The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the health of children, adolescents and expectant mothers worldwide is at risk from the illegal processing of old electrical or electronic devices.
WHO raised the alert on Tuesday in a landmark new report on the toxic threat, entitled: “Children and Digital Dumpsites’’.
In a statement coinciding with the launch, WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, warned that the health threat was growing, in line with the “mounting tsunami of e-waste’”.
“In the same way the world has rallied to protect the seas and their ecosystems from plastic and microplastic pollution, we need to rally to protect our most valuable resource – the health of our children – from the growing threat of e-waste,” he added.
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Discarded electronic devices or e-waste has become the fastest growing domestic waste category in the world, according to the UN health agency.
The Global E-waste Statistics Partnership (GESP) said that of the 53.6 million tonnes produced worldwide in 2019, only 17.4 per cent was recorded as collected and appropriately recycled.
While the fate of the remaining e-waste is unknown, it is unlikely to have been managed and recycled in an environmentally-sound manner.
While some e-waste ends up in landfills, significant amounts are often illegally shipped to low and middle-income countries where informal workers, including children and adolescents, pick through, dismantle, or use acid baths to extract valuable metals and materials from the discarded items.
WHO said that an estimated 12.9 million women who work in the informal waste sector were potentially exposing themselves and their unborn children to toxic residue.
According to WHO lead author, Marie-Noel Drisse, improper e-waste management is a rising issue that many countries do not recognise yet as a health problem.
Drisse warned that if action is not taken now, “its impacts will have a devastating health effect on children and lay a heavy burden on the health sector in the years to come”. (NAN)