February 25, 2002
Technology's Toxic Trash Is Sent to Poor Nations
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 24 — The
global export of electronics waste,
including consumer devices, computer
monitors and circuit boards, is creating
environmental and health problems in the
third world, a report to be issued on Monday
by five environmental organizations says.
Laborer heating aqua regia -- a mixture of 5% pure nitric acid and 75% pure hydrochloric acid -- a mixture that will dissolve gold. Without any resiratory protection workers inhale acid fumes, chlorine and sulphur dioxide gas all day as they swirl computer chips removed from circuit boards in acid to collect tiny amounts of gold. The sludges from the process are dumped directly into the river. Guiyu, China. December 2001. Copyright Basel Action Network.
The report says that 50 to 80 percent of
electronics waste collected for recycling in
the United States is placed on container ships
and sent to China, India, Pakistan or other
developing countries, where it is reused or
recycled under largely unregulated conditions,
often with toxic results.
The groups said there were no precise
estimates of the amount of such waste
currently created by the disposal of obsolete
consumer electronic and computing gear. The
Environmental Protection Agency estimated
last year, however, that in 1997 as many as
3.2 million tons of "e- waste" ended up in
United States landfills and that the amount
might increase fourfold in several years.
The groups also cited National Safety Council
estimates that as many as 315 million
computers have or will become obsolete from
1997 to 2004, generating a wide range of
potentially toxic wastes.
For example, each color computer monitor or
television display contains an average of four
to eight pounds of lead, which can enter the
environment when the monitors are illegally
disposed of in landfills.
"We've created a problem that has to be dealt
with," said Ted Smith, executive director of
the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, one of the
groups that participated in the report. The
others are the Basel Action Network, Toxics
Link India, Pakistan's Society for the
Conservation and Protection of the
Environment and Greenpeace China.
An E.P.A. scientist, Robert Tonetti,
acknowledged that a significant portion of the
nation's obsolete consumer electronics gear
was exported. He said, however, that there
was no systematic reporting of the shipments,
so there was no way to gauge the extent of
the problem accurately. "No one has a good
grasp of the numbers," said Mr. Tonetti, a
senior environmental scientist in the E.P.A.'s
office of solid waste.
Mr. Tonetti said that figures in a 1999
National Safety Council report showed that
about 723,000 computer monitors had been
recycled in the United States and 100,000 had
been exported. The report noted that more
than a million monitors were unaccounted for
and that many of them may have gone to
parts brokers who subsequently exported the
gear.
Open burning of plastic encased metal printer and motor parts. Open burning of plastics and other material is common in order to reduce the waste to metals. Guiyu, China. December 2001. Copyright Basel Action Network.
There is an international debate over how to deal with the
problem, Mr. Tonetti
said, adding that the European Union was moving toward requiring
manufacturers to take cradle-to-grave responsibility for their
products,
particularly when they contain potentially hazardous materials.
In contrast, the
United States industry has resisted this approach, he said.
While there is no consensus on a solution, he said the environmental
groups
had focused on important issues that should have more attention.
Mr. Tonetti
added, however, that the cradle-to-grave approach was not endorsed
by the
United States government. Environmental groups, he said, have
overlooked
that much electronics manufacturing is now outside of the United
States and
Europe, complicating the issue of manufacturer responsibility.
He also said that a significant factor in the increased
export of obsolete
electronics from the United States was the closing of smelters
here in recent
years, frequently because of environmental regulations.
The report, "Exporting Harm: The Techno-Trashing of
Asia," focuses on
electronics recycling around the region of Guiyu in Guangdong
province in
China. The area, which is northeast of Hong Kong, includes a cluster
of small
villages that since 1995 have become a booming recycling center
for electronic
gear arriving from all over the globe through the port of Nanhai.
The region has a work force of approximately 100,000 people
focused on
recycling, the report stated, with the process broken into small,
specialized
cottage work groups. In one neighborhood, plastics may be salvaged,
while in
another, circuit boards may be smelted to extract trace amounts
of gold and
other valuable materials, according to the investigators, who
visited the region
in December last year.
One casualty of the recycling boom in the region has been
drinking water, the
report says. Since 1995, as a result of groundwater pollution,
water has been
trucked in from 20 miles away.
The investigators said the recycling operations often involved
young children,
many of whom were unaware of the hazards. The hazardous operations
included open burning of plastics and wires, riverbank acid works
to extract
gold, the melting and burning of soldered circuit boards and the
cracking and
dumping of cathode ray tubes laden with lead.
The report described certain areas of Guiyu that were dedicated
to dismantling
printers. In those areas, toner cartridges were recycled manually,
according to
Jim Puckett, an author of the report.
"Workers without any protective respiratory equipment
or special clothing of
any kind opened cartridges with screwdrivers and then used paint
brushes and
their hands to wipe the toner into a bucket," the report
said. It added that the
process created constant clouds of toner, which were routinely
inhaled.
Mr. Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network, said,
"They call this
recycling, but it's really dumping by another name." The
network is an
international watchdog group that is trying to enforce the Basel
Convention, a
1989 United Nations treaty intended to limit the export of hazardous
waste.
The United States is the only developed nation that has not signed
it.
The convention calls on countries to reduce exports of hazardous
wastes to a
minimum and deal with their waste problems within their own borders
where
possible.
The authors of the report argue that stricter environmental
regulations in the
developed world have caused a trend toward exporting hazardous
materials to
the poorest countries, where occupational and environmental protections
are
inadequate.
The environmental groups took water and soil samples along
the Lianjiang
River and had them tested by a private center in Hong Kong. The
results, the
groups said, revealed alarming levels of heavy metals that corresponded
directly with metals most commonly found in computers. The water
sample,
taken near a site where circuit boards were processed and burned,
showed
levels of toxic materials 190 times the levels for drinking water
recommended
by the World Health Organization.
The report also notes evidence of similar unregulated recycling
operations in
both Pakistan and India. The researchers said that Karachi, Pakistan,
was one
of the country's principal markets for second-hand and scrap materials.
