New study: Moss Landing battery fire dumped 55,000 pounds of toxic metals into wildlife

A major fire in January at one of the world’s largest battery storage plants in Moss Landing showered 55,000 pounds of toxic metals across the landscape within a mile of the plant, a new scientific study has found.

Researchers from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories measured more than 100 locations at Elkhorn Slough, an expanse of sensitive marshes just north of the plant, and found high levels of nickel, cobalt and manganese on the top of the soil — all metals contained in the thousands of lithium-ion batteries that burned and which were spread in microscopic pieces through the billowing smoke that poured from the fire.

“It was like a dust,” said Ivano Aiello, a marine geology professor at Moss Landing Marine Labs who led the soils testing. “That’s what it was. A metal dust. It was like s