Word: guiyu
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...bottom of America's electronics wastebasket lies the township of Guiyu. The cluster of villages in southern China's Guangdong province is a dumping ground for mountains of scrapped computers and high-tech appliances, the detritus of a digital revolution going on an ocean away. Blue Dongfeng trucks with heaving loads of broken hardware dominate the roads and kick dust into the faces of the bicycle-cart drivers, their own cargo of tangled wires swaying with each turn. Atop a riverbank junk heap near the Meizhou bridge, a piece of cardboard flutters in the breeze?printed on it are keystroke...
...other electrical conductors are used in microchips and motherboards; lead is in solder and computer monitors; copper can be mined from wires and internal circuitry. But in China, which according to ban receives nearly 90% of America's castoffs, recycling is a crude process carried out in places like Guiyu by tens of thousands of peasants equipped with the most rudimentary of tools. Components must be laboriously broken apart by hand. Some are dipped in acid baths to leach out precious metals, while the plastic covering on wiring is sometimes burned away to free the copper underneath...
...work is menial, dangerous, and illegal. Often it results in the release of highly toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil. Along the waterways of Guiyu, computer monitors are smashed with hammers, exposing workers to toxic phosphor dust. Lead and barium from the crushed components seep into the riverbank. Toner cartridges are cracked open for their carbon-black dust. Used in industrial processing, the material "is a great seller," says one worker, "more than 10 per cartridge." But its effects when inhaled are unknown...