Is E-Waste Led Pandemic The Next Threat To Humanity?

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A recent WHO warning states that there is an alarming rise in toxicity levels due to irresponsible e-waste disposal. It is already affecting health of millions of children. Recently, a case was reported of toxic food poisoning that was a result of e-waste contamination having got transferred to food items in Ghana. 

In a ground breaking news report, Children and Digital Dumpsites, the WHO has explicitly outlined the irresponsible disposal of electronic waste. “With mounting volumes of production and disposal, the world faces what one recent international forum described as a mounting “tsunami of e-waste”, putting lives and health at risk.” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “In the same way the world has rallied to protect the seas and their ecosystems from plastic and microplastic pollution, we need to rally to protect our most valuable resource –the health of our children – from the growing threat of e-waste.”

As many as 12.9 million women are working in the informal waste sector, which potentially exposes them to toxic e-waste and puts them and their unborn children at risk.  

Due to the economic hardships facing the African countries, children are forced to retrieve copper or other heavy metals from disposed e-waste, exposing themselves to thousands of other harmful elements that are unhealthy for human consumption.

The report outlines how exposure to such harmful elements for pregnant women can lead to permanent deformity amongst unborn children, leave alone neurological damage too. The next pandemic facing us may just be (again) manmade. We have been warned before hand, and will have to act upon it in time. 

According to the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership (GESP), e-waste garbage had grown by 21% in the five years up to 2019, when 53.6 million metric tonnes of e-waste was generated. Surprisingly, last year’s e-waste weighed as much as 350 cruise ships placed end to end to form a line 125km long. 

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