Agbogbloshie: The World's Largest e-Waste Dump 117
kc123 writes "Photographer Kevin McElvaney documents Agbogbloshie, a former wetland in Accra, Ghana, which is home to the world's largest e-waste dumping site. Boys and young men smash devices to get to the metals, especially copper. Injuries, such as burns, untreated wounds, eye damage, lung and back problems, go hand in hand with chronic nausea, anorexia, debilitating headaches and respiratory problems. Most workers die from cancer in their 20s."
Re:Something I threw away may have killed someone (Score:2, Interesting)
If you throw away e-waste, it ends up in a domestic landfill at the worst, recycled in a domestic processing plant at best.
http://www.bloombergview.com/a... [bloombergview.com]
It's actually the used computer equipment that gets sold to the third world that ends up in places like Africa. They do actually end up using most of it, until it either breaks or they find something better, and NOBODY buys their used stuff, so THAT stuff ends up in these photographs you are seeing here. The only way WE can prevent that is to completely deny the third world access to technology, which I don't think is an ideal situation.
But basically this is unwarranted environmental alarmism, exactly like the imagined (and never realized, and never will be realized) threat of so called overflowing landfills:
http://www.slate.com/articles/... [slate.com]