Some cole slaw with your CPU?

Do you ever wonder what happened to the first computer you ever saw in your house? The one that caused fist fights with your sister because you both wanted to play King’s Quest and neither would relent to let the other play first. The one your entire family shared before you got your own personal computer that feels as light as a marshmallow. You know, the one that looked like a box that you could barely wrap your arms around. It was really heavy, too.

Yeah, that piece of ancient history probably wound up somewhere like China or Africa because manufacturers didn’t want to bear the burden of recycling it responsibly. Well, they still don’t. So they ship it illegally to developing countries where people who are already suffering from poor living conditions get to have old computers piled into their front yards and back yards. Not to worry, they can scrape a living by seeing what sorts of precious metals they can extract from our garbage. Oh, they can always burn the useless pieces to clear the trash from their living spaces. All sounds peachy…except that these activities mean chemicals put into computers to prevent them from catching on fire are entering their bodies, chemicals that no one wants in their bodies, chemicals that cause things like lower fertility in both men and women and development issues in children. These toxic chemicals, commonly called flame retardants, have been found in the air and dust of these electronic waste sites. As it turns out, flame retardants enter the body most readily through ingestion. But who is going to pick up a handful of dust and eat it? (Unless they’re one of those pregnant ladies that get those weird cravings.) Probably no one, but they’re ingesting the chemicals anyway.

A recent study* done in China found excessively high levels of flame retardants in the fish consumed by residents of a waste site. These communities rely heavily on seafood as part of their diet.

How does this affect me, you may be wondering. China’s fish is contaminated, not mine. Eh, it probably doesn’t affect you a whole lot but guess what? These chemicals aren’t bound to the products they’re put in so as you’re reading this post, they are leaking out and settling into the ever-present dust bunnies where you are probably unwittingly ingesting them. And they really like to stick around. And accumulate in fatty deposits that exist in our food chain. So yep, we’re eating it, too.

Okay…what do we do? This is a difficult question to answer with no easy out. Flame retardants have been banned a few times since they first came out in the 1970s but the chemical industry responds by tweaking them slightly so that it is marginally different from its banned predecessor. Sneaky, huh? We don’t need these chemicals. The ultimate goal would be to redesign our electronics so that they are sustainable and safe from production to end of life.

To find out more about solving the electronic waste problem, check out this site.

*Chan JKY, et al, Dietary intake of PBDEs of residents at two major electronic waste recycling sites in China, Sci Total Environ (2012), doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.06.093.

Beverly Shen is a PhD student in Environmental Health Sciences at Emory University who probably dated herself by referencing King’s Quest. The 90s were rad.