A new Boston University School of Public Health published in Annals of Work Exposure and Health is the first to evaluate the exposures faced by cellular electronic shredder workers, a new service that securely destroys hard drives, laptops, and other electronic devices that contain sensitive information.Site.
Even the correct disposal of e-waste exposes staff to poisonous metals such as lead and cadmium, as well as poisonous chemicals: everything is crushed into a fine powder that is easy to melt for new devices, but also easy to inhale or even absorb.Skin.
Dr. Diana Ceballos, assistant professor of environmental fitness at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), noted the increasing use of cell electronic device shredding trucks to destroy electronic technology on site, adding on college campuses and concerned.
“I’ve been involved in almost non-existent security measures and potentially harmful operating conditions,” Ceballos says.
She warned that the staff was dressed in masks or protective goggles while grounding electronic devices in internal trucks that had no ventilation but an open back door.
Ceballos and his colleagues at the T.H. School of Public Health.Harvard Chan evaluated the exhibitions and after a 65-minute crushing task through an employee in a truck in the Greater Boston area.
Ceballos collected air samples (on the employee’s head) and surface wipes from other parts of the truck, and researchers found that steel concentrations in the air near the crusher reached a maximum of 2,500 ultra-thin waste consistent with cubic meter, adding 2.9 micrograms of lead.”These exposures are similar to those in a chimney or when using a diesel generator in a camp,” Ceballos explains, “but the biggest challenge for the employee is that those grades are internal to a truck and can collect in harmful grades.”
There were 171 micrograms of debris 2.5 millimeters or less in diameter (called PM2.5) consistent with cubic meter.By comparison, the air in downtown Boston generally comprises 10 to 30 micrograms of PM2.5 consistent with cubic meter, with noticeable and fatal effects.
After work, the shredder and nearby surfaces were coated with 1,190 micrograms of lead consisting of one square centimeter, and Ceballos discovered lead and other metals on surfaces as far away and separate from the shredder as the truck cab.the employee’s clothing or skin, however, points out that these contaminants can also return home to an employee and damage the circle of member relatives.
At least the generator that powers the shredder of this truck is a new hybrid; With an older diesel generator and a truck configured differently, Ceballos said, an employee may also be exposed to life-threatening degrees of carbon monoxide.
The verdict: Ceballos and their colleagues found that the grades of metals and other contaminants in the truck were comparable to what they and other researchers found in non-mobile electronic recycling services that were compliant, but those services are intended to use equipment of protection. , and the amenities have suction ventilation (not just an open door) and normal cleaning.
(Ceballos says trucks do not pose a threat to passers-by.)
“These trucks have become very popular and are a wonderful service,” says Ceballos.”My purpose with this publication is to paint with industry certifications to their rules to decorate fitness and protection in those trucks.”
But she says it’s not enough to bring trucks to the same degree of protection as non-mobile installations.
The electronic recycling criteria are not yet strict enough for workers’ health, in large part because the industry is very new, is developing so fast and manages ever-changing technology, leaving government regulations in the dust.
Workers are also disproportionately “vulnerable,” according to a new observation in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine through Ceballos and colleagues from educational and government institutions, adding Harvard Chan School, the University of Montreal, the National Institute for Occupational Protection and Physical Fitness (NIOSH) and the Robert-Sauvé Institute of Studies in Occupational Fitness and Protection (IRSST) in Quebec.
Electronic recycling staff, like staff in many other high-risk and low-wage jobs, are much more likely to come from racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, under-25s, fluent English and/or intellectual disabilities, commentators write.Many are also incarcerated lately or earlier, adding staff at about a dozen e-recycling sites in U.S. prisons.