Dangers of E-waste highlighted at lecture

By Travis Ball
The Collegian

In an appearance at Fresno State Tuesday afternoon, environmental journalist Elizabeth Grossman discussed the nationwide problem of electronic waste and its various effects on society.

Grossman shared some of the things she learned while writing her latest book, entitled “High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.”

Some of the things she learned while writing the book turned out to be unpleasant.

“Much of what I learned was really not pretty,” Grossman said. “It was quite distressing.”

Introduced to an audience of more than 50 people at the Alice Peters Auditorium in the University Business Center at Fresno State, Grossman read an excerpt from her book that presented two very different lifestyles.

She described herself sitting behind her computer at home in Oregon, while across the globe in China a woman knelt next to a river with her child while a burning pile of wires smoked in the background. According to Grossman, only about 10 percent of electronic waste is being recycled and half of that is what she calls primitive recycling.

Primitive recycling is like the burning pile of wires Grossman described or landfills full of discarded electronic equipment that are sometimes generated by recycling facilities she calls “speculative scrap brokers.”

Grossman said these brokers establish themselves as recyclers but in reality send the electronic waste they receive overseas after extracting what they need — usually small amounts of valuable metals.

Grossman said there is a lot of bad news in her book, but it is news that people need to know — and she said her book is not anti-technology.

“If you actually know about a problem you can do something about it,” Grossman said.

According to Grossman, electronic waste can be harmful to both people and the environment.

Grossman said research has been done on flame retardants in electronics and the chemicals contained in them can interfere with metabolism and the nervous system in some ways.

“The stuff in plastics is all really, really nasty,” she said.

Grossman said Americans own 2 billion pieces of high tech consumer electronics and the U.S. government replaces 10,000 computers each week.

Electronic waste is so dangerous as a waste, Grossman said, that a truckload of computer screens by itself can be classified as toxic.

“We’re not leading on the cleanup end,” Grossman said about the United States, where much of the technology is born. “We’re playing catch up.”

Grossman said the problem of electronic waste various quite a bit in different places around the world.

In Europe electronic recycling is mandatory while little is being done in Africa. The situation in Beijing has gotten so much publicity that things are starting to get done. “It’s bad for business,” Grossman said about negative publicity for a country.

Tamara Lauria, a business management student, said Grossman’s discussion was very informative.

“I was surprised there hasn’t been more work done,” Lauria said about cleaning up e-waste. “I suspect there will be more done in the future, and more nonprofit organizations will be involved.”

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