My profession is environmental consultancy. I do or have done several things, including managing a laboratory, but my bread and butter is construction-related industrial hygiene, including asbestos, lead-based paints, crystalline silica and PCBs. The States, in theory, has tough laws regarding all of these, but we still find asbestos (especially in drywall mud and roofing mastics) and lead-based paint (especially on glazed ceramic tiles and yellow safety paint) in relatively new construction. It's fairly rare, but it happens a few times a year.
The problem is imported materials, which are rarely if ever actually tested. Now, consider how difficult it would be to test the contents of car batteries versus simply grabbing a piece of construction material.
Eventually, Western nations will promulgate regulations that are in some way, shape or form restrictive, for ESG purposes. Chinese and Indian companies will certify that they are complying, and until some consumer or consumer advocate group actually tears apart their EV batteries and has them tested at a laboratory, proves they come from processes Lepidolite and gets it on the TV/Cable/Internet news, they will keep doing what they're doing. All sorts of nations' firms lie and cheat, including Americans and Australians, but the Chinese and Indians seem to have made an industry of it. It's like a portion of their competitive advantage.
Even when they get caught, which is rare, they'll get fined a few $100K, maybe even a few $1M, but it will be a drop in the bucket from what doing things correctly would have cost them, and they will still be ahead by cheating.
The Chinese should be REALLY concerned by the effluent waste from processing Lepidolite, by the way. It's such a difficult resource to work with and has so many impurities that most Chinese refiners are using hydrofluoric acid (HF), rather than sulfuric, to process it. Hydrofluoric acid is not only an EXTREMELY dangerous waste product, if the source tank were to rupture and allow it to become a gaseous cloud, HF is a deadly nightmare that would kill everyone in it's path, until it dissipates.
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