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US regulators ignoring electronic waste

US regulators are doing little to ensure that neither people nor the environment are harmed by potentially dangerous obsolete cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) and other electronic devices sent abroad for reuse or disposal, congressional investigators said.

So lax is the oversight of the exports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires notification and approval only for shipments of CRTs, such as televisions and old-style computers, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report.

Even that, the report said, has led to only one administrative penalty, invoked against a shipper identified by the GAO by recruiting shippers for what would have been illegal shipments.

Circuit boards also are covered by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, but in a different category.

The report was requested by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and was released on Wednesday at a subcommittee hearing. The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress.

The EPA responded that the report was misleading and overstated the problem.

“EPA is concerned that readers of the report may be misled to believe that a very large percentage of US electronic waste is currently being reused and recycled globally,” the EPA response said.

Americans are increasingly turning to environmentally conscious “reduce, reuse, recycle” practices for ridding themselves of unused items, the report said. That could justify exportation of obsolete electronics, it said.

“Since one person’s trash is often another person’s treasure, a thriving international trade has emerged in used electronics, largely from industrialized to developing countries,” the report said.

“As the export of used electronics has continued, however, concerns have mounted that not all recycling is conducted responsibly, particularly in developing countries, and that some US recyclers and exporters may be at fault.”

It noted that Americans threw away 330 million electronic devices in 2006, of which 15 percent to 20 percent were exported, EPA estimates showed. That means 50 million to 66 million devices went abroad.

“As alleged in recent years by environmental groups, imported used electronics that cannot be repaired are often recycled in developing countries by crude and inefficient means and with virtually no human health or environmental protection,” the report said, quoting one group that most of those came from North America.

At the other end, the report said, are China, India, Vietnam, Cambodia and other Asian countries as well as some in West Africa that import primarily for reuse instead of cannibalizing parts or recycling.

“Other investigations have corroborated disassembly practices in some Asian countries involving the open-air burning of wire to recover copper and open acid baths for separating metals,” it said. “These practices expose people to lead and other hazardous materials.”

The report blamed the trade on ineffective regulation in the US.

“US law allows the unfettered export of nearly all types of used electronic devices. US hazardous waste regulations do not consider most used electronic products ... as hazardous, even though they can be mismanaged overseas and can cause serious health and environmental problems,” it said.

The problem is not universal in Asia, however. Since the ban on CRTs took effect in January last year, the report said, Hong Kong inspectors have intercepted and returned to the US 26 shipping containers of used CRT monitors. It was not because of the US action; authorities in Hong Kong said they violated Hong Kong’s hazardous waste import laws.
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