Gadget recycling may be poisoning China's children

(NS) -- Think about this next time you upgrade your PC: toxic metals from old electronic goods are finding their way into school grounds in China.

Seventy per cent of the world's discarded phones and computers are exported to China. Most are processed in family-run workshops, where the circuit boards are ripped out of old equipment and heated over open fires. This melts the solder, allowing individual components to be removed and resold. The bare circuit boards are then burned.

But as Ming Wong of Hong Kong Baptist University points out, circuit boards contain a lot of heavy metals. Burning them releases fumes containing metals such as lead and copper, which pose a danger to people's health. Lead damages the central nervous system and lungs if inhaled, for example. full story