Guiyu Town
Guiyu (Chinese: ; pinyin: Gùiyǔ) is a town in the Chaoyang district of Guangdong province in China. Situated on the South China Sea coast, Guiyu is perhaps best known in the global environmentalist community for its reception of E-waste. In fact, the town also holds the record for being the largest e-waste site, as of 2013.
Guiyu, population 150,000, is a town in the Guangdong Province in southeast China. It was once the largest E-waste site on earth, and was first documented fully in December 2001 by the Basel Action Network in their report and documentary film entitled Exporting Harm. The health and environmental issues exposed by this report and subsequent scientific studies have greatly concerned international organizations such as the Basel Action Network and later Greenpeace and the United Nations Environment Programme and the Basel Convention.
Guiyu has 5,500 businesses, many of them family workshops, that dismantle old electronics to extract lead, gold, copper and other valuable metals. This industry employs tens of thousands of people and dismantles 1.5 million pounds of discarded computers, cell phones and other electronics each year. Developed countries, including the United States, ship their discarded electronics to developing countries such as this poor area of China, because it is much cheaper than properly and safely recycling electronics. Regions like Guiyu now rely on electronics as an economic staple despite the adverse effects electronic waste has on health and the environment. The burning off of plastics in the town has resulted in 80% of its children having dangerous levels of lead in their blood.
A 2008 study titled Heavy Metals Concentrations of Surface Dust from E-Waste Recycling and Its Human Health Implications in Southeast China examined environmental and human health risks in Guiyu by collecting dust samples from workshops, roads, a schoolyard and an outdoor food market that sells fish, vegetables and meat. The study found that in the workshops, there were elevated levels of lead, copper and zinc; at a schoolyard, there were elevated levels of lead and copper. Other areas near the school also contained extremely high levels of nickel in areas where children often eat (and are therefore exposed to contaminated dust). In the food market, high levels of copper, nickel, lead and zinc were found. This was a concern because the food (often placed in plastic buckets on the ground) likely comes into contact with this contaminated dust. Lead and copper in road dust were 330 and 106, and 371 and 155 times higher, respectively, than non e-waste sites located 8 and 30 km away. High levels of toxic metals at the schoolyard and food market showed that public places were adversely impacted. Out of all the metals found, lead consistently had the greatest amounts present at all locations, with Copper being the second most-abundant. Levels of lead for a workshop employee exceeded the “safe” amount of oral lead ingestion by 50 times. Lead levels for the general public were 5 times lower than those for e-waste workers, but was still higher than the "safe" amount. Children, who face great adverse effects from lead poisoning, face a potential health risk at all locations 8 times higher than adults.
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