'60 Minutes': Toxins inside your computer Video
'60 Minutes': Toxins inside your computer Video Transcript
>> You know, my computer seems like such a smooth clean machine, what's inside it?
>> Lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides. All of these materials have known toxicological effects that range from brain damage to kidney disease to mutations, cancers. The problem with e-waste is that it is the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide.
>> What do you mean "fastest-growing?"
>> Well, we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States.
>> A 130,000 everyday?
>> Correct.
>> In the United States alone?
>> Correct. And we throw out over a 100 million cell phones every year.
>> When you did the laboratory analysis of the samples that you took from Guiyu, were you surprised at the levels that you found?
>> Yes, yes we were very surprised because they are extremely high and even higher than the other areas where open burning takes place. So, especially I was very surprised at the lead levels.
>> What did you find in the lead levels in the dust samples?
>> We used a control site, which was about 6 kilometers away from Guiyu and we found levels which were about 320 times higher. I mean in lead.
>> Six kilometers away.
>> Uh-hum.
>> And Guiyu was 300 and...
>> It's 330 times.
>> Three hundred and thirty times higher.
>> Yeah, over 300 times higher.
>> I mean remember, you know as specie, Homo sapiens are poor. Half the world lives at less than 2 dollars a day. Two billion people live on less than a dollar a day. We're sending electronic wastes that are very toxic that require extraordinary skills to disassemble in the most precise combusting conditions and technological conditions to people who are making virtually nothing, without any safety equipment, without the proper equipment, without regulatory oversights and we are exposing them to poisons. We are poisoning these people, we are poisoning these children. We are poisoning their water supplies. We are poisoning their soil. ^M00:02:14
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