You all know that getting rid of all those old computers, printers, cell phones and such is a huge problem and that tossed on the land fill they are toxic to ground water. Well, sometimes we fill ships with them and send them to China. So far, so good. Contaminate the communists, I guess, because they toss what they don't recycle and contaminate their own landfills.
But the Chinese are apparently recycling some of this waste into lead alloy and making it into children's jewelry and sending it back to us. The Wall Street Journal reports today that two studies suggest that this jewelry had traces of copper and tin indicating solder material from circuit boards was the source of the high levels of lead and that some jewelry contained antimony, a toxic metalloid element used to harden lead in batteries.
You will be glad to find out that China bans imports of e-waste but that it arrives nonetheless in loads of sixty tons or more.
To add to the profound head-hurting globalization many of the trashed electronics, or parts of them, came from China in the first place.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment