause pulmonary edema and dental erosion ; zinc sulfate, skin burns and eye damage; sodium cyanide, cancer, reproductive risk, thyroid enlargement and damage to the nervous system.
As has occurred in the Mining areas, the regions where clandestine laboratories for synthetic drugs are set up today are a health risk but, as it is an activity whose mass production is relatively recent and controlled by violent organizations, there is no measurement of the impact.
At the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague they measured the impact that it can have and that has published in the Journal of Experimental Biology the increase of methamphetamine in the river system and thus detected “addicted” trout that were abstinent from eating and mating.
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