Earth Equity News

Following the Trail of Toxic E-Waste. By Scott Pelley, CBS Sixty Minutes, November 9, 2008, video (12:41 min.) and text. "60 Minutes takes you to one of the most toxic places on Earth -- a place government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. It's a town in China where you can't breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead. It's worth risking a visit because much of the poison is coming out of the homes, schools and offices of America. This is a story about recycling -- about how your best intentions to be green can be channeled into an underground sewer that flows from the United States and into the wasteland... Computers may seem like sleek, high-tech marvels. But what's inside them? 'Lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides... All of these materials have known toxicological effects that range from brain damage to kidney disease to mutations, cancers,' Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist... at NRDC, explained... 'E -waste is that it is the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide... we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States.' And he said over 100 million cell phones are thrown out annually."