Trouble With Tech Trash
There's gold in them their laptops. Not to mention copper, glass and plastic.
You can use hammers or even your hands to salvage these potentially valuable commodities. Just ask the low-paid Chinese workers who expose themselves to all sorts of noxious chemicals as they break open computers in search of tiny bits of treasure. Sometimes they detect types of valuable plastic by smelling it as it burns. Or they strip out gold by dumping microchips into toxic acid, all without any protection.
As an eye-opening new book reveals, the environmental and health hazards posed by high-tech products are hardly limited to what happens when they're dumped in the garbage, like an estimated 89 percent of discarded consumer electronics in the United States.
The trouble begins much earlier. The gold inside computers -- as much as an ounce in every desktop thanks to gold wires and other parts -- must be first mined from ecologically unfriendly open pits in countries like South Africa, writes Oregon science journalist Elizabeth Grossman in High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics and Human Health. Then comes the manufacturing of semiconductors, which has contaminated ground water from Silicon Valley to upstate New York and allegedly sickened workers. And when electronics do become obsolete, they end up clogging landfills or being sent off to countries unknown, destined for recycling that poses its own hazards.
"Information-age technology has linked the world as never before, but its debris and detritus span the Earth as well," Grossman writes.
The dangers of dead electronic devices are nothing new, and some readers may already know about China's huge and hazardous recycling industry (displayed in a revealing documentary) and the renegade flame-retardant chemicals that are leaching into humans and sea animals worldwide.
Still, Grossman manages to create a coherent, informative and scary narrative out of the births and deaths of electronics from TVs and cell phones to computer monitors and iPods.
But it's hard to figure out just how panicked we should be by her findings. With so many chemicals in the water, the air and our bodies, no one seems to know which ones are most dangerous. Scientists, watchdogs and government agencies often must rely on animal testing and guesswork; in some cases, the chemicals haven't even undergone significant health testing.
The muddy readability of High Tech Trash is another problem. Grossman is a better reporter than writer, and she frequently loses her way amid a glut of acronyms, arcane details and techno-speak.
While the book is hardly a page-turner, it does make a convincing case that electronics manufacturers and the U.S. government are asleep at the wheel.
The European Union and states like California are setting the standard when it comes to reform, as are several high-tech manufacturers that offer "take-back" programs. But much more needs to be done to get consumers on board, Grossman writes.
And companies themselves need to realize they bear responsibility for the products that they unleash on the world, replacing them with better models just weeks later and leaving behind hunks of metal and plastic.