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Soon after Nussle and other Ohio Presbyterians had gathered their preliminary data, Ellie Stock, pastor of a Joining Hands member congregation in St. Louis, traveled to Peru to see La Oroya for herself. "It looked surreal, like a moonscape," she said. "The vegetation had died, and the orange-colored Mantaro River was dead—all due to the contamination. Grey flakes drifted down from the sky, covered our clothing, and burned our eyes and throats."

Stock and her colleagues gave seminars for La Oroya pastors on Scripture's mandate to care for God's creation. She received friends from La Oroya into her St. Louis home, and she organized a prayer vigil for La Oroya's children.

On a wintry Saturday morning in February 2003, Stock introduced Hinostroza to Fernando Serrano, a researcher at St. Louis University's School of Public Health. Stock also introduced Hinostroza to a group of health advocates from Herculaneum, Missouri, a nearby town struggling with pollution from another Doe Run Company metal smelter. Within a year, two health advocates from Herculaneum—a Catholic and a Presbyterian—would travel to Lima to testify before Peru's Congress. St. Louis University (SLU) and the Centers for Disease Control also agreed to organize a major environmental health study for La Oroya to provide scientific data on the city's pollution.

Then Hinostroza pleaded for help from Monsignor Pedro Barreto, the Catholic archbishop of Huancayo, Peru. "Monsignor, we know that we adults are already contaminated and many of us are sick," Hinostroza said. "But we are here for the children. And you must help us because this is what Jesus would do."

Moved to tears, the Jesuit archbishop offered his assistance.

Barreto studied the issue, spoke with all sides of the growing conflict, and invited SLU to conduct an independent study as the first step in an open process to reduce pollution in La Oroya and the entire Mantaro River Valley. The results, presented in December 2005, showed that Hinostroza and La Oroya's parents had good reason to worry about the town's pollution. More than 97 percent of the city's 12,000 children had lead poisoning. In addition, high amounts of arsenic, cadmium, and other toxins significantly increased residents' risk of cancer.

Doe Run says it is working to "find solutions" to the city's environmental and health problems, which were left by "previous operators of the La Oroya complex." The company, which has operated the smelter since 1997, says it "is concerned with the impact the contamination has on the surrounding communities as well as the health concerns brought on by poor nutrition, lack of sanitation and clean water, and poor air quality."

The SLU study began to change the Peruvian government's indifference to the situation. CBS News, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and more than 500 U.S. and Peruvian newspapers and magazines reported on the story, putting pressure on the Peruvian government.

Peru's Supreme Court ruled in the summer of 2006 that the government's health ministry was negligent in protecting La Oroya's children and ordered it to implement an emergency health plan. Cleanup has been slow, and Doe Run has asked for more time to implement the government's mandated pollution controls. Still, the improvements brought about by these groups have been measurable.

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April 2007, Vol. 51, No. 4