Elizabeth Grossman

The official bisphenol A industry group Web site maintains its products “pose no known risks to human health.” A growing number of scientists disagree, and bisphenol A, which appears to produce adverse impacts at low levels of exposure, is now at the center of a controversy challenging established methods of determining chemical safety.

In the past year, legislators in several states have introduced bills that would restrict local sale of infants’ and children’s products containing bisphenol A. In March, a class action lawsuit — the first of its kind — was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against manufacturers and retailers of affected baby bottles and cups. In December 2006, San Francisco adopted a law that would ban the sale of baby products with bisphenol A. However, this May, in the wake of lawsuits by chemical and toy manufacturers, and a review by the city’s health and environmental departments, the city repealed the ban, vowing to reconsider it in a year.

Americans have been increasingly using products made with bisphenol A since the 1940s. Between 1980 and 2000, U.S. production of bisphenol A grew nearly five times. Worldwide, over 6 billion pounds are now produced annually. This is big business. Sales of bisphenol A products, whose manufacturers include Bayer, Dow Chemical and General Electric, generate billions of dollars annually.

While bisphenol A has earned approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for what are called “food contact” consumer products, the Centers for Disease Control has found bisphenol A in 95 percent of tested Americans at or above levels that have been found to cause abnormalities in animals. The FDA has responded that “impurities and processing aids” used in these plastics can migrate to food, but at much lower levels than those that have caused adverse effects in animal tests.

First recognized as a synthetic estrogen in the 1930s, bisphenol A belongs to a category of chemicals called endocrine disrupters because of their ability to interfere with hormone function. Endocrine disrupters interact in specific ways with the genetic receptors that determine a number of vital bodily mechanisms. In the case of bisphenol A, these apparently include egg cell, reproductive organ, and fat cell development. Its most profound effects appear to take place prenatally and in the early stages after birth.

Bisphenol A produces its adverse effects in “phenomenally small amounts,” says Frederick vom Saal, professor of biology at the University of Missouri, Columbia, who has studied bisphenol A for over a decade. As vom Saal and other researchers point out, these levels are below those the FDA considers safe for daily human consumption.

Scientists have known that bisphenol A could leach from finished plastics since the early 1990s. That low levels of exposure could cause genetic abnormalities was discovered more recently.

In 1998, molecular biologist Patricia Hunt and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University were investigating chromosomal changes that occur in egg cells as animals age. The experiment compared mice with abnormalities to normal mice. “One day, the controls went bananas, showing a huge number of chromosomal abnormalities,” recalls Hunt, now professor of molecular biosciences at Washington State University. The spike was so severe the researchers thought it must be caused by a chemical exposure. They discovered the contamination came from bisphenol A released by degrading plastic in the mouse cages.

Further upsetting traditional toxicology is that low doses of bisphenol A can produce adverse impacts while high doses may not. Hunt, Taylor and vom Saal explain that low levels of exposure during fetal development can cause lasting changes in reproductive and metabolic development. These changes to the fetus are permanent and irreversible, whereas impacts of adult exposure are reversible. “The fetus is exquisitely sensitive to bisphenol A,” says Hunt. “One hit during a brief window of time can influence future development.”

In January of this year, Hunt and colleagues published a study showing that exposure to small levels of bisphenol A disrupts normal egg cell growth in a developing female mouse embryo, setting the stage for potential miscarriage. Bisphenol A, explains Hunt, affects three generations: mother, developing female baby, and the daughter’s potential children. Meanwhile, Taylor and his colleges have seen lifelong changes caused by prenatal exposure to bisphenol A.

In a recently published paper, they show that exposure to bisphenol A during pregnancy can cause “lasting changes in development of the uterus that could pose problems in pregnancy,” including potential miscarriage. Hunt and Taylor both explain that many factors contribute to miscarriage and fertility problems. But, says Hunt of bisphenol A, “We know enough to know that we should be concerned.” Exposure to bisphenol A is “an important and modifiable environmental risk that we should at least inform people about,” says Taylor, who is also an attending physician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Scientists have also recently discovered that prenatal exposure to bisphenol A can lead to a predisposition to obesity. Bisphenol A, explains vom Saal, interacts with the nuclear hormone receptors that prompt fat cell development. Bisphenol A apparently accelerates this process, known scientifically as adipogenesis, causing exposed animals to develop more fat cells — as well as fat cells that store more fat — leading to a lifetime tendency to obesity. It also affects the feedback loops to which hormones respond, prompting exposed fat cells to send more signals, asking, essentially, to be fed, causing excess fat accumulation.

Again, the levels at which bisphenol A interferes with normal genetic programming confounds traditional toxicological assumptions. “An unexpected finding is that if you only look at high doses of bisphenol A, you’ll see it suppressing body fat,” says vom Saal. He explains that at high levels of exposure, hormone receptors can become flooded and shut down, while low doses can prompt specific genetic activity. This phenomenon contributes to the difficulty of assessing the toxicity of endocrine disrupters and to the current controversy over the health impacts of bisphenol A.

Since 1997, well over 100 published studies have documented adverse effects in animals caused by exposure to low levels of bisphenol A. Vom Saal notes that the studies showing few or no health risks associated with bisphenol A have examined high rather than low doses, and have tended to be sponsored by chemical and plastics industries. Scientists studying endocrine disruption also note that the genetic mechanisms affected by these chemicals work similarly in all animals, including humans.

Industry representatives counter that it’s not a matter of keeping score but a matter of scientific weight of evidence. A fact sheet posted on the Bisphenol A Industry Group Web site cites studies “demonstrating that BPA is not an endocrine disrupter at any realistic level of exposure.” The Baby Bottle Information Center says that bisphenol A studies citing adverse impacts to reproductive health contain speculation that goes “far beyond the actual findings of the study.” In short, says Steven Hentges, spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, “the science doesn’t support any concerns about bisphenol A’s impact of human health.”

Bisphenol A is also now under review by the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health. But the review committee, convened by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Health, ended its March 2007 meeting without reaching any decisions. During that meeting, questions were raised about conflicts of interest on the part of Sciences International Inc., the consultants hired to gather and summarize the research being evaluated. Sciences International scientists, it was discovered, had also worked for chemical manufacturers, including producers of bisphenol A. In April, the National Institutes of Health terminated Sciences International’s contract and is now evaluating the company’s work on bisphenol A.

In the absence of definitive guidelines, what’s a consumer to do? “A primary route of exposure is ingestion,” says Taylor. So “bisphenol A is easy to avoid when pregnant. Don’t eat canned goods, don’t have dental sealants put in unless absolutely necessary, and use glass instead of plastic water bottles,” he suggests.

Hunt advises avoiding plastics once they become visibly rough, a sign that suggests leaching of bisphenol A. “To me, any chemical that can mimic the activity of estrogen is scary,” she says. Yet the American Chemistry Council’s baby bottle safety Web site has conflicting advice: “Over time, polycarbonate plastic can become cloudy from normal wear-and-tear on the surface. There is no health-based reason to stop using a baby bottle that becomes cloudy.”

To date, a direct link between bisphenol A and human reproductive problems and obesity has yet to be proven. It’s hard to make that connection, says Taylor, because “people don’t know they have had an exposure and it may not manifest itself for 20 to 30 years.” But, says Hunt, “If we wait for comparable human data and it comes out like animal data, we aren’t going to be breeding as a species.”

As the Amundsen cuts through ice across the top of the globe, Carrie and his fellow researchers are uncovering evidence of a disturbing fallout of climate change. They are finding toxic contaminants, some at remarkably high levels, accumulating in this remote and visually pristine environment. Although there are no industrial sources in the Arctic, residents of the Far North have some of the world’s highest levels of mercury exposure, some well above what the World Health Organization considers safe. High levels of mercury — a powerful neurotoxin — are being found in Arctic marine wildlife, including ringed seals and beluga whales, both staples of the traditional Northern diet. Levels in Arctic beluga have increased markedly in recent years.

When coal is burned in power plants in the U.S., China and elsewhere, mercury is released into the atmosphere. Airborne, mercury can travel great distances before settling to the ground, or into lakes, rivers and oceans. Air and ocean currents, propelled by weather patterns and storm systems, sweep the mercury north. But the recent increases in Arctic mercury outpace and cannot be explained by smokestack emissions alone, says Gary A. Stern, a senior scientist with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, professor at the University of Manitoba and co-leader of the Amundsen expedition. Rather, signs point to global warming and other disruptive impacts of climate change.

As temperatures rise, causing sea ice, permafrost and snow to melt, the mercury that had been frozen in place is now being released, causing exposure up and down the food web. “Climate change alters exposure in the north and increases the system’s vulnerability,” says Robie Macdonald, a research scientist with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Yet the Arctic researchers are routinely recording a lot more than mercury. They are seeing synthetic chemicals such as the brominated flame retardants known as PBDE’s (used in upholstery, textiles and plastics), as well as perfluorinated and chlorine compounds. And while long banned in many countries, lingering amounts of DDT and PCBs continue to turn up in people and animals in the Far North. Of concern due to their persistence and ability to accumulate in plant and animal tissue — particularly the fat prevalent in Arctic animals — these chemicals are also known to disrupt the endocrine hormones that regulate reproduction and metabolism. Some are considered carcinogens.

Alaskan polar bears, for instance, have some of the highest levels yet found in Arctic mammals of hexachlorohexane (HCH), a pesticide used to kill fungi on food crops. Carrie’s ice samples, collected hundreds of miles from any agricultural sites, contain HCH. Polar bears also have some of the highest recorded levels of perfluorinated compounds, chemicals used in waterproofing and in fire and stain retardants. Indigenous people in both the Canadian and Greenland Arctic have some of the world’s highest exposures to these persistent pollutants.

In the summer of 2007, Arctic sea ice reached a record low. Scientists monitoring the 2008 winter ice pack suspect this year’s summer ice may also be remarkably low. As David Barber, Canada Research Chair in Arctic system science at the University of Manitoba, puts it, “Well over a million years of all ecosystems evolved to take advantage of this ice cover.” With markedly less substantial sea ice cover, the hemispheric system is being thrown off balance, prompting changes that are increasing the load of contaminants in the Arctic.

As Stern explains, increased snowmelt, runoff and erosion in the Mackenzie River Basin are also now washing naturally occurring mercury into the Beaufort Sea. At the same time, disappearing sea ice leaves more water exposed to sunlight, increasing the growth of marine microorganisms and tiny plants like algae. This accelerates the process that turns mercury into its highly toxic form called methylmercury, which accumulates in marine mammals and fish traditionally eaten by residents of the Arctic. “These changes are happening much faster than anticipated,” Stern says one morning on the Amundsen.

Decreasing sea ice is changing other dynamics of the Arctic ecosystem. Seasonal climate changes are pushing some animals farther to find food and prompting some to alter what and when they eat. “With climate shift changing availability of ocean nutrients, some birds that used to fly 50 miles to eat now have to fly 100,” says Macdonald. “This means storing more fat, magnifying — or concentrating — the contents of the fat, resulting in stress to both birds and their chicks.” Because fat cells serve as a reservoir for many contaminants, when broken down to release energy, the toxics are also released, exposing animals from within.

In addition, says Macdonald, “Migrating fish bring with them the contaminants they’ve hoovered up in the ocean. When the fish spawn, they release the contaminants.” Similarly, fish-eating birds can take up these pollutants that they then excrete. It’s possible, he says, that animals themselves might be adding to the transport of contaminants.

“The food web is quite important in terms of where contaminants are found,” says Derek Muir, a senior scientist in aquatic ecosystems research with Environment Canada. Warmer temperatures and shorter ice seasons — in lakes as well as the Arctic Ocean — could alter what happens at the bottom of the food web in ways that affect how contaminants move up the food ladder, he explains. “Warming,” says Muir, “could deliver more contaminants up the food chain to top predators, and result in high levels of contaminants in very remote areas.”

Because top predators are important traditional food for Arctic people, humans are at the top of the food web. “There is absolutely no doubt of exposure of pollutants with harmful effects to some groups,” says Eric Dewailly, professor of social and preventive medicine at Laval University, who works with the International Network for Circumpolar Health Research. There are local sources for some metals and pollutants, but most of the persistent organic pollutants in the Arctic come “100 percent from the outside,” he says. Dewailly notes that because people are exposed to mixtures of contaminants, it’s hard to isolate the precise impact of a single one. However, studies are now being conducted in Canadian Arctic communities to investigate links between contaminants and cardiovascular, neurological, reproductive and immune system problems.

Climate change is having another hazardous effect on indigenous people. Warming temperatures have caused changes in ice conditions and migration patterns that determine where people hunt and fish. In some northern communities, these changes have begun to push people toward greater dependence on supermarket food, which in remote Arctic villages can be extremely limited.

Research by Grace Egeland, Canada Research Chair in nutrition and health at McGill University, shows that traditional Arctic foods tend to provide more protein, vitamins and minerals than typically available local market food, which is usually higher in carbohydrates, fat and sugar. “These people are feeling so many pressures of transition that they’re now at risk,” says Egeland of the Arctic’s indigenous communities. “There’s a human right to food without elevated contaminants,” says Egeland. “Based on what we know now, why wait to count the adverse events. Why wait until it’s too late?”

But what kind of action should be taken? Can the brakes be put on the cascading impacts of climate change? “If we could slow it down we would,” says Barber of the shrinking sea ice. “But we can’t do that now; there’s too much inertia in the system.”

Can we reduce the impact of the pollutants? “We can control persistent organic pollutants,” says Muir. It’s well documented that when hazardous chemicals — including mercury — are taken out of use, environmental levels decrease. And if affected populations are sufficiently healthy, they will recover.

Yet the key to controlling these pollutants, says Muir, is knowing which are persistent, toxic, likely to climb the food web and travel long distances. Muir explains that of the 30,000 or so chemicals now in wide commercial use, only about 4 percent are routinely monitored. Environmental and health impacts of about 75 percent of them have not been studied at all. Meanwhile, these invisible substances are moving to and through the Arctic. And what happens in the Far North, says Stern, may well presage what’s to come farther south. “It’s the canary in the coal mine,” he says.

In Taizhou’s outdoor workshops, people bang apart the computers and toss bits of metal into brick furnaces that look like chimneys. Split open, the electronics release a stew of toxic materials — among them beryllium, cadmium, lead, mercury and flame retardants — that can accumulate in human blood and disrupt the body’s hormonal balance. Exposed to heat or allowed to degrade, electronics’ plastics can break down into organic pollutants that cause a host of health problems, including cancer. Wearing no protective clothing, workers roast circuit boards in big, uncovered woklike pans to melt plastics and collect valuable metals. Other workers sluice open basins of acid over semiconductors to remove their gold, tossing the waste into nearby streams. Typical wages for this work are about $2 to $4 a day.

Jim Puckett, director of Basel Action Network, an environmental advocacy organization that tracks hazardous waste, filmed these Dickensian scenes in 2004. “The volume of junk was amazing,” he says. “It was arriving 24 hours a day and there was so much scrap that one truck was loaded every two minutes.” Nothing has changed in two years. “China is still getting the stuff,” Puckett tells me in March 2006. In fact, he says, the trend in China now is “to push the ugly stuff out of sight into the rural areas.”

The conditions in Taizhou are particularly distressing to Puckett because they underscore what he sees as a persistent failure by the U.S. federal government to stop the dumping of millions of used computers, TVs, cellphones and other electronics in the world’s developing regions, including those in China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Eastern Europe and Africa.

Because high-tech electronics contain hundreds of materials packed into small spaces, they are difficult and expensive to recycle. Eager to minimize costs and maximize profits, many recyclers ship large quantities of used electronics to countries where labor is cheap and environmental regulations lax. U.S. recyclers and watchdog groups like Basel Action Network estimate that 50 percent or more of the United States’ used computers, cellphones and TVs sent to recyclers are shipped overseas for recycling to places like Taizhou or Lagos, Nigeria, as permitted by federal law. But much of this obsolete equipment ends up as toxic waste, with hazardous components exposed, burned or allowed to degrade in landfills.

BAN first called widespread attention to the problem in 2002, when it released “Exporting Harm,” a documentary that revealed the appalling damage caused by electronic waste in China. In the southern Chinese village of Guiyu, many of the workers who dismantle high-tech electronics live only steps from their jobs. Their children wander over piles of burnt wires and splash in puddles by the banks of rivers that have become dumping grounds for discarded computer parts. The pollution has been so severe that Guiyu’s water supply has been undrinkable since the mid-’90s. Water samples taken in 2005 found levels of lead and other metals 400 to 600 times what international standards consider safe.

In the summer of 2005, Puckett investigated Lagos, another port bursting with what he calls the “effluent of the affluent.” “It appears that about 500 loads of computer equipment are arriving in Lagos each month,” he says. Ostensibly sent for resale in Nigeria’s rapidly growing market for high-tech electronics, as much as 75 percent of the incoming equipment is unusable, Puckett discovered. As a result, huge quantities are simply dumped.

Photographs taken by BAN in Lagos show scrapped electronics lying in wetlands, along roadsides, being examined by curious children and burning in uncontained landfills. Seared, broken monitors and CPUs are nestled in weeds, serving as perches for lizards, chickens and goats. One mound of computer junk towers at least 6 feet high. Puckett found identification tags showing that some of the junked equipment originally belonged to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Illinois Department of Human Services, the Kansas Department of Aging, the State of Massachusetts, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the City of Houston, school districts, hospitals, banks and numerous businesses, including IBM and Intel.

Under the Basel Convention, an international agreement designed to curtail trade in hazardous waste, none of this dumping should be happening. Leaded CRT glass, mercury switches, parts containing heavy metals, and other elements of computer scrap are considered hazardous waste under Basel and cannot be exported for disposal. Electronics can be exported for reuse, repair and — under certain conditions — recycling, creating a gray area into which millions of tons of obsolete electronics have fallen.

The U.S. is the only industrialized nation not to have ratified the Basel Convention, which would prevent it from trading in hazardous waste. The U.S. also has no federal laws that prohibit the export of toxic e-waste, nor has the U.S. signed the Basel Ban, a 1995 amendment to the convention that prohibits export of hazardous waste from Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development member countries to non-OECD countries — essentially from wealthy to poorer nations. While this policy is intended to spur reuse and recycling, it also makes it difficult to curtail the kind of shipments BAN found in Lagos.

Despite a growing awareness of e-waste’s hazards, the U.S. government, says Puckett, has done nothing in the past several years to stem the flow of e-trash. Given the Bush administration’s reluctance to enact or support regulations that interfere with what it considers free trade and the difficulty of monitoring e-waste exports, the shipments continue. “Follow the material, and you’ll find the vast majority of e-waste is still going overseas,” says Robert Houghton, president of Redemtech Inc., a company that handles electronics recycling for a number of Fortune 500 companies, including Kaiser Permanente. As Puckett says, “Exploiting low-wage countries as a dumping ground is winning the day.”

Over a billion computers are now in use worldwide — over 200 million in the United States, which has the world’s highest per capita concentration of PCs. The average life span of an American computer is about three to five years and some 30 million become obsolete here each year. According to the International Association of Electronics Recyclers, approximately 3 billion pieces of consumer electronics will be scrapped by 2010. Overall, high-tech electronics are the fastest-growing part of the municipal waste stream both in the U.S. and Europe.

The EPA estimates that only about 10 percent of all obsolete consumer electronics are recycled. The rest are stored somewhere, passed on to second users, or simply tossed in the trash. The EPA’s most recent estimate is that over 2 million tons of e-waste end up in U.S. landfills each year. As Jim Fisher of Salon reported in 2000, a toxic stew from discarded computers leaches into groundwater surrounding landfills.

Current design, particularly of equipment now entering the waste stream, makes separating electronics’ dozens of materials labor-intensive. “Almost every piece of equipment is different,” says Greg Sampson of Earth Protection Services, a national electronics recycler. The process almost always involves manual labor and, once the electronics are dismantled, sophisticated machinery is required to safely separate and process metals and plastics.

The fragile CRTs with leaded glass used in traditional desktop monitors and TV screens pose a particular recycling challenge. Metals are the easiest materials to recycle and the most valuable — circuit boards typically contain gold, silver and other precious metals. Plastics are the peskiest, as many different kinds may be used in a single piece of equipment and markets for recycled plastics are far less established than those for scrap metals.

E-Scrap News, a recycling industry trade magazine, features about 950 e-scrap processors in its North American database — a list that doesn’t include nonprofits or reuse organizations. And not all electronics recyclers offer the same services. Some dismantle the equipment and recover materials themselves. But many simply collect equipment and do initial disassembly, then contract with others for materials recovery.

According to the International Association of Electronics Recyclers, this business now generates about $700 million annually in the U.S. and is increasing steadily. Most recyclers charge fees to process equipment. But essentially profits come from the sale of materials recovered or by selling equipment or components to those who will do so. There’s also a speculative aspect to the business, especially when the scrap metal market is booming and the value of recyclable circuit boards increasing — it reached an all-time high in January 2006 at $5,640 a ton.

Some recyclers — mostly smaller shops — acquire used equipment at surplus property auctions, on eBay or other such resale outlets, then resell equipment whole or in parts by the pound to what Houghton calls “materials brokers” and “chop shops.” One batch of equipment may end up being sold to a series of brokers before it reaches a materials processor, and much of what these brokers deal in ends up overseas where costs are lowest. “If a company is buying your electronic scrap or untested equipment,” rather than charging for this service, “it’s highly likely that it’s going overseas,” says Sarah Westervelt of BAN.

In 2000, Salon’s Fisher noted that U.S. computer manfacturers bucked the European trend of instigating convenient buy-back programs for used computers — a resistance that continues today. Since 2000, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an environmental group, has maintained a “report card” of computer makers’ environmental progress in recycling and manufacturing. In its most recent report card, it notes that the “most alarming trends in the electronics industry in the United States continue to be staunch opposition to producer take back programs.”

Currently, there is no consistent, industrywide or government program to certify or license electronics recyclers. As a result, says Houghton, “It’s extremely difficult to peel back the onion far enough to find out where the equipment goes. It may change hands two, three or four times before it leaves the country.” And, he explains, “The cost of shipping a 40-foot container full of computers, relative to the value of the equipment,” even at scrap prices, “is pretty low.” With dealers from China to Eastern Europe and Africa ready to buy used electronics for scrap or reuse, and U.S. domestic transportation and recycling costs high, it’s actually more profitable to load up a container and send it to Nigeria or Taizhou than it is to process equipment at home.

So traveling the seas in the shadows of legitimate high-tech exports are huge containers that may hold as many as 1,000 used computers. They’re loaded on ships at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports in the U.S. for Atlantic crossings, or at European ports, including Felixstowe, Le Havre and Rotterdam, arriving in West Africa by way of Spain. Others cross the Mediterranean from Israel and Dubai, or travel Asian Pacific routes from the U.S., Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

Compounding the difficulty of tracking an individual computer is the fact that several different companies — including freight consolidators at both exporting and importing ports, some located in countries distant from both buyers and sellers — are responsible for moving these goods. A recycler in Texas may well be unaware of who is unloading or receiving his goods in China or Africa. Many international freight shippers make it easy to track a whole container — just punch the number into their Web site — but information about who’s shipping what is not public information.

Even in Europe, where e-waste exports are regulated, illegal shipments slip through. “From our work, we have no doubt that there are improper shipments of waste,” says Roy Watkinson of the U.K. Environment Agency, which in October of 2005 reported that 75 percent of the containers it had inspected that month contained some illegal waste, including e-scrap. A European group, IMPEL, a network of environmental regulators, has been monitoring this trade, and has found ships loaded with damaged computer equipment sailing out of Wales bound for Pakistan in containers marked “plastics.”

According to accounts by Lai Yun of Greenpeace China and Mark Dallura of Chase Electronics in Philadelphia, and news reports from China, corruption is common among customs officials there. Dallura told the Washington Post in 2003 that he ships discarded computers to China via Taiwanese middlemen. “I sell it to [the Taiwanese] in Los Angeles and how they get it there is not my concern,” Dallura said. “They pay the customs officials off. Everybody knows it. They show up with Mercedeses, rolls of hundred-dollar bills. This is not small-time. This is big-time stuff. There’s a lot of money going on in this.” Today, loads of e-scrap continue to enter the country despite the Chinese government’s official crackdown on these imports.

In an attempt to find out how computers belonging to the U.S. and state government agencies — including one from a Wisconsin school district — might end up in Lagos, Nigeria, I tried to get to the bottom of what happens to the over half-million computers the federal government disposes of each year.

Much of the federal government’s used but usable computer equipment (including cellphones) is placed with another government agency or donated to a school or community nonprofit (usually chosen and vetted by an individual agency office). The rest (the exact numbers are not known) goes to the General Services Administration — the agency that deals with the procurement, use and disposal of government property — for public auction. State governments work similarly, usually through state surplus property offices or equivalent programs. No one I consulted had any estimate of how many computers state and local governments discard annually. What was clear is that the ultimate fate of significant quantities of government electronics is poorly documented.

Equipment left after these donations and sales is sent out for recycling. Some federal and state agencies choose their own recyclers. Some federal agencies send used computers to the recyclers awarded contracts under the EPA’s electronics recycling program, called Recycling Electronics and Asset Disposition services. A number send equipment to the Federal Prison Industries’ computer recycling facilities, which dismantle equipment and send parts on for materials recovery. Many state and local governments (and school districts) put their electronics recycling contracts out for bid, often choosing the company that charges the least to handle and process the equipment. This itself is a red flag. “If there’s no charge,” or prices are extremely low, especially for monitors, cautions Sampson of Earth Protection Services, “chances are high equipment is being recycled using cheap labor or by less than optimum methods.”

What struck me about the GSA and other public auctions was the lack of oversight, both in terms of where used equipment might end up — potentially creating environmental hazards — and in terms of data security. BAN had scrapped hard drives that it purchased in Lagos analyzed by the Swiss firm NetMon, which found correspondence from staff at the World Bank and from Wisconsin’s Child Protective Custody Agency, among others. As a result of chaotic recycling, “There’s a definite concern for our security, says Eric Karofsky, senior research analyst with AMR Research, a firm that analyzes business supply chains.

Recent GSA auctions have included computers belonging to the Census Bureau, the South Texas Veterans Health Care System, the Border Patrol, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Anyone over 18 from a country the U.S. does business with, who has a valid credit card, can buy at these auctions, many of which are conducted online. Auction participants are hard to identify as their bids are recorded only by user names, but it’s unlikely that anyone is buying a load of 75 used CPUs for personal use. And there are thousands of waiting online buyers. In the U.S., a laptop sells on eBay about every 45 seconds, reports senior category manager Stephani Regalia, who helped launch eBay’s ReThink program devoted to selling used electronics.

The GSA keeps records of who’s bought equipment, but does not track what happens to equipment that’s been sold, nor does it ask buyers why they’re purchasing the electronics. “Why would we?” asks a GSA staffer in Boston. The result is that at both the state and federal level, large quantities of electronics are purchased by brokers, auctioneers and individual dealers who often sell the equipment for export.

For example, one company that has bid at GSA auctions, CTBI Co., of San Antonio, also works as the Morsi Corp. Mike Hancock, the company’s proprietor, tells me that he sells working equipment to overseas buyers, including those in Indonesia. The scrap, he says, goes to China, Pakistan and Canada, but another company handles those transactions, so he doesn’t track things further. As far as he’s concerned, none of his scrap has ended up in Nigeria. “I don’t do business in Nigeria,” Hancock says. “There are too many bad credit cards there.”

One electronics recycler that does do business in Africa is Arizona-based ScrapComputer.com. The staff person I spoke to (who would not give me his name), in the company’s Chicago office, says nothing ends up in landfills, and that working equipment is refurbished for schools or sold on eBay. But it also exports computers to India and China where, the staffer says, functional CRTs are remade into TVs. ScrapComputer also sends equipment — all working, I am told — to Malaysia and Egypt, and to West African countries including the Congo. Clearly, this is not the only company selling into Africa, but given the fluid nature of the business, it’s extremely difficult to pin down which recyclers knowingly sell e-scrap with a blind eye to dumping and unsound recycling methods.

Still curious to know how a computer owned by Wisconsin’s Wauwatosa School District ended up in Lagos, I tracked down the office, SWAP (Surplus With a Purpose), that handles used computers for Wisconsin school districts. Tim Sell, SWAP’s business manager, tells me that SWAP — part of the University of Wisconsin — accounts for everything it handles. He says equipment not refurbished for donations or placed in state offices goes to the Wisconsin State Corrections Department’s computer recycling facilities, which refurbish and recycle used computers.

But he bemoans the legal loopholes that make e-scrap so hard to track. “Recyclers lie to us,” he says, explaining that despite assurances, equipment and parts probably do end up being handled in ways SWAP would rather it did not. When I ask about the computer in Nigeria, Sell tells me he knows that individual customers buy equipment from SWAP and stockpile it for sale to bulk buyers either here or overseas, including those who buy to sell in Africa. With so many unknowns and loopholes in the current system of accounting for used electronics sent for recycling, “I don’t know how you’re going to stop these exports 100 percent,” says Sell.

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The U.S. may be one of the world’s biggest consumers of high-tech electronics, but unlike the European Union or Japan, the U.S. has no national system for handling e-waste. Unless a state or local government prohibits it, it’s currently legal to dump up to 220 pounds a month of e-waste, including CRTs and circuit boards, into local landfills. Several dozen states have introduced e-waste bills, and a handful of U.S. states — California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Washington — have recently passed substantive e-waste bills, some of which bar CRTs from their landfills. E-waste bills have also been introduced in the House and Senate, but neither would create a national collection system.

The export of e-waste has been discussed in Congress but no legislation to regulate this trade has yet been introduced. Matt Gerien, press secretary to Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., who has co-sponsored an e-waste bill in the House, says, “Ironically, what brought Representative Thompson to this issue are these export problems.” But neither the bill that Rep. Thompson has co-sponsored with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., nor the one introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jim Talent, R-Mo., would deal with exports.

Meanwhile, says Laura Coughlan of the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste, the Bush administration has drafted legislation that would allow the U.S. to ratify the Basel Convention, but is waiting for final clearance for transmittal to Congress. And the Ban amendment, which essentially prohibits sending e-waste from wealthy to poorer countries, “has created issues for U.S. ratification of the convention,” says Coughlan, who explains that no “U.S. administration has supported ratification of this amendment, and the U.S. government has been unable to reach consensus with domestic stakeholders.”

Legislation in Europe has made electronics recycling mandatory throughout the E.U., as it is in Japan and some other countries. Companion legislation requires the elimination of certain toxics — among them lead, cadmium and hexavalent chromium used in solder, batteries, inks and paints — from electronic products, and given the global nature of the high-tech industry, these new materials standards could effectively become world standards. Many such changes have already been made and more are in the works, but the old equipment now being discarded remains laden with toxics.

As U.S. lawmakers, manufacturers, environmental advocates, waste haulers and recyclers struggle to find a way to collect the nation’s high-tech trash, Americans are left with what policymakers are fond of calling a patchwork of regulations and recycling options. This makes things as confusing for manufacturers as it does for consumers and recyclers. “At some point, the ‘feds’ will have to step in and harmonize things,” says Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

In 2005, the EPA held an electronics recycling summit. Among the issues participants grappled with, and on which there is no industrywide or national policy, are that of certifying electronics recyclers and exporting electronic waste. Complaints were voiced about the difficulty of dealing with products designed with materials that make recycling complicated and expensive. But loudest of all were complaints that the U.S. had too many confusing and uncoordinated recycling efforts. A year later, a few more state laws regulating e-waste have been passed but little else has been done to stop the steady stream of used computers, cellphones and TVs that are ending up overseas, in dumps, polluting soil, water and air.

If you are donating your equipment to a reuse organization, ask if equipment is tested before it is passed on for donation and if the company only ships working equipment. Ask who their recipient organizations are. You want to make sure equipment is going directly to qualified recipients, not speculative brokers. This helps prevent the kind of dumping BAN witnessed in Nigeria. Also check out FreeGeek in Portland, Ore., which builds computers out of salvaged parts from donated equipment. Its Web site has links to other similar organizations.

If the answer to any of these questions is, “We don’t know,” or, “We can’t tell you,” you may want to send your equipment elsewhere, as any reputable recycler or reuse organization should be able to provide answers.

One of the easiest options is to use your computer manufacturer’s recycling program. Major manufacturers are acutely aware of the liabilities associated with not handling equipment properly and don’t want to be the subject of a muckraking exposi. Virtually all U.S. manufacturers’ take-back programs charge fees, and many require packing and shipping the equipment yourself. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a good guide to responsible recycling, finds many of the manufacture take-back programs wanting and publishes a report card on the environmental effectiveness of most of them.

The Rethink Program hosted by eBay has a good computer recycling FAQ section and many useful links to recyclers, as do CompuMentor’s Tech Soup site and the EPA’s eCycling Web site. But be aware that the recyclers listed on these sites have not been vetted or approved by these organizations in any way. The public agency that handles garbage disposal and recycling in your region may also list electronics recyclers on a Web site but these lists are not vetted either. Tech Soup and Rethink both have links to data-wiping software.

The Basel Action Network Web site carries a list of electronics recyclers that have signed BAN’s stewardship pledge, under which recyclers agree not to export e-waste or add it to landfill, or use prison labor, and to document where equipment, parts and materials go. Its list includes recyclers in all parts of the U.S. The following links to select groups and manufacturers should help you find the best methods and places for recycling.

Government and nonprofit organizations U.S. EPA Plug-in to eCycling Northeast Recycling Council Northwest Product Stewardship Council Basel Action Network, Pledge Recyclers CompuMentor Goodwill Industries National Cristina Foundation eBay Rethink Program Electronic Industries Alliance International Association of Electronics Recyclers Manufacturers Apple Canon Dell Epson Gateway Hewlett-Packard IBM Lexmark Panasonic Sony Toshiba