Walk into a drugstore here complaining of itchy eyes and you’re guaranteed an empathetic response. “You should see it on some days,” a pharmacist told a visitor recently. “There’s a white cloud over the town and your throat burns.” The cloud’s source is a vast smelting and refining complex operated in this Andean industrial town of 40,000 by U.S.-based Doe Run. Daily, the plant spews over 900 tons of sulfur dioxide into the air and emits such other contaminants as lead, cadmium and arsenic. The pollution underlies a debate here featuring two countervailing concerns: the plant’s effect on public health and its major importance to the local economy. That debate has heated up since Feb. 17, when Doe Run asked the government for a... [Log in to read more]