Climate Change, Mixed Messaging & Superfreakonomics

A really important comment was brought up this week in my environmental epidemiology lecture on climate change. I wanted to speak to this point a bit more after coming across a series of writings about a recently published book called Superfreakonomics by Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

The comment in class was about the difficulty of sorting through the mixed messaging surrounding climate change, and the role that health promoters need to play in order to address this issue at the individual level. This was a really important point to bring up because it is difficult to know what our role as individuals is when we speak about climate change. This point is particularly important not only because lifestyle changes need to be made, but also because political will needs to be generated.

I came across a prime example of this mixed messaging after watching a CBC interview of Steve Levitt. One of the chapters in his new book is about climate change and why he thinks that the current climate change efforts are flawed. This peaked my interest, and so I tried to track down his chapter online. Instead I came across an interesting series of blog posts between the author and a climate change economist. Thankfully, the chapter doesn't refute the current scientific consensus about climate change, but rather argues that the "solution" isn't in changing human contributions to the problem (adaptation strategies). I don't fully understand what aerosol geo-engineering is, but the authors present this as a harmless and cheap quick fix for global warming. Skeptics have highlighted that the authors ignored readily available literature detailing the severe risks associated with aerosol geo-engineering and reasons why emission reduction is the dominant strategy chosen. Even though I have not read the chapter myself, I remain quite uncomfortable with the thought that if this book was even remotely as successful as the first Freakonomics, 4 million people could potentially be mislead by the message in this chapter.

The Difficulty of Finding a Reputable Recycling Company

I've come across dozens of documentaries and articles about recycling companies who claim to do their recycling locally, when in fact some of their items are shipped overseas. An exceptional video from CBS' program 60 Minutes looks at a small business in Colorado called Executive Recycling. This company has successfully spread the message to residents about the importance of recycling products locally, but they are caught on video shipping containers filled with cathode ray tubes (CRTs - from old tvs and computer monitors) to Hong Kong.

There is a particularly uncomfortable scene when they visit Guiyu, China (the worlds largest e-waste dumping ground), and the cameramen had to wrestle to keep their cameras once discovered by the owners of the recycling operation. It serves to emphasize the political nature of this issue. One thing I just couldn't understand at first was how these dumping grounds could be kept a "secret" for soo long. Slowly I'm learning that this is an issue of power, poverty and greed. Surprise, surprise... Jim Puckett, an environmental health and justice activist and co-founder of the Basel Action Network, is interviewed in the film. The reporter asked him why people continue to knowingly work in this hazardous industry. This is his response:

"Desperate people will do desperate things, but we should never put them in that situation. It's a hell of a choice between poverty and poison and we should never make people make that choice."

Here is the documentary for those of you that are interested:

What Do Jewelry and E-waste Have In Common?

This week in our environmental epidemiology class one of the main topics of discussion was lead. Our instructor brought up a very interesting source of exposure: lead jewelry. The discussion included a talk about how e-waste is contributing to this problem.

I came across two well-known stories from the United States that demonstrate this issue. In 2003, in Oregon, a 4 year old boy died after swallowing a piece of jewelry bought from a vending machine. Later it was discovered that the toy medallion consisted of 38.8% lead [CDC report, 2004]. More recently, in 2006, another child died from acute lead poisoning in Minnesota, after ingesting a metallic heart-shaped charm. The charm was a gift with purchase from Reebok, which was almost entirely made from lead (99.1%) [CDC report, 2006]. In both instances, the product responsible was imported from abroad. The Consumer Product Safety division of Health Canada, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the US, are responsible for ensuring that tragedies like this never happen but evidently things are missed.

How this relates to e-waste:
In my literature search I came across a paper by Weidenhamer and Clement looking at e-waste as a possible source for lead contaminated jewelry. These researchers took note of the movement of e-waste from North American to Asian countries, and hypothesized that recycled circuit boards were being used to produce these heavily leaded jewelry items sold in the US. They took sixteen jewelry items that were previously known to contain 20-80% lead, and analyzed the items for lead, copper and tin content. In addition, lead-tin solders (what's used to join two pieces of metal together) from workshops in China were looked at, which are typically 60% tin/40% lead or 63% tin/37% lead by weight [Geibig & Socolof, 2005]. The main source of lead in electronic goods is in these lead-tin solders and also leaded glass of cathode ray tubes (the big tubes found in older computer screens and tvs) [Ernst et al., 2003].

Eight samples of the solder used in workshops in Taizhou, China (a major e-waste recycling area) were retrieved for a comparison to the contents found in the jewelry samples. After analyzing and comparing the lead-tin content in all 16 jewelry samples, 6 samples contained suspicious amounts of tin, and 5 of these samples contained suspicious amounts of copper. Because copper is normally only a trace component of electronic solders, the heating of circuit boards in molten solder, as observed in e-waste recycling workshops, has the potential to transfer a significant amount of copper into the solder. This supports their hypothesis that at least some of the leaded jewelry may be manufactured from scrap solder materials.

This study did not look at heavily leaded jewelry (>80% lead by weight). So the question of where these highly leaded jewelry items are coming from still remains a mystery.

Here are some things to look out for when purchasing jewelry, as recommended by Health Canada:

• Pure lead is heavy, soft, dark bluish grey in colour and has a dull surface.
• Jewelry with a very high lead content tends to be: thicker and leave a greyish mark when wiped on a white piece of paper.
  
• Check with the retailer before buying an item. If they cannot provide assurance, don't buy it.
• For Children: don't allow them to wear adult jewelry, suck or chew on jewelry, and if items are swallowed contact emergency medical services if you think the item may have contained lead.
  

When E-waste Becomes A Security Issue

According to the 2009 Converge IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) Trends Report, "almost twice as many American IT managers said data security is more important to their organizations than being green when it comes to IT asset disposal." Although the report notes that there is better awareness of e-waste policies and procedures, I found their motivation for proper e-waste disposal to be quite interesting.

To elaborate on the security issue, there has been increasing concerns about the mishandling of personal information left on old electronics. In the introductory film previously posted, e-waste is presented as an explanation for why Ghana is the world's leading country for cyber crime. Ghana, being one of the known international e-waste dumping grounds, has been identified as a central region where electronic recyclers extract personal information such as credit card and bank account numbers to commit fraudulent acts.

At the end of the day it seems that IT managers could ensure both better security and greener disposal by utilizing local, reputable disposal companies. As long as both ends are achieved, I guess this is progress??