Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys.

“My work is to pick out these small black boxes,” he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the pile of computer remains stacked high beside him.

His older brother Salim, 12, is also hard at work instead of being at school. He is extracting tiny transistors and capacitors from wire boards.

The brothers, who decline to reveal how much they earn a day, say they are kept frantically busy as increasing numbers of computers, printers and other electronic goods are discarded by offices and homes.

Few statistics are known about the informal “e-waste” industry, but a United Nations report launched in February described how mountains of hazardous waste from electronic products are growing exponentially in developing countries.

It said India would have 500 percent more e-waste from old computers in 2020 than in 2007, and 18 times more old mobile phones.

The risks posed to those who handle the cast-offs are clear to T.K. Joshi, head of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi.

He studied 250 people working in the city as recyclers and dismantlers over 12 months to October 2009 and found almost all suffered from breathing problems such as asthma and bronchitis.

High

“We found dangerously high levels — 10 to 20 times higher than normal — of lead, mercury and chromium in blood and urine samples,” he told AFP.

“All these have a detrimental effect on the respiratory, urinary and digestive systems, besides crippling immunity and causing cancer.”

Toxic metals and poisons enter workers’ bloodstreams during the laborious manual extraction process and when equipment is crudely treated to collect tiny quantities of precious metals.

“The recovery of metals like gold, platinum, copper and lead uses caustic soda and concentrated acids,” said Joshi.

“Workers dip their hands in poisonous chemicals for long hours. They are also exposed to fumes of highly concentrated acid.”

Safety gear such as gloves, face masks and ventilation fans are virtually unheard of, and workers — many of them children — often have little idea of what they are handling.

“All the workers we surveyed were unaware of the dangers they were exposed to. They were all illiterate and desperate for employment,” said Joshi. “Their choice is clear — either die of hunger or of metal poisoning.”

And he warned exposure to e-waste by-products such as cadmium and lead could result in a slow, painful death.

“They can’t sleep or walk,” he said. “They are wasted by the time they reach 35-40 years of age and incapable of working.”

There are no estimates of how many people die in India from e-waste poisoning as ill workers generally drift back to their villages when they can no longer earn a living.

Irony

“The irony is that the amounts of gold and platinum they extract are traces — fractions of a milligramme,” said Priti Mahesh, programme coordinator of the New Delhi-based Toxic Link environment group.

“Computers, televisions and mobile phones are most dangerous because they have high levels of lead, mercury and cadmium — and they have short life-spans so are discarded more,” she said.

The Indian government has proposed a law to regulate the e-waste trade, but Delhi environment group the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said any legislation would miss the army of informal workers such as brothers Asif and Salim.

“The proposed law says only big firms should be in the business of recycling and dismantling,” said Kushal Pal Singh Yadav, a CSE campaigner.

“This is not going to work because the informal sector already has a cheap system of collection, disposal or recycling in place — so people will use that.”

For Joshi, the sight of children working in appalling conditions taking computers apart is as potent a symbol of India’s deep troubles as rag-pickers sorting through stinking household rubbish dumps.

“India needs laws which will protect workers’ interests, especially the vulnerable and children. We have a lot to learn from Western societies about workers’ rights,” he said.

What is e-waste?

Rapid change in technology, low initial cost, and planned obsolescence have resulted in a fast-growing surplus of electronic waste around the globe. Experts regard electronic waste as a “rapidly expanding” issue.

Technical solutions are available, but in most cases a legal framework, a collection system, logistics, and other services need to be implemented before a technical solution can be applied. An estimated 50 million tonnes of e-waste is produced each year. The USA discards 30 million computers each year and 100 million phones are disposed of in Europe each year. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that only 15-20 percent of e-waste is recycled, the rest of these electronics go directly into landfills and incinerators.

In the United States, an estimated 70 percent of heavy metals in landfills comes from discarded electronics, while electronic waste represents only 2 percent of America’s trash in landfills. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that unwanted electronics totaled 2 million tons in 2005, and 3 million tons in 2006.

They also estimate that e-waste is growing at two to three times the rate of any other waste source. Discarded electronics represented 5 to 6 times as much weight as recycled electronics. The Consumer Electronics Association says that US households spend an average of $1,400 annually on an average of 24 electronic items, leading to speculations of millions of tons of valuable metals sitting in desk drawers. The US National Safety Council estimates that 75 percent of all personal computers ever sold are now gathering dust as surplus electronics. While some recycle, 7 percent of cellphone owners still throw away their old cellphones.

Surplus electronics have extremely high cost differentials. A single repairable laptop can be worth hundreds of dollars, while an imploded cathode ray tube (CRT) is extremely difficult and expensive to recycle. This has created a difficult free-market economy. Large quantities of used electronics are typically sold to countries with very high repair capability and high raw material demand, which can result in high accumulations of residue in poor areas without strong environmental laws. Trade in electronic waste is controlled by the Basel Convention. The Basel Convention Parties have considered the question of whether exports of hazardous used electronic equipment for repair or refurbishment are not considered as Basel Convention hazardous wastes unless they are discarded. The burden of proof that the items will be repaired and not discarded rest on the exporter, and any ultimate disposal of non-working components is subject to controls under that Convention. In the Guidance document produced on that subject, that question was left up to the Parties.

Like virgin material mining and extraction, recycling of materials from electronic scrap has raised concerns over toxicity and carcinogenicity of some of its substances and processes. Toxic substances in electronic waste may include lead, mercury, and cadmium. Carcinogenic substances in electronic waste may include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Capacitors, transformers, and wires insulated with or components coated with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), manufactured before 1977, often contain dangerous amounts of PCBs.