Evaluating Risks of Acquired Clinical Vulnerability Among Subjects Exposed to E-Waste - Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology - page 2

that predispose exposed subjects to disease. ACV comprises a complex biological
process that is manifested by exposure to toxicants, generally over the course of many
years, and results from subtle changes that occur at the cellular and molecular level.
In this paper, we review the available literature on health-hazard threats posed by
the handling of electronic waste (E-waste), predominantly in third-world countries,
and evaluate the resulting exposures in the context of ACV.

2 Electronic Waste

E-waste comprises a multitude of electronic components of virtually any electronic
device that has become unusable (Tables 1 and 2 ). Most E-waste results from the
fact that electronic devices age rapidly (technologically), are relatively inexpensive,
and are replaced by newer and usually more powerful devices that serve the same
function. In India, an enormous magnitude of E-waste generation is expected in the
next decade and beyond. This increase will result from plans to escalate India's
economic growth to achieve a target of 11% share of the global consumer electronic
market by 2015. According to conservative estimates, there will be 600 million
mobile subscribers, 60 million Personal Computers (PCs), and 143 million TVs in
India by the year 2012. Most of the electronic gadgets owned by the population
contain economically valuable materials. Nevertheless, more disconcerting is the
fact that most, if not all, of these items will contain materials that are unequivocally
dangerous to the environment and/or to human health, if processed for recycling,
disposed of in landills, or are incinerated. It is rather certain that some proportion

Table 1 Material composition (% by weight) of E-waste from selected appliances

Information and communi-
cation technology (ICT)
and consumer electronics

Large household
appliances

Small household
appliances Material Lamps

Ferrous metal 43 29 36 -

Aluminum 14 9.3 5 14

Copper 12 17 4 0.22

Lead 1.6 0.57 0.29 -

Cadmium 0.0014 0.0068 0.018 -

Mercury 0.000038 0.000018 0.00007 0.02

Gold 0.00000067 0.00000061 0.00024 -

Silver 0.0000077 0.000007 0.0012 -

Palladium 0.0000003 0.00000024 0.00006 -

Indium - - 0.0005 0.0005

Brominated plastics 0.29 0.75 18 3.7

Plastics 19 37 12 -

Lead glass - - 19 -

Glass 0.017 0.16 0.3 77

Other 10 6.9 5.7 5

Source : E-waste guide information ( 2010 )