Background: Electronic waste (e-waste) is produced in staggering quantities, estimated globally to be 41.8 million tonnes in 2014. Informal e-waste recycling is a source of much-needed income in many low- to middle-income countries. However, its handling and disposal in underdeveloped countries is often unsafe and leads to contaminated environments. Rudimentary and uncontrolled processing methods often result in substantial harmful chemical exposures among vulnerable populations, including women and children. E-waste hazards have not yet received the attention they deserve in research and public health agendas.
Objectives: We provide an overview of the scale and health risks. We review international efforts concerned with environmental hazards, especially affecting children, as a preface to presenting next steps in addressing health issues stemming from the global e-waste problem.
Discussion: The e-waste problem has been building for decades. Increased observation of adverse health effects from e-waste sites calls for protecting human health and the environment from e-waste contamination. Even if e-waste exposure intervention and prevention efforts are implemented, legacy contamination will remain, necessitating increased awareness of e-waste as a major environmental health threat.
Conclusion: Global, national, and local levels efforts must aim to create safe recycling operations that consider broad security issues for people who rely on e-waste processing for survival. Paramount to these efforts is reducing pregnant women and children’s e-waste exposures to mitigate harmful health effects. With human environmental health in mind, novel dismantling methods and remediation technologies and intervention practices are needed to protect communities.
1National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; 2MDB, Inc., Durham, North Carolina, USA; 3Water Research Institute, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Accra, Ghana; 4Swedish Toxicology Sciences Research Center, Södertälje University, Södertälje, Sweden; 5World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland; 6University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; 7University at Albany, Rensselaer, New York, USA; 8University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; 9Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, China; 10Basel Convention Regional Centre for Training and Technology Transfer, Al-Orman, Giza, Egypt; 11Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA; 12United Nations University Institute for Sustainability and Peace, United Nations University, Bonn, Germany; 13Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, Mexico; 14Cairo University, Giza, Egypt; 15Department of Toxicology, School of Medicine, University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay; 16Chulabhorn Research Institute, Bangkok, Thailand; 17Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; 18Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Recommended Citation:
Michelle Heacock,1 Carol Bain Kelly,2 Kwadwo Ansong Asante,et al. E-Waste and Harm to Vulnerable Populations: A Growing Global Problem[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2016-01-01,Volume 124(Issue 5):550