Transnational corporations appropriate "carrying capacity" for the core by transferring the core's hazardous products, production processes, and wastes to the peripheral countries of the world-system. An increasingly important form of this reproduction process is the transfer of core-based hazardous industries to export processing zones (EPZs) located in a number of peripheral countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. A specific case is examined in this paper: the transfer of hazardous industries to the maquiladora centers located on the Mexican side of the Mexico-U.S. border. Maquiladoras provide an excellent case for examining what is known about the causes, adverse consequences, and political responses associated with the transfer of core-based hazardous production processes to the EPZs of the periphery.