<incom> Elizabeth Grossman: High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics and Human Health (review)

[Geert Lovink]

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71171-0.html?tw=wn_index_15

The Trouble With Tech Trash
By Randy Dotinga

There's gold in them thar laptops. Not to mention copper, glass and 
plastic.

You can use hammers or even your hands to salvage these potentially 
valuable commodities. Just ask the low-paid Chinese workers who expose 
themselves to all sorts of noxious chemicals as they break open 
computers in search of tiny bits of treasure. Sometimes they detect 
types of valuable plastic by smelling it as it burns. Or they strip out 
gold by dumping microchips into toxic acid, all without any protection.

As an eye-opening new book reveals, the environmental and health 
hazards posed by high-tech products are hardly limited to what happens 
when they're dumped in the garbage, like an estimated 89 percent of 
discarded consumer electronics in the United States.

The trouble begins much earlier. The gold inside computers -- as much 
as an ounce in every desktop thanks to gold wires and other parts -- 
must be first mined from ecologically unfriendly open pits in countries 
like South Africa, writes Oregon science journalist Elizabeth Grossman 
in High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics and Human Health. 
Then comes the manufacturing of semiconductors, which has contaminated 
ground water from Silicon Valley to upstate New York and allegedly 
sickened workers. And when electronics do become obsolete, they end up 
clogging landfills or being sent off to countries unknown, destined for 
recycling that poses its own hazards.

"Information-age technology has linked the world as never before, but 
its debris and detritus span the Earth as well," Grossman writes.

The dangers of dead electronic devices are nothing new, and some 
readers may already know about China's huge and hazardous recycling 
industry (displayed in a revealing documentary) and the renegade 
flame-retardant chemicals that are leaching into humans and sea animals 
worldwide.

Still, Grossman manages to create a coherent, informative and scary 
narrative out of the births and deaths of electronics from TVs and cell 
phones to computer monitors and iPods.

But it's hard to figure out just how panicked we should be by her 
findings. With so many chemicals in the water, the air and our bodies, 
no one seems to know which ones are most dangerous. Scientists, 
watchdogs and government agencies often must rely on animal testing and 
guesswork; in some cases, the chemicals haven't even undergone 
significant health testing.

The muddy readability of High Tech Trash is another problem. Grossman 
is a better reporter than writer, and she frequently loses her way amid 
a glut of acronyms, arcane details and techno-speak.

While the book is hardly a page-turner, it does make a convincing case 
that electronics manufacturers and the U.S. government are asleep at 
the wheel.

The European Union and states like California are setting the standard 
when it comes to reform, as are several high-tech manufacturers that 
offer "take-back" programs. But much more needs to be done to get 
consumers on board, Grossman writes.

And companies themselves need to realize they bear responsibility for 
the products that they unleash on the world, replacing them with better 
models just weeks later and leaving behind hunks of metal and plastic.