In these impoverished communities, a growing number of waste disposal companies are extracting valuable metals, such as copper and gold, from the machines.

During the disposal process, however, workers are often exposed to hazardous substances, such as lead, mercury and cadmium, when they become airborn or settle in the soil. Few businesses take even minimum safety precautions to protect their employees from exposure to the toxic materials.

Most of the junked paraphernalia comes from developed countries, including Japan. Some of the computers bear Japanese words, such as "Tsushin Koji-ka (communication works section)" and "Deta Shokyo Zumi (Data has been deleted)."

Critics say the international community must beef up efforts to halt the trade.

At the village of Guiyu in Guangdong province, southern China, small mountains of worn-out PCs are piled high in front of many homes. Whisps of inky smoke twist upward from dozens of fires on the banks of a river and in the fields, tended by villagers who are incinerating plastic and vinyl parts cast off from the high-tech trash heaps.

For decades, the main industry of the village, which is located about 50 kilometers west of the downtown of Shantou special economic zone, had been recycling scrap iron and other metals until electronic waste started to flow in 1990.

Now the town's cash cow is the gold, copper and other metals that can be extracted from the obsolete hardware.

Even parts in good condition can be salvaged and sold.

The village has seen a modern-day gold rush as people move in to start their own waste disposal business--pushing the population past 300,000.

Electronic waste disposal can be a lucrative pursuit.

A small company with four or five employees can take in as much as 2 million yuan (about 30 million yen) a month while the average village worker earns a mere 1,000 to 1,500 yuan a month.

However, behind this thriving enterprise, serious health effects are being observed among villagers who are exposed to high levels of lead, mercury, cadmium and solvents.

The Medical School of Shantou University conducted a health survey of Guiyu from late 2003 to 2004. It found 135 of 165 children aged 1 to 6 years old had lead poisoning.

In the suburbs of New Delhi, home to the nation's largest electronic waste disposal industry, the health risks of waste disposal workers are also a big worry.

At a cramped workplace in Gadda district, about 10 workers spend their days extracting copper from PC parts.

The parts are boiled in water, scrubbed and then dumped in a bath of sulfuric and nitric acid for one day to extract the copper, which sells for 300 rupee (about 820 yen) per kilogram.

In an environment thick with toxic fumes, maskless workers toil in a dangerous job clad only in ordinary street clothes. A lucky few wear rubber gloves.

Children are also at work here. A 10-year-old boy, Rajesh, said he came from his home in Bihar state in eastern India about a month before in order to work in Gadda.

T.K. Joshi, director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health of Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, is concerned about possible damage to the brain and internal organs caused by inhaling mercury, lead and cadmium.

"The electronic waste disposal business began to grow (in New Delhi) three or four years ago. In the future, we will see patients with various afflictions that are difficult to treat," Joshi said.

"The impact on the brain of children in their stage of intellectual development is a serious concern. If an expecting mother inhales the toxic substances from a worker's clothes at home, she could give birth to a deformed baby," he added.

Nevertheless, the waste workers seem unconcerned.

According to Toxics Link, a New Delhi-based nongovernmental organization, most of the 10,000 to 15,000 workers are migrants from rural regions and earn a mere 50 rupee a day. The business owners shrug off the health risks and don't implement countermeasures, the group said.

The Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes stipulates that electronic waste cannot be exported without the consent of the importing country.

To bypass this restriction, the trash is being traded not as waste but as "used PCs" or "mixed metals."

According to sources in China's recycling business, electronic waste is imported by sea mainly from the United States, Europe, Japan, Thailand and Australia.

The ships stop at Hong Kong where smugglers take charge of the cargo, which they clear through customs by classifying it as such items as used goods or scrap iron. Customs inspectors never check the contents of the cargo.

The cargo is then shipped to mainland China where there are no customs inspections either.

In India, the volume of imported electronic waste began rising in 2002, reaching an estimated 50,000 tons a year at present.

Last year, India's Ministry of Environment and Forests prepared a bill to regulate the import of such electronic rubbish. Yet India produces more than 150,000 tons of its own electronic waste every year, a figure that is expected to increase amid the country's booming economy.

Grasping the true picture of the worldwide electronic waste issue is a tough challenge.

Basel Action Network, a nongovernmental organization based in the United States, and other organizations estimate that 10 million tons of electronic waste is exported to Asian countries from the United States alone.

While concern is growing in the international community over hazardous electronic waste disposal, signatory countries to the Basel Convention have yet to unite on the issue of export regulations.

In the 1995 conference of the signatory states, the revisions to the convention, which are aimed to ban the export of hazardous wastes from developed countries to developing countries completely, were adopted.

But the revisions have yet to come into effect because the countries have failed to agree on how many countries must ratify the revisions.

As Japan has not ratified the revisions, it has become the target of criticism from environmental groups.

"Japan is trying to delay the implementation of the revisions along with the United States, Australia and other countries," said an official of one environmental organization.

Tetsuo Kogure contributed to this article from New Delhi.(IHT/Asahi: April 28,2007)