- Guiyu
Guiyu (Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: Gùiyǔ) is the name of a town in southern
China . coord|23|19|11.81|N|116|20|59.62|E|Location
Guiyu Town is located within the southwest part of the coastal
Shantou prefecture-level city, in easternGuangdong province,People's Republic of China . The Lianjiang river runs through the town.Transport
Its inconvenience in transportation makes it unknown to most
Shantou locals.Industry
Guiyu is the largest
electronic waste (e-waste) site on earth, [The Seattle Times (2006 ). " [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002920133_ewaste09.html E-waste dump of the world] "RetrievedMarch 9 ,2007 ] and was first documented fully in December 2001 by theBasel Action Network in their report and documentary film entitled "Exporting Harm". [ [Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia] (2002) [http://www.ban.org/E-waste/technotrashfinalcomp.pdf] ] The health and environmental issues exposed by this report and subsequent scientific studies [http://www.ban.org/main/library.html#scientific] have greatly concerned international organisations such as the Basel Action Network and laterGreenpeace and theUnited Nations Environment Programme and theBasel Convention .China is believed to be the predominant recipient of the world's e-waste, with a roughly estimated one million tons of electronic waste being shipped there per year, mostly from the
United States ,Canada ,Japan , andSouth Korea . It arrives viacontainer ship s through the ports ofHong Kong orPearl River Delta ports such asNanhai . From there it is trucked to informal e-waste processing centers. Guiyu receives more e-waste than any other area in China.Guiyu began receiving e-waste around 1995, slowly attracting rural peasants from the countryside to work in processing it. There are an estimated 150,000 e-waste workers in Guiyu. [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071119/ap_on_re_as/china_toxic_electronics China not fighting off e-waste nightmare] , By Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press Writer, 11/18/07. ] The average worker makes just US$1.50 a day, and the average workday is sixteen hours. This $1.50 is made by recovering the valuable metals and parts that are within the discarded electronics.
A great many of the primitive
recycling operations in Guiyu are toxic and dangerous to workers' health. These include operations by the many thousands of workers who cookcircuit board s to remove chips andsolder s, burn wires and other plastics to liberate metals such ascopper , use highly corrosive and dangerous acid baths along the riverbanks to extractgold from themicrochip s, and sweep printertoner out of cartridges. Children are exposed to thedioxin -laden ash. The soil has been saturated withlead ,chromium ,tin , and otherheavy metals . The water is undrinkable and must be trucked in from elsewhere. Lead levels in the river sediment are double European safety levels, according to the Basel Action Network. [http://www.ban.org/E-waste/technotrashfinalcomp.pdf] Piles of ash and plastic waste sit on the ground beside rice paddies anddike s holding in the Lianjiang river.In 2007, conditions in Guiyu have changed little despite the efforts of the central government to crack down and enforce the long-standing e-waste import ban.Fact|date=January 2008 Visitors to the city still experience headaches and strange metallic tastes in the mouth.Fact|date=March 2008 Recent studies have revealed some of the highest levels of dioxin ever recorded.Fact|date=March 2008
References
External links
* Viceland: [http://www.viceland.com/int/v14n9/htdocs/ctrl.php CTRL+ALT+LANDFILL – China's Secret Computer Graveyard]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXzsqTFwV3Q Video about e-waste in Guiyu]
* [http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en/photosvideos/slideshows/electronics-dirty-secret?page=1 Series of pictures of e-waste in Guiyu -- Greenpeace China]
* [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312163,00.html FOXNews.com - Chinese Recyclers Live in Toxic E-Waste Dump - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News]
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