Episode Description:
For today’s tech episode. We’re going to be talking about… the crisis of e-waste and children’s health.
We’ll specifically be referencing a report by the World Health Organization from 2021 titled “Children and digital dumpsites: e-waste exposure and child health”
The report summarizes the latest scientific knowledge on the links between informal e-waste recycling activities and health outcomes in children.
By endangering tens of millions of children and women of childbearing age, improper disposal of e-waste threatens the health and abilities of future generations.
A problem, that is most severe where impoverished city dwellers work in or live near informal dumps and landfills. These unmonitored sites in low and middle-income countries receive a large share of global e-waste.
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According to a report from the World Health Organization “in 2019, some million tonnes of e-waste were generated worldwide, a 21% increase over the past five years.”
Global e-waste is projected to grow to 74.7 million tonnes by 2030.
An estimated 152 million children aged 5 – 17 years are involved in child labor, including 18 million children (or 11.9%) in the industrial sector, which includes waste processing.
It is estimated that between 2.9 million and 12.9 million women are involved in the informal waste sector, including an unknown number of women of childbearing age.
[Cue intro music]
What is going on everyone! I’m your host Kevin Muñoz. This is the LEO podcast tech corner, where we talk about all things tech.
For today’s tech episode. We’re going to be talking about… the crisis of e-waste and children’s health.
We’ll specifically be referencing a report by the World Health Organization from 2021 titled “Children and digital dumpsites: e-waste exposure and child health”
The report summarizes the latest scientific knowledge on the links between informal e-waste recycling activities and health outcomes in children.
By endangering tens of millions of children and women of childbearing age, improper disposal of e-waste threatens the health and abilities of future generations.
A problem, that is most severe where impoverished city dwellers work in or live near informal dumps and landfills. These unmonitored sites in low and middle-income countries receive a large share of global e-waste.
This is today’s free episode. If you want early access to upcoming episodes and bonus episodes or if you just want to support the podcast and the hard work that goes into it, you can do that on patreon.com/latinamericaneo and if not, then enjoy this one!
[End intro music]
Topic 1 (Background): What has led to this problem?
The ineffective waste management of mobile phones, computers, and appliances has led to a global crisis of e-waste health risks.
You may have noticed that your appliances like washing machines and refrigerators, were known as “durable goods” because they were built to last, but that isn’t the case anymore and even cell phones don’t last as long as they used to and instead of having them repaired what ends up happening is we all just end up buying new ones.
Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re not crazy! This is done by design, it is not a coincidence.
Both small and large appliances are designed in ways that make repairs difficult. For this reason, the e-waste volumes are out of control!
In fact, there’s so much e-waste that by 2030, the global employment in waste management is expected to grow by 70%, or another 45 million jobs.
Topic 2: Reprocessing increases risks and impacts
However, a huge problem is that not all e-waste that is produced ends up in a formal management or recycling systems. To give you an idea, in 2019 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste was generated globally but only 17.4% or 9.3 million tonnes of e-waste was documented as collected and properly recycled. The rest 82.6% or 44.3 million tonnes of global e-waste produced in 2019 was not documented. This means that 43.7 million tonnes of e-waste is unknown; which means it was probably disposed of in illegal landfills, domestically or internationally, or was recycled by informal workers.
0.6 million tonnes of e-waste is estimated to have ended up in residual waste bins in European countries.
Topic 3: E-waste workers and their families are exposed to toxicants through multiple pathways
This growing waste contains valuable materials like gold, silver, palladium, platinum, cobalt, copper, iron, and aluminum. Because of these valuable materials, the informal scavenging for e-waste in unmanaged landfills has become a common income source for low-income communities nearby.
Now there are a lot of problems with this. One is that primitive recycling processes typically lack safety measures and personal protective equipment. This results in severe environmental contamination and human health risks associated with e-waste sites.
In order to extract the valuable materials, you would need to dismantle them and use a lot of heat. It’s important to note that heating and open burning emit particulate matter, which leaches into soil and water.
These released chemicals like heavy metals are known to harm children. As mentioned These substances can pollute the air, dust, water, and soil. What ends up happening is that e-waste workers inhale and ingest hazardous dust, and their skin, shoes, and clothes carry it into communities and their homes.
These multiple sources of e-waste toxicants put children and their families at risk in communities near informal e-waste sites. There’s even data showing that various air pollutants from the burning metals, plastics, and contaminants also settle as residues on crops, market foods, and other surfaces.
Even when talking about cities with organized waste management systems, the e-waste often is discarded alongside other solid waste ending up in landfills. The issue with that is that such discarded e-waste can leach toxicants into drinking water supplies and aquifers which is an underground layer of permeable rock, sediment (usually sand or gravel), or soil that contains water. This groundwater can then be extracted using a water well.
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Topic 4: Most at risk
As previously mentioned children and pregnant women working in or living ear informal e-waste disposal and processing sites the among those most vulnerable to hazardous chemicals.
In fact, children are disproportionately at risk due to their still-developing organs and immune systems, as well as their rapid growth and all the vulnerabilities that come with a child still developing.
For example, children end up absorbing more pollutants because they breathe more rapidly and ingest more food and water for their size when compared to adults. Let’s be honest as well children are dirty because they like to get dirty and end up engaging in what they call hand-to-mouth and object-to-mouth behaviors much more often than adults which end up increasing their relative intake of contaminated dust or soil. So you can see how it’s all connected.
As for pregnant girls and women working or living near e-waste sites, exposure to toxicants even at very low levels can impact pregnancy health. This exposure could result in long-term impacts on the health of newborns in childhood or even in adult life.
In fact, e-waste exposure has been linked to a variety of adverse health outcomes, including impaired neurological and behavioral development, negative birth outcomes, and immune system impacts.
Topic 5: E-waste global and regional actions
According to the World Health Report “Action to protect human and environmental health from the hazards of e-waste needs to happen at a global, regional, national, and local levels. The health sector can play a role at all levels by providing leadership, conducting research, lobbying policy-makers, and engaging communities”
They mention global because vast amounts of e-waste are transported from the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, and the Republic of Korea to African, Asian, and South American countries.
Now when hearing that it actually makes sense as to why only 17.4% of e-waste is documented as collected and properly recycled. Big wealthy countries ship their e-waste to poorer countries and let them deal with the consequences. This is a big concern because this is how informal waste disposal sites become a thing. E-waste has valuable materials, low-income communities want these materials in order to make a living, but by extracting these materials informally children and childbearing women are being exposed to hazardous toxins.
It’s actually more beneficial for better countries to enact better recycling practices because it presents opportunities for increased income and decreased demand for new materials.
In 2019, up to $57 billion in raw materials could have been recovered if e-waste had been recycled optimally.
Extracting these resources from e-waste is actually better for the climate because it produces less carbon dioxide than mining for the same materials.
Among a long list of what Governments and corporations alike need to prioritize. Ensuring the health and safety of e-waste workers and communities should be high on that list and especially making protecting children the highest policy priority.
States according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child are actually duty-bound to ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the survival and development of the child.
Chronic exposure to e-waste and its toxic components violates children’s rights.
Businesses are also obligated to prevent children from being exposed to toxins from their products and activities.
Also on that list is eliminating child labor and incorporating adult e-waste workers into the formal economy with good conditions this would mean transitioning informal workers to the formal economy.
Speaking of the economy, the world also needs to shift towards a circular economy by manufacturing more durable electronic and electrical equipment.
As well as raising awareness of e-waste health risks and encouraging responsible recycling with policy-makers, communities, waste workers and their families.
Especially at the local level. Health professionals need to be aware of the health risks of e-waste and need training and equipment to detect and test for toxicant exposure in workers.
Now it looks like some action is being taken, according to the WHO they are developing at the regional and local levels to help develop frameworks to protect child health from e-waste exposure in Latin America and Africa. These pilot projects would aim to promote local advocacy and collaboration with communities and build the capacity of primary health systems to address risks by monitoring e-waste exposure and measuring the success of interventions.
Topic 6: Climate and health agendas
Lastly, I wanted to talk about climate change and e-waste for a bit.
I briefly mentioned earlier in the episode that extracting resources from electrical and electronic waste using safe extraction technologies reduces health risks while also producing less CO2, than mining the same materials, therefore actually benefiting the environment and reducing climate emissions.
It was found that refrigerators and air-conditioners recycled in substandard conditions in 2019 ended up producing an estimated 98 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents.
So to give you a better picture, in contrast, the 17.4% of appropriately recycled e-waste saved as much as 15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents from being released into the environment in 2019.
Of course, the collaboration between the private sector and national ministries of health, and labor, industry and environment is once again essential.
THE END
That’s all for today on the LEO podcast. I’m Kevin Muñoz and as always feel free to send me a message with your thoughts or with any interesting topic that you’d like to see covered.
and for those of you on Patreon, I’ll see you there.
Otherwise, I’ll see you all in next week’s episode!
Sources:
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240023901
Children and digital dumpsites: e-waste exposure and child health
Overview: This report summarizes the latest scientific knowledge on the links between informal e-waste recycling activities and health outcomes in children. As many as 18 million children and adolescents and 12.9 million women, including an unknown number of women of childbearing age, may be at risk from adverse health outcomes linked to e-waste recycling. The report is intended to increase awareness and knowledge among health professionals of the dangers that e-waste recycling poses to the health of future generations and is a call to action to reduce children’s exposure to harmful e-waste activities.
