Title: The Human and Environmental Effects of E-Waste – Population Reference Bureau
Headings: The Human and Environmental Effects of E-Waste
The Human and Environmental Effects of E-Waste
References
Date
Authors
Lucy McAllister

Content: 2
Developing countries with rapidly growing economies handle e-waste from developed countries, and from their own internal consumers. Currently, an estimated 70 percent of e-waste handled in India is from other nations, but the UNEP estimates that between 2007 and 2020, domestic television e-waste will double, computer e-waste will increase five times, and cell phones 18 times. The informal sector’s recycling practices magnify health risks. For example, primary and secondary exposure to toxic metals, such as lead, results mainly from open-air burning used to retrieve valuable components such as gold. Combustion from burning e-waste creates fine particulate matter, which is linked to pulmonary and cardiovascular disease. While the health implications of e-waste are difficult to isolate due to the informal working conditions, poverty, and poor sanitation, several studies in Guiyu, a city in southeastern China, offer insight. Guiyu is known as the largest e-waste recycling site in the world, and the city’s residents exhibit substantial digestive, neurological, respiratory, and bone problems. For example, 80 percent of Guiyu’s children experience respiratory ailments, and are especially at risk of lead poisoning. 3
Residents of Guiyu are not the only ones at risk. Researchers such as Brett Robinson, a professor of soil and physical sciences at Lincoln University in New Zealand, warn that wind patterns in Southeast China disperse toxic particles released by open-air burning across the Pearl River Delta Region, home to 45 million people.