Hazardous e-waste
Hazardous e-waste shipments that threaten the poor in China, India and Nigeria are likely to see increased shipments in the coming years.
E-waste is consumer and business electronic equipment that is near or at the end of its useful life. Certain components of electronic products contain materials that render them hazardous, and include heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic. Many of these elements are extremely valuable, such as gold and platinum, while the majority of them are non-renewable.
Consumers discard an estimated 14 to 20 million personal computers every year just in the US, while activist groups expect developing nations to triple their output of all electronic waste by 2010.
E-waste is likely becoming an environmental and health problem in both Asia and Africa.
Greenpeace International released a report in August 2005 of its scientific investigations into the hazardous chemicals found in scrap yards where China and India recycle their electronic waste. Greenpeace found toxic chemicals that include tin, lead, copper, cadmium and antimony in the soil and local rivers around scrap yards where both countries recycle electronic waste. The organization confirmed that all stages in e-waste processing could release substantial quantities of toxic heavy metals and organic compounds into the workplace environment.
Activists have raised the same environmental and health concerns in Africa.
Professor OladDele Osibjano of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria says that he has found excess heavy metals in soil, plants and people who eat vegetables. He claims that this problem has social health implications due to grazing animals, people picking vegetables and eating them, and drinking water containing toxins.
Companies ship e-waste to India and China because "recycling" is a lucrative business.
The process involves the employment of poverty stricken citizens to strip down computers and extract parts to re-use in machines and sell on the street. Electronic recycling is an unregulated industry in India, and activists now fear that the recycling process is harmful to the health of its employees.
The Indian government estimates that the country generates approximately 146,000 tonnes of e-waste annually, and that another 150,000 tonnes of used PCs, printers and other IT devices enter its ports illegally.
What is called for is to make e-waste producers accountable for their actions and a check on the use of toxic substances during the production process itself.
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