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       E-waste is the enormous environmental problem in today’s society because various technologies are made for marketing, using, and producing, but electronic materials have expiration. The using time of a PC monitor is six or seven years, and internal hardware like Central Processing Unit (CPU) could be used only four or five years (Slade, 2006, p. 1). With the short life of electronic components, electronic waste is increasing. The rise of e-waste is not only the short electronic life or technology moving, but the behavior of consumers that retire their products even the products are usable effect the increasing of electronic waste. In 2002, more than 130 million mobile phones, which were still working, were threw away in the United States, so this provides the shout life cycle of electronic products, and their life span still declining (Slade, 2006). Most usable products that are retried cannot be recycled is the significant problem for managing electronic waste. For example, only 15% of e-waste in the world can be fully recycled (Modak, 2011). Even though most of electronic goods are not recyclable, consumers still want to replace them with new models, and buying the second or third products are considered. Slade explains that people who do not have a cell phone are going to buy one, but people who are already have a cell phone want to buy a newer model or get a second or third. These electronic devices have chemical elements that can be found inside of the devices. For instance, the chemical elements are used in hardware such as circuit boards, chips, and batteries (Heacock, et al., 2016), and about 60 chemical elements including cadmium, mercury, copper, manganese, nickel, zinc, iron, and aluminum can be found in many complex electronics (Grant, et al., 2013). All of these are the rational to impact the global environment from e-waste that was “…estimated to be 41.8 million tons in 2014 and may increase to 65.4 million tons by 2017” (Breivik, Armitage, Wania, & Jones, 2014).

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Chayatorn  Supataragul

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CONSEQUENCES

EFFECT TO ENVIRONMENT

EFFECT TO HUMAN

    The pollution is increased by the mass of electronic equipment because plastic is the major material of electronic devices and packages, and plastic can provide toxic when it is burn. For example, the process that want to recover the valuable copper from wires often burn the plastic that cover the wires for taking the copper, so this method releases harmful “polyvinyl chloride, dioxins, furans, brominated flame retardants, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) into the environment” (Heacock, et al., 2016). The environment around the landfill that store e-waste can release hazardous toxic into the ground and the air, and most of the developing countries have low efficiency to manage electronic materials. For instance, e-waste is dumped in landfill with low efficiency in most of the developing countries (Kolias, Hahladakis, & Gidarakos, 2014).

The consequences of electronic waste can impact environment and human.

       The effects of e-waste do not impact only the environment, but electronic waste can affect human. E-waste can be impact people from many resources like water, air, soil dust, and food because chemical in the electronic devices can be spread to natural resources. The research that collect rice and dust samples from house close to e-waste landfill has intensity of lead, cadmium, and copper that are almost twice the maximum permissible concentrations (Zheng, et al., 2013). Moreover, e-waste can involve human diseases, and Grant et al. (2013) states that health consequences from e-waste could change thyroid function, altered cellular expression and function, adverse neonatal outcomes, cognitive and behavioral changes, and decreased lung function. Overall, e-waste is the problem of human and environment that we should consider protecting and recovering our world.

E-WASTE

MANAGING E-WASTE FOR BETTER ENVIRONMENT
 

© 2017 by Chayatorn Supataragul

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