According to the market research firm LatinPanel, 73 percent of the almost 570 million residents in Latin America and Caribbean owned a cell phone as of December 2006. Last year 17 percent of the population — one in six people in the region — purchased 93.5 million new cell phones. The majority were new and expensive models, costing an average of US$57, and as high as $73 in Brazil.

Héctor Herrero, an environmental activist who works in the Argentine organization Fundación Vida Silvestre, said that it is a positive trend that so many people have access to this technology, but added: “The bad thing is that many cell phone parts are made from extremely toxic materials that generally end up in dumps where they contaminate the atmosphere, soil and ground water reserves, where a large portion of the Latin American population accesses its water.”

Arturo Erazo Ramírez, director of Peru’s National Health Institute, says that the smallest of batteries is “enough to contaminate 600,000 liters of water.”

Cell phone batteries have a life of one or two years, and the cell phone hardware itself is constantly changing. Most cell phones now have a digital camera, a LCD screen and other modern features, and constant improvements and new models prompt consumers to throw away their phones for a newer model in a shorter period of time, LatinPanel’s report found.

Toxic parts

Cell phones and their batteries are made of highly toxic elements: lead, which attacks the nervous, circulatory and reproductive systems; cadmium, a carcinogen that damages the kidneys and bones; mercury, which causes brain and central nervous system damage; beryllium, another carcinogen that causes anorexia; and flame retardants that can hurt one’s neurological and hormonal systems.

Even though Argentines discard some 3,500 metric tons of batteries each year, and Chile discards some 2,000 metric tons, these countries lack protocols to dispose of these products safely. Environmentalists note that in 2006 the European Union prohibited the entry of any cell phone containing cadmium, lead, mercury, beryllium, lithium, nickel, among other toxic substances, so they hope this measure will eventually benefit the Latin American and Caribbean population.

“The mobile phone is a global product that has between 500 and 1,000 pieces. For Nokia, Motorola, LG, Sony-Ericsson and Samsung — the world’s five largest cell phone producers — it is very complicated to produce based on different standards, so luckily, soon telephones made under European regulations will come to us,” said Greenpeace Brazil in a pamphlet.

Until now, the only attempt to address the problem on a regional level was in 2004, during the Regional Workshop for the Prevention and Monitoring of Illicit Trafficking of Dangerous Waste in Argentina. Government experts from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela participated, but when the discussions were heading to the application of regulations similar to those adopted by the European Union, the parties never met again.

Mexico, the region’s second-largest electronics producer after Brazil, did not participate in the workshop. There are no such regulations in Mexico, as cell phones, computers and other technology are exported without controls. Last February, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, signed an agreement with the Chamber of Commerce to recycle waste, but the document said nothing about electronic waste.