Hidden Costs of the Green Transition: A Bioethical Analysis of Occupational Hazards in Lithium-Ion Battery Supply Chains

The global transition toward low-carbon energy has made lithium-ion batteries essential to electric mobility and renewable energy storage.Yet the environmental benefits of this transition can obscure an important ethical contradiction: workers involved in extracting and processing lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese may face substantial occupational hazards.Exposure to respirable dust, toxic metals, and chemical agents occurs across battery mineral supply chains, often in settings where regulatory protection and occupational health surveillance are limited.A transition that reduces carbon emissions while tolerating preventable occupational harm cannot be considered fully sustainable.From a bioethical perspective, such a transition must uphold the principles of justice, non-maleficence, and respect for human dignity.Occupational health should therefore be treated as a core indicator of sustainability.Governments, industries, investors, and consumers share responsibility for ensuring that decarbonization does not depend on transferring health risks to vulnerable workers.A genuinely just energy transition must protect both the planet and the people whose labor makes that transition possible.