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The growing amount of electronic waste or e-waste across the world may have prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to raise the alarm on the development as well as underline the effect of e-waste on the health of millions of children. In its first report on e-waste, titled, “Children and Digital Dumpsites,” the WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned: “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.”
The WHO DG also argued: “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.” The report also noted that a significant proportion of e-waste produced every year is exported from high-income countries to low-and middle-income countries, where there may be a lack of regulation, or where regulation does exist, it may be poorly enforced.
According to Marie-Noel Brune Drisse, the lead WHO author on the report, “a child who eats just one chicken egg from Agbogbloshie, a waste site in Ghana, will absorb 220 times the European Food Safety Authority daily limit for intake of chlorinated dioxins.”
The WHO alarm over the soaring volumes of e-waste is timely and must compel all governments, especially those in developing countries to initiate plans to check the menace that has serious implication for children’s health. In 2019, about 53.6 metric tons of e-waste was produced globally. It has been projected to increase to 4.7 metric tons by 2030. Asia is the largest contributor of e-waste at 24.9 metric tons. It is followed by the Americas at 13.1 metric tons, Europe (12 metric tons), Africa and Oceania at 2.9 metric tons and 0.7 metric tons, respectively.
In terms of per capita generation of e-waste, Europe came first with 16.2 kg; Oceanic came second with 16.1 kg and quickly followed by the Americas. Africa came last at 2.5 kg. Similarly, Europe at 42.5 per cent ranked first in collection and recycling of e-waste; Asia came second at 11.7 per cent while the Americas and Oceania followed with 9.4 per cent and 8.8 per cent respectively. Africa came last at 0.9 per cent.
Regrettably, only 17.4 per cent of e-waste generated in 2019 reached formal management or recycling facilities, according to the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership (GESP). The rest, the GESP said, was illegally dumped, overwhelmingly in low-or middle-income countries, where the recycling is mostly done by informal workers.
The WHO report also pointed out that about 19.9 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. It also revealed that over 18 million children and adolescents, some as young as five years of age, are actively engaged in the informal industrial sector, of which waste processing is a sub-sector.
For pregnant women, exposure to toxic e-waste, according to the report, can affect the health and development of their unborn children for the rest of their lives. The WHO states that children exposed to e-waste are particularly vulnerable to the toxic chemicals they contain due to their smaller size, less developed organs and rapid rate of growth and development.
The danger posed by growing amount of e-waste across the world is not in doubt. We call on the nation’s health authorities to wake-up and do something about the health challenges posed by e-waste in the country. Therefore, the federal and state governments should come out with adequate e-waste disposal and recycling plans in order to protect the health of Nigerian children as well as those unborn and the environment.
Since e-waste can be found in virtually all parts of the country, we believe that the 774 local governments should also be part of the initiative to rid Nigeria of toxic e-waste. According to experts, e-waste is created when an electronic product is discarded after the end of its useful life. It also includes electrical devices. Unfortunately, Nigerian is one of the dumping grounds for used electronic and electrical materials from Europe and Asia.
