Having lived in Asia for almost 30 years, I am a little sensitive to the condemnation Americans and Europeans heap on China, India, Vietnam and many other countries.  The scorn is, no doubt, legitimate.  Arsenic, lead, melamine and other deadly toxic elements in their manufactured products do find their way to our shores and hurt us.  This is wrong, dangerous and must stop!   There is, however, another point to be made.  Simply, western countries use lax import inspection to dump millions of tons of our most toxic chemicals onto the people and the environment of Asia and Africa.  This is a scandal and is wrong.

What is dumped onto their shores?  By the shipload, we routinely send millions of tons of old electronic products to these countries.  It is called e-waste. Greenpeace estimates that if we loaded all the e-waste onto one train, it would stretch all the way around the world.  Imagine how much electronic garbage that is.  A great majority of this will end up in Asia or Africa.  These include computers, monitors, mobile phones, photocopy machines, printers, televisions, radios, amplifiers….

E-waste contains toxic materials such as lead, mercury, cadmium and flame retardants. These materials are dangerous as they will accumulate and concentrate in fatty tissues.  In these tissues, the materials will poison the body.  They are especially dangerous to the unborn and nursing infants. 

These are incredibly dangerous materials to be unleashing on any environment.   But, dumped on the shores of countries that have little power to protect their environment or workers is serious.  Learning how these materials are often handled appears more a death sentence to those involved.  Often the work is done with bare hands and no face mask.  Toxic dust is released in the air, and the factory has no air vents.  Workers are actually looking to extricate the mercury, lead, cadmium and the Flame retardants out, so it can be used again in their industry.  These are the materials that have value and are unsafely separated.

Further damage is caused when the bulk of this material is simply dumped.  They may be dumped in a landfill, but more worrisome is that they may just be dumped into a nearby river, stream or lake. 

Just one example is enough: Up to 38 separate chemicals are incorporated into electronic waste items. Many of the plastics used in electronic equipment contain flame retardant. These are generally halogens added to the plastic resin, making the plastics difficult to recycle. Due to the flame retardants being additives, they easily leach off the material in hot weather, which is a problem because when disposed of, electronic waste is generally left outside. Greater damage results in the tropical weather of Asia and Africa.

To say this is a problem is an understatement.  Many of these e-waste shipments are illegal, but because of lack of enforcement and/or bribery, it occurs.  Often the offending shipping company as well as the manufacturer knows about it.  But, following the laws of the West create the economic profitable conditions for these people to dump.  It is wrong.

So, many of these countries send us poison in their products that go passed our inspectors.  But, we are not faultless as we send poison right back to them.  It is wrong and two wrongs don’t make a right.