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Social and Environmental Injustice Experienced by Female Migrant Workers in China
Published in Esra Ozdenerol, Gender Inequalities, 2021
This chapter shall focus on examining the environmentally vulnerable status of female migrant workers in China, using Guiyu town at Guangdong Province as an example. Guiyu town started importing electronic and electric waste (e-waste) from foreign countries and participating in the recycling business since the early 1990s. Under the development of global capitalism and the domestic transformation from a socialist to post-socialist/neoliberal society, Guiyu town has become one of the biggest e-waste recycling sites in China. However, the operating model of family workshop and the rough and brutal ways of dismantling e-waste that leave both nature and people directly exposed to environmental hazards has also brought with it serious environmental problems, including soil, water, and air pollution. This increase in serious pollution has also led to rigorous environmental governance from both central and local governments in recent years. A lot of (illegal) e-waste workshops have been banned, and local environmental supervision has become more and more strict.
Sociological and Psychological Considerations to Climate Change
Published in Julie Kerr, Introduction to Energy and Climate, 2017
Guiyu, China, is the location of what may be the largest electronic waste (e-waste) site on earth. Guiyu’s soil, water, air and people are paying a high price, however. In small workshops and in the open countryside, thousands of men, women, and children are dissembling the toys and equipment of the developed world—such as old computers, monitors, printers, DVD players, photocopying machines, telephones and phone chargers, music speakers, car batteries, and microwave ovens. They use primitive methods that leave them exposed to environmental hazards. For example, circuit boards and other computer parts are burned, individually, over open fires to extract metals. This smelting process releases large amounts of toxic gases into the air.
Global Issues and Aspects of the Disposal and Recycling of Electronics
Published in Thomas P. Fuller, Global Occupational Safety and Health Management Handbook, 2019
In the town of Guiyu, China, approximately 100,000 people are employed in small informal e-waste operations that preform hazardous recycling practices such as toner sweeping, open burning, cathode ray tube (CRT) cracking and dumping, and circuit board recycling. The wastes recycled at these small operations are received from Japan, South Korean, and Europe, but mainly from North America (Puckett, 2002). Other methods of handling e-waste in China include open burning to “cook” off plastics to retrieve metals, de-soldering printed circuit boards to release computer chips, acid baths, open dumping of recycling byproducts, and physical dismantling by force (Jan, 2013).
Impacts of the influx of e-waste into Hong Kong after China has tightened up entry regulations
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2020
Siyi Lin, Yu Bon Man, Ka Lai Chow, Chunmiao Zheng, Ming Hung Wong
From the 1970s to the 2000s, e-waste recycling businessmen from Guiyu (a town located in southern Guangdong Province which was notorious for heavy pollution by e-waste recycling activities) initiated the import of metallic parts in the form of mixed e-waste types (originating from developed countries) in one container from Vietnam or Taiwan, entering mainland China via HK (Shinkuma & Huong, 2009). This mixed type of e-waste flow continued unofficially before 2010 (Shinkuma & Huong, 2009), even though the Basel Convention decreed the importation of mixed metal for recycling purposes in China to be illegal, due to the lack of control of international trade in secondhand e-waste (Terazono et al., 2006).
Comparing storage battery and solar cell in assisting Eucalyptus Globulus to phytoremediate soil polluted by Cd, Pb, and Cu
Published in International Journal of Phytoremediation, 2019
Jie Luo, Mei He, Jian Wu, Siyuan Huo, Xiaowen Sophie Gu
Soil is regarded as a crucial pollutant sink due to its natural purification ability, but it turns into an important source for various toxins when their amount exceeds its buffering capacity (Kim et al. 2016; Taiwo et al. 2016). Guiyu town, a notorious e-waste recycling center in China has been involved in this industry for 30 years. Tens of square kilometers of soil surrounding it was polluted to different degrees (Leung et al. 2006; Zheng et al. 2013) and relatively high contents of metals were detected in indigenous rice, vegetables and umbilical cord blood of neonates (Li et al. 2008; Guo et al. 2009; Luo et al. 2016). Therefore, it is urgent to remediate the local soil impacted by e-waste recycling.
Heavy metal contamination and bioaccumulation in Khorat snail-eating turtles (Malayemys khoratensis) from an e-waste recycling activity site in Thailand
Published in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, 2022
Monthakarn Mokarat, Apichaya Ruangsakunporn, Thotsapol Chaianunporn, Khemika Lomthaisong, Mark Gregory Robson, Sarun Keithmaleesatti
The production of global electronic equipment (e-waste) reached approximately 50 million tons in 2020, with an annual growth between 4% and 5% (Baldé et al. 2017), as a result of the economic expansion of electrical and electronic products worldwide. Therefore, e-waste management has become a major problem for the environment and ecosystems, especially in developing countries, which have become the largest recipients and dumping sites for e-wastes from developed countries (Song et al. 2012). E-wastes create problems not only because of their quantities but also because of their toxic components, such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and heavy metals, such as lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and mercury (Hg) (Song and Li 2014). The e-waste recycling industry has several significant issues, one of which is unregulated e-wastes, which can cause severe pollution. Informal e-waste processing generally recovers precious metals using basic processes such as burning, melting, and utilizing acid chemical baths. These processes can result in causing severe pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as the atmosphere, by highly toxic heavy metals (Deng et al. 2007; Gullett et al. 2007; Wei and Liu 2012). It is well known that heavy metals persist in the environment and ecosystems, and at low concentrations, they can potentially cause toxicity through bioaccumulation in plants, wildlife, and humans. E-wastes have environmental impacts because they release toxic substances into aquatic ecosystems, where they accumulate in the water, sediments, and aquatic organisms and are then transmitted to humans via the food chain (Rubalingeswari et al. 2021). Across the world, some well-known e-waste dumping sites are in China (Mujezinovic 2019), Ghana (Srigboh et al. 2016; Amankwaa et al. 2017) and India (Singh et al. 2018). Referring to a literature review focused on the environmental effects of heavy metals from e-waste recycling sites in China, including Guiyu, Jiangsu and Shanghai, heavy metal pollutants from e-wastes spread from recycling facilities to the surrounding environment (air, dust, soil, sediment, and organisms). These activities can cause severe pollution by highly toxic heavy metals (such as Cu, Cd, Pb and Hg) in ecosystems and are even found in organisms (Deng et al. 2006, 2007; Chen et al. 2010; Tang et al. 2010; Bi et al. 2011; Luo et al. 2011; Zhang et al. 2011; Fang et al. 2013; Fu et al. 2013). It also appears that e-waste exposure has caused problems for neonates in e-waste recycling sites as a result of their mothers’ exposures. Heavy metals from e-waste sites have impacts on the environment as well as on-site workers’ health, causing growth issues, cellular expression abnormalities and DNA damage (Chen et al. 2010; Zhang et al. 2011; Alabi et al. 2012; Xue et al. 2012). For human health, chronic exposure to heavy metals at concentrations much lower than those responsible for acute toxicity affects a variety of biological systems (Fox 2001). Furthermore, China found that children living in Guiyu (an e-waste recycling town) had significantly higher levels of Pb in their blood. Thus, people near e-waste sites may be at risk for exposure to several toxic heavy metals (Huo et al. 2007).