Manufacturers must take responsibility for reducing health risks associated with toxic materials.

Physicians for Social Responsibility is an organization concerned with the health of citizens and workers worldwide. We have serious concerns about the potential toxicity of multiple computer components and other electronic products if they are allowed into our landfills and incinerators.

In the next 5 years an estimated 500 million computers will come off people’s shelves for disposal in the U.S. alone.

It would be very easy to slip old computers into the hopper at my local landfill. Computer components are already arriving at one incinerator in Maine. The attendants try to remove them as they appear because they don’t burn well, but some inevitably slip through.

We need to mandate industry-managed collection and recycling programs for these products as they become obsolete.

It’s really amazing how much toxic material is contained in the computers we use every day. There are separate whole chapters in my textbooks of industrial and environmental medicine on the adverse effects of exposure to toxic metals such as lead, mercury, beryllium, cadmium and chromium, and dioxins from chlorine-based plastics. Each one of these compounds has many different known and suspected health problems.

Lead and mercury can cause widespread environmental and health effects, and affect production workers’ health.

There are a billion pounds of lead in computers waiting to be junked in the next 5 years. Lead causes anemia and widespread neurological dysfunction, such as developmental delays, behavioral problems, hyperactivity, lowered intelligence and decreased growth in children.

Although the removal of lead from paint and gasoline is a great environmental success story of our time, 890,000 U.S. children in 1997 still had lead levels thought to interfere with school performance.

In adults it causes headaches, sleep disorders, memory deficits and personality changes. And lead still falls from the sky onto our soils and waters.

Small amounts of mercury can damage a brain forming and starting to grow in the womb. It may affect children’s behavior and how they learn, think and problem solve in later life.

About 20 percent of Maine women of childbearing age have been exposed to mercury. The very survival of Maine’s loon population is already threatened by abnormal nesting and foraging behaviors caused by this element.

Dioxins and related “furan” compounds come from burning plastics containing chlorine and other “halogens,” such as bromine. These highly toxic compounds can cause endocrine hormone disruption and certain forms of cancer. Some studies have shown birth defects and reproductive problems.

Most of the knowledge on beryllium, cadmium and chromium comes from the study of adverse effects on workers.

U.S. laws and constant medical surveillance have reduced, but by no means eliminated, illnesses related to them. Workers in foreign countries, where most of these materials are sent for disposal or recycling, have nowhere near the level of physical and legal protection that we have. Computer parts often end up in smoldering open landfills and are even junked in open waters where people live and draw their drinking water.

We have no significant experience to date with the effects of these materials as they start to leach from our landfills and blow over us in particulates from incinerators upwind. This is a new experiment that should not be done on people.

Beryllium causes severe acute bronchitis and a chronic systemic disease, or “berylliosis,” that can be fatal. It produces cough, fatigue, shortness of breath, and liver and heart involvement that can occur in sensitive individuals, even secretaries and security personnel far from the production floor. It can start years after exposure ceases. It is also carcinogenic. Small amounts of beryllium in dental prostheses can leak out and cause oral lesions in sensitized individuals.

Cadmium interferes with kidney function and bone metabolism, and is also a carcinogen. Hexavalent chromium can cause skin and mucous membrane damage and chronic bronchitis. It can increase the incidence of lung cancer in workers by up to 16 times.

We’ve really got to be proactive on this matter and get manufacturers to take responsibility for these health risks rather than expect us to clean up their mess. Or better still, get them to use chlorine free plastics and the new “LED,” or light emitting diode, technology to avoid use of these toxic materials wherever possible.

Once they are used widely, these new technologies will rapidly become cost effective.

Dr. Paul A. Liebow of Bucksport is a member of Maine Physicians for Social Responsibility.

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