Children and Digital Dumpsites: WHO

In News

Recently, a World Health Organisation (WHO) report has stated that over 18 million kids at e-waste dumpsites face the threat of health hazards.

About the Report

• The report, titled Children and Digital Dumpsites: e-waste exposure and child health was published in June 2021.
• It underlined the risk children faced while working in the informal processing of discarded electronic devices or e-waste.
• It also summarized the latest scientific knowledge on the links between informal e-waste recycling activities and health outcomes in children.

Major Findings

• Threats to Children and Women: As young as 5 years old children, total amounting to 18 million children and 12.9 million women, including pregnant women, work at these dumpsites every year posing threat to themselves of the effect of the hazardous waste.
• Health Hazards: The report stressed that children working at these ‘digital dumpsites’ are more prone to improper lung function, deoxyribonucleic acid damage and increased risk of chronic diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease.
• Indiscriminate Dumping: Every year, the e-waste from high-income countries is dumped in the middle or low-income countries for processing; the latter do not even have proper safeguarding regulation. This makes the process even more dangerous.
• Increasing Awareness: The report is intended to increase awareness and knowledge among health professionals of the dangers that e-waste recycling poses to the health of future generations and is a call to action to reduce children’s exposure to harmful e-waste activities.
• Rising e-Waste: The volume of e-waste generated is surging rapidly across the globe. 
  • It has grown 21 per cent since 2014 and is set to keep expanding.
  • About 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste was generated in 2019, according to the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership. It is expected to reach 74.7 million tonnes by 2030, while global employment in the waste sector is projected to soar by some 70 per cent, or another 45 million jobs, many of them in e-waste processing.
  • Only 17.4 per cent of this e-waste was processed in formal recycling facilities. 

Impacts on Children and Women

• Prenatal and childhood exposures to e-waste toxicants are associated with: 
  • impaired neurological and behavioural development.
  • negative birth outcomes.
  • lung function and respiratory effects (including cough, wheeze and asthma).
  • impaired thyroid function.
  • changes in cardiovascular system function.
  • DNA damage.
  • immune system impacts (including greater vulnerability to infection, reduced immunization response and higher rates of allergies and autoimmune diseases).
  • increased risks of chronic disease later in life (including cancer and cardiovascular disease).
• Expectant mothers exposed to these toxicants face higher risks of negative birth outcomes, such as: 
  • Stillbirth.
  • Premature births.
  • Low birth weight and length.
  • Impaired neurodevelopment in their babies.
• Post Natal Hazards
  • Lead: Exerts toxic effects on various systems in the body such as the central (organic affective syndrome) and peripheral nervous systems (motor neuropathy), the hematopoietic system (anaemia), the genitourinary system (capable of causing damage to all parts of nephron) and the reproductive systems (male and female).
  • Mercury: Causes damage to the genitourinary system (tubular dysfunction), the central and peripheral nervous systems as well as the foetus. When inorganic mercury spreads out in the water, it is transformed into methylated mercury, which bio-accumulates in living organisms and concentrates through the food chain, particularly by fish.
  • Cadmium: Is a potentially long-term cumulative poison. Toxic cadmium compounds accumulate in the human body, especially in the kidneys. There is evidence of the role of cadmium and beryllium in carcinogenicity.
  • Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH): Affects lung, skin and bladder. Epidemiological studies in the past on occupational exposure to PAH provide sufficient evidence of the role of PAH in the induction of skin and lung cancers.

(Image Courtesy: WHO Report)

Challenges

• Devastating Health Effects on Children: Children are less likely to metabolise or eradicate pollutants absorbed and are more prone to improper lung function and at the risk of chronic diseases. E.g. A child who eats just one chicken egg from Agbogbloshie, a waste site in Ghana, will absorb 220 times the European Food Safety Authority daily limit for intake of chlorinated dioxins.
• Increase in IMR and MMR: Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) are bound to increase when pregnant women and children are exposed to such an environment.
• Unorganized Waste Management Systems: e-waste is often discarded alongside other solid waste, ending up in landfills. Such discarded e-waste can leach toxicants into aquifers and drinking water supplies.
• Impacts Across Neighborhoods: The hazardous impact of working at such sites is also experienced by families and communities that reside in the vicinity of these e-waste dumpsites. 
• Pollution from Burning: The burning of e-waste materials to extract metals also makes e-waste sites frequent sources of intense air pollution contaminated by toxic mixes of harmful particles, including heavy metals and industrial chemicals and compounds.
• Informal Processing: Illegal processing by informal workers is a major threat. Informal methods of removing materials from e-waste have been linked to a range of health effects, especially in children
• Rise in Use of Electronic Appliances: E-Waste is likely to increase in the coming years because of the rise in the number of smartphones and computers.
• Burden on Health Sector: Its impacts will lay a heavy burden on the health sector in the years to come. Most of the countries facing this issue are low and middle income. This enhanced health impact will take toll on finance of the country
• Babies are More Prone: Babies face additional risks from the body burdens of their mothers through breast milk and transplacental exposure and from direct contact with toxic chemicals from frequent hand-to-mouth behaviour.

Recommendations/Suggestions

• Ensure health and safety of e-waste workers, children, their families and communities with systems that train and protect workers, that monitor exposures and health outcomes, and that make protecting children the highest policy priority.
• Enforce sound environmental health practices for disposal, recapture and reuse of materials.
• Shift towards a circular economy by manufacturing more-durable electronics and electrical equipment, using safer and less-toxic materials, and encouraging sustainable consumption to reduce e-waste, as opposed to the current trend of increasing turnover.
• Manage e-waste by prioritizing health and environmental protection throughout the life cycle, with reference to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, appropriate regional conventions and the Sustainable Development Goals on waste management.
• Eliminate child labour and incorporate adult e-wastes workers into the formal economy with decent conditions across the value chain of collection, processing/recycling and resale by incorporating informal workers in the formal economy. 
• Calls for binding action by exporters, importers and governments to ensure environmentally sound disposal of e-waste and the health and safety of workers and communities.
• The health sector is also being asked to reduce adverse effects from e-waste by building up capacity to diagnose, monitor and prevent toxic exposure, and to advocate for better data and health research on risks faced by informal e-waste workers.
• The health sector can play a role by providing leadership and advocacy, conducting research, influencing policy-makers, engaging communities, and reaching out to other sectors to demand that health concerns be made central to e-waste policies.

• Better recycling presents opportunities for increased income and decreased demand for new materials. 

• Regional and national capacity-building for health-based assessment of e-waste policies and regulations, particularly regarding children’s health;
• Raising awareness of e-waste health risks and encouraging responsible recycling with policy-makers, communities, waste workers and their families; 
• Building health sector capacity to diagnose, monitor and prevent toxic exposures within primary health care services for children and women;
• Pursuing better data and further research about women and children involved with e-waste, as well as studies about implementation and effectiveness of protective measures.

Source: DTE