An environmental-programs manager for Public Works here in Pasadena, where I live, says that "electronic waste contaminates our air and water, and is hazardous to human health." Like many other cities, Pasadena holds episodic electronic waste ("e-waste") collection events in which people bring in their hazardous home materials to be disposed of.
On a Saturday morning several years ago, I took an old TV, laptop and printer to one of these places.ceramic zentai suits for the medical, Always striving to be "green," I felt pleased with myself. The thought of any of these junked items or their components ending up in a landfill somewhere was abhorrent.
The truth, which I didn’t know then, is that my junked items could end up in a landfill, just not in the U.S. In 2010, when I visited Accra, Ghana, my birthplace, I might very well have found my discarded TV,For the last five years porcelain tiles ,Whilst magic cube are not deadly, laptop and printer in Agbogbloshie, Accra’s most notorious slum.
Nicknamed "Sodom and Gomorrah," it lies along the Odaw River and Korle Lagoon, and has become an electronics wasteland. If you look long enough, you will find fragments of plastic that indicate where the discarded stuff comes from — such telltale names as West Virginia County Sheriff and School District of Philadelphia. Europe is guilty as well.
Agbogbloshie is decidedly not your average tourist haunt and won’t be featured in any glossy tourism pamphlets anytime soon. I probably wouldn’t have visited myself, but since it is the setting of a pivotal scene in my 2011 novel, "Children of the Street," I needed to see the place first-hand.
As I left the main road, teeming with shoppers, and approached the Odaw, I could see and feel people staring at me, wondering what I was doing there. I came upon a group of male teenagers who eyed me warily when I asked if one would act as my guide. Some said nothing, others shook their heads no, but a boy stepped forward with a smile. Sure, he’d be happy to take me around. About 18, his name was Issifu and, like most residents of Agbogbloshie, he was a Muslim from northern Ghana.
He showed me how, along the stagnant canal choked with trash, boys break up the plastic surround of TVs to get at the copper wiring inside. They then burn off the plastic coating of the wires, producing blasts of foul-smelling smoke that rises high in the air and gives Agbogbloshie a strangely apocalyptic look.
Boys gather as much copper as they can from this process and then sell it to a dealer who pays them by weight. In breaking up the televisions and burning the plastic, these boys (and they are invariably boys) are exposed to toxic chemicals: lead, mercury, chromium, beryllium, arsenic and brominated flame-retardants. Issifu told me that toward the end of a day in which he takes part in this processing of e-waste, he typically develops a splitting headache,This will leave your shoulders free to rotate in their offshore merchant account . dizziness and nausea.
Donating old but still-working electronic equipment to developing countries probably started as a noble idea,This patent infringement case relates to retractable landscape oil paintings , but now it has become a way to discard junk computers and their hazardous components. By falsely labeling them "donations," Western countries can bypass international regulations that proscribe electronic dumping. When they arrive at Ghana’s ports, e-waste dealers sort through the goods to find working components. What can’t be reused is discarded at places like Agbogbloshie.
On a Saturday morning several years ago, I took an old TV, laptop and printer to one of these places.ceramic zentai suits for the medical, Always striving to be "green," I felt pleased with myself. The thought of any of these junked items or their components ending up in a landfill somewhere was abhorrent.
The truth, which I didn’t know then, is that my junked items could end up in a landfill, just not in the U.S. In 2010, when I visited Accra, Ghana, my birthplace, I might very well have found my discarded TV,For the last five years porcelain tiles ,Whilst magic cube are not deadly, laptop and printer in Agbogbloshie, Accra’s most notorious slum.
Nicknamed "Sodom and Gomorrah," it lies along the Odaw River and Korle Lagoon, and has become an electronics wasteland. If you look long enough, you will find fragments of plastic that indicate where the discarded stuff comes from — such telltale names as West Virginia County Sheriff and School District of Philadelphia. Europe is guilty as well.
Agbogbloshie is decidedly not your average tourist haunt and won’t be featured in any glossy tourism pamphlets anytime soon. I probably wouldn’t have visited myself, but since it is the setting of a pivotal scene in my 2011 novel, "Children of the Street," I needed to see the place first-hand.
As I left the main road, teeming with shoppers, and approached the Odaw, I could see and feel people staring at me, wondering what I was doing there. I came upon a group of male teenagers who eyed me warily when I asked if one would act as my guide. Some said nothing, others shook their heads no, but a boy stepped forward with a smile. Sure, he’d be happy to take me around. About 18, his name was Issifu and, like most residents of Agbogbloshie, he was a Muslim from northern Ghana.
He showed me how, along the stagnant canal choked with trash, boys break up the plastic surround of TVs to get at the copper wiring inside. They then burn off the plastic coating of the wires, producing blasts of foul-smelling smoke that rises high in the air and gives Agbogbloshie a strangely apocalyptic look.
Boys gather as much copper as they can from this process and then sell it to a dealer who pays them by weight. In breaking up the televisions and burning the plastic, these boys (and they are invariably boys) are exposed to toxic chemicals: lead, mercury, chromium, beryllium, arsenic and brominated flame-retardants. Issifu told me that toward the end of a day in which he takes part in this processing of e-waste, he typically develops a splitting headache,This will leave your shoulders free to rotate in their offshore merchant account . dizziness and nausea.
Donating old but still-working electronic equipment to developing countries probably started as a noble idea,This patent infringement case relates to retractable landscape oil paintings , but now it has become a way to discard junk computers and their hazardous components. By falsely labeling them "donations," Western countries can bypass international regulations that proscribe electronic dumping. When they arrive at Ghana’s ports, e-waste dealers sort through the goods to find working components. What can’t be reused is discarded at places like Agbogbloshie.
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