E-waste: 21st Century Pollution

Electronic or E-waste is serious and growing environmental and health threat around the world

. In 2000 over 4.6 million tons of e-waste was dumped into landfills in the U.S. alone, according to Greenpeace. E-waste is some of the most hazardous waste material that is being dumped into our landfills since it contains numerous compounds that are dangerous to the environment and humans including toxic heavy metals like Mercury, Lead, Aluminum and Cadmium, brominated flame retardants, PVC plastic, dioxins and furans. This waste will be broken down over time and can end up in our water supplies and if it is incinerated it can end up in our air, on our land and eventually in our bodies.

The U.S. government and many U.S. based companies export a lot of waster material to other countries and much of this waste will undoubtedly contain E-waste. There are numerous health and safety problems with dumping our refuse into other countries but one fear is that what we dump "over there" can come back to hurt us.

In many developing or third world countries like China and India where we send a lot of waste material workers are often children, women, and the elderly, who work to extract the toxic metals with simple tools like hammers and pliers, wearing no protective gear of any sort, followed by discarding the parts, recycled or not, in open spaces completely exposed to the elements. Much of it is also incinerated which releases the toxins into the air and contaminates the environment for miles around. These countries also export a lot of foods like fish, shellfish, fruits, juices, vegetables, cotton, tea, sugar and frozen seafood to the U.S.

So the toxins that are released like Mercury, Cadmium and Dioxins for the E-waste that we dump in those countries can come back to us in the products that we then import from those countries. The U.S. really cannot afford to adopt an out of sight out of mind mindset in regards to the waste that we send to other countries, particularly e-waste. This really is a global economy and it could end up being a case of "what goes around comes around"!

by: Patrick Hayes

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