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Book Review | New Books
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Book Review
High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxins, and Human Health
By Elizabeth Grossman
Washington, DC:Island Press, 2006. 334 pp. ISBN: 1-55963-554-1, $25.95
In High Tech Trash, Elizabeth Grossman traces the effects of the high-tech computer industry on the environment, from the raw materials to the chemicals and solvents used to produce silicone chips as well as other persistent organic compounds used to produce high-tech equipment. Grossman then describes the subsequent recycling of electronics for reuse as well as the recovery and recycling of raw materials such as copper, zinc, gold, and plastics.
![August book cover](bookcvr.jpg) | image: Arnold Greenwell/EHP |
This journey through electronics, which formerly had been recognized as a "clean" industry, begins in the mines that supply many of the raw materials—including copper, aluminum, lead, gold, zinc, nickel, tin, silver, and iron—used in modern electronics. Grossman then discusses the different chemicals and solvents used in the production of silicone chips. She gives a close-up view of the electronics industry, recognizing the improvements in chemical safety from the early days when many of the tasks involving solvents such as trichloroethylene (TCE) and trichloroethane (TCA) were performed manually. These improvements have helped ensure that workers' exposures to chemicals have been substantially reduced in the automated factories of today. Grossman further points out that the groundwater at current Superfund sites is now contaminated with TCE and TCA as a result of leaks and spills that occurred in the early days of the electronics industry. The fact that several residential areas once drew drinking water from these sites and that vapors may pass upward from soil to air has, says Grossman, affected thousands of people.
In her review of the available literature on polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), Grossman discusses the likely link between human exposure to PBDEs and the high levels of PBDEs in residential dust. Unfortunately, Grossman frequently uses the generic term "PBDEs" rather than specifying which congeners are present in the technical-grade preparation of the PBDEs she discusses. Primarily, technical-grade octabromodiphenyl ether (octaBDE) and decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE) are used in the plastic housings of electronics, whereas technical-grade pentabromodiphenyl ether (pentaBDE) is used primarily in polyurethane to manufacture foam and padding materials. The congeners present in the pentaBDE mixture have been shown to accumulate in biological tissues, but the PBDEs in octaBDE and decaBDE have much shorter half-lives in people and are unlikely to biomagnify, although they are detectable in many human tissues.
The chapters on recycling and on the flow of electronic waste from consumers to landfills and the export of waste to developing countries are well written and detailed. For example, Grossman states that the United States discards enough electronic waste annually to cover a football field a mile high and that of this waste, only 10% is recycled for materials recovery. Most of the waste goes to landfills or to waste incinerators.
Grossman describes the handling of electronic waste that is exported from developed countries into developing countries and the tremendous environmental impact this waste has had in certain countries. For example, in Taizhou in southern China, circuit boards containing lead, flame retardants, and plasticizers are melted for the recovery of metals in uncovered pans only steps away from the workers' dormitories. In addition, the author offers an interesting description of the different recycling processes used by industrial companies such as Boliden Mineral AB in Sweden and Noranda in the United States. These companies have discovered a "rich ore stream" in the circuit boards they "mine" for metals.
Clearly, the increasing tide of electronic waste will be brought under control only if all parties involved (manufacturers, legislators, consumers, and recyclers) implement improvements such as reducing the amount of hazardous materials used in the manufacture of electronic products, producing electronics that are easier to disassemble for recycling, enacting legislation governing the electronics and recycling industries, and ensuring that consumers are informed about the issues associated with the production of electronics and with electronic waste so they can make educated decisions about the issues. Unfortunately, we have just now begun to address these issues, and changes will not be quick or easy.
Andreas Sjödin
Andreas Sjödin is the laboratory chief of the Combustion Products and Persistent Pollutants Biomonitoring Laboratory at the National Center for Environmental Heath at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This laboratory conducts measurements for brominated flame retardants and other persistent organohalogens and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon metabolites in human biological specimens for epidemiologic studies such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey.
New Books
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A Basic Introduction to Pollutant Fate and Transport: An Integrated Approach with Chemistry, Modeling, Risk Assessment, and Environmental Legislation
Frank M. Dunnivant, Elliot Anders
Hoboken, NJ:John Wiley & Sons, 2006. 504 pp. ISBN: 0-471-65128-1, $89.95
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Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics: From Air Pollution to Climate Change, 2nd Ed.
John H. Seinfeld, Spyros N. Pandis
Hoboken, NJ:John Wiley & Sons, 2006. 1232 pp. ISBN: 0-471-72017-8, $150
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Cancer Diagnostics with DNA Microarrays
Steen Knudsen
Hoboken, NJ:John Wiley & Sons, 2006. 208 pp. ISBN: 0-471-78407-9, $125
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Chemical Genomics: Small Molecule Probes to Study Cellular Function
Stefan Jaroch, Weinmann Hilmar, eds.
New York:Springer, 2006. 174 pp. ISBN: 3-540-27865-6, $79.95
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Comparative Environmental Politics
Jerry McBeath, Jonathan Rosenberg
New York:Springer, 2006. 193 pp. ISBN: 1-4020-4762-2, $125
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Ecological Risks Associated with the Destruction of Chemical Weapons
Vladimir M. Kolodkin, Wolfgang Ruck, eds.
New York:Springer, 2006. 340 pp. ISBN: 1-4020-3136-X, $65
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Environmental UV Radiation: Impact on Ecosystems and Human Health and Predictive Models
Francesco Ghetti, Giovanni Checcucci, Janet F. Bornman, eds.
New York:Springer, 2006. 288 pp. ISBN: 1-4020-3696-5, $79.95
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Genomics and Proteomics Engineering in Medicine and Biology
Metin Akay, ed.
Hoboken, NJ:John Wiley & Sons, 2006. 336 pp. ISBN: 0-471-63181-7, $98.95
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How Much Should a Person Consume: Environmentalism in India and the United States
Ramachandra Guha
Berkeley:University of California Press, 2006. 276 pp. ISBN: 0-520-24803-1, $55
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Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge
Linda Nash
Berkeley:University of California Press, 2006. 346 pp. ISBN: 0-520-24891-0, $60
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Nonparametric Functional Data Analysis: Theory and Practice
Frédéric Ferraty, Philippe Vieu
New York:Springer, 2006. 268 pp. ISBN: 0-387-30369-3, $79.95
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Public Health: Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights
World Health Organization
Geneva:WHO Press, 2006. 216 pp. ISBN: 92-4-156323-0, $27
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Statistical Analysis of Environmental Space–Time Processes
Nhu D. Le, James V. Zidek
New York:Springer, 2006. 341 pp. ISBN: 0-387-26209-1, $79.95
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System Modeling in Cellular Biology
Zoltan Szallasi, Jörg Stelling, Vipul Periwal
Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2006. 480 pp. ISBN 0-262-19548-8, $50
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The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World's Greatest Challenge
Kirstin Dow, Thomas E. Downing
Berkeley:University of California Press, 2006. 112 pp. ISBN: 0-520-25023-0, $19.95
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Verifying Treaty Compliance: Limiting Weapons of Mass Destruction and Monitoring Kyoto Protocol Provisions
R. Avenhaus, N. Kyriakopoulos, M. Richard, G. Stein, eds.
New York:Springer, 2006. 629 pp. ISBN: 3-540-33853-5, $179
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