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How your old phone, fridge will poison you
Is it safe? Mr Musa Kiggundu repairs a phone at Jamtech phone repairs in Kisugu, a Kampala suburb. Photo by Paul Tajuba
What you need to know:
Gold rush. There is gold in Mubende District and people from different areas have rushed in to grab a piece of the prized mineral. But while at it, the indigenous people of Mubende and the local government in the area have not reaped a lot out of it. Paul Tajuba explores why.
Ritah Naiga, a journalist, owns two mobile phones; has a refrigerator at home, a computer at work and other electronic gadgets.
Almost every year she says she acquires a new phone simply to keep up with the new innovations that manufacturers keep coming up with to stay afloat in light of the cutthroat competition in the in mobile phone industry.
Currently one can do almost everything with their phone, from banking to paying school fees and other dues, on top of the ordinary communication functions. With multiple players in the industry, the more gadgets one has the merrier.
Despite Ms Naiga’s consumption of these products, she does not follow up where her used gadgets end and barely thinks of any potential dangers they are causing to the environment.
“If a phone is old, I have no business with it. I give it to a relative or a friend but some people take them as scraps,” Ms Naiga says.
At Jamtech phone repairs in Kisugu, a Kampala suburb, Mr Musa Kiggundu, a mechanic, says he receives a minimum of 20 used phones for repair daily. These are mostly substandard phones whose lifespan is normally short.
That is just a tip of the iceberg, he estimates.
“There are many used phones kept in homes because of owners’ emotional attachments in addition to those we repair and those that we fail to fix,” Mr Kiggundu says.
In his experience as a mechanic spanning six years, he says the most throw-away parts on a phone are batteries, screens and outer casing commonly referred to as “housing”.
“Other parts in a phone can easily be used in other faulty phones but batteries are normally for throwing away,” Mr Kiggundu stresses.
Mr Benon Fred Twinamasiko, a lecturer at the Department of Physics at Makerere University, says throw-away phone parts are among the most dangerous pieces to the environment.
And the more the appetite for phones of people like Ms Nayiga’s grows, the more the potential damage to the environment.
Mr Twinamasiko says electronics have a lot of plastics, which by their nature “are non- biodegradable but the chemicals in these electronics are more dangerous.” Biodegradable substances are those that can be broken down by bacteria or other living organisms so that with time they are reduced to soil particles. Because the phone parts are non-biodegradable, therefore, they cannot be broken down in this way.
There are more dangerous properties in phones, however.
“The lithium ion in batteries endangers the environment especially when poorly dumped in a place and rainwater carries these chemicals into our streams which are sources of fish and water for domestic use,” Mr Twinamasiko says.
According to the World Health organization (WHO), e-waste results into health risks as people get to use water and food contaminated with chemical substances and pollution that result from burning or recycling of these electronics.
Children most at risk
Most electronics contain harmful materials such as lead, cadmium, chromium, brominated flame retardants or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), according to the global health body World Health Organisation.
“Children are especially vulnerable to the health risks that may result from e-waste exposure and, therefore, need more specific protection, “reads part of the WHO information about e waste on its website.
“As they are still growing, children’s intake of air, water and food in proportion to their weight is significantly increased compared to adults, - and with that, the risk of hazardous chemical absorption,” the website adds.
Similarly, Mr Twinamasiko says, old-fashioned refrigerator models which majority Ugandans use emit dangerous gases even after being discarded them.
A refrigerator works in such a way that a volatile gas in it called methane gas goes through the fins around its cooling icy part, and the process ends in gases called fluorocarbons emitted.
When fluorocarbons are released into the atmosphere, it is one of the gases that cause global warming which result into climate change.
Furthermore, electronics block drainage systems and degrade the soil by reducing the amount of water flowing into the earth. Dr Tom Okurut, the executive director National Environment Management Authority (Nema), says one metric tonne of e-waste is estimated to be hidden in the environment in Uganda.
But it could be even more, he says, because there are many electronics in government and private companies all over the country.
Uganda, after signing the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer in 2001, banned in 2010 the importation and sale of used refrigerators. But old refrigerators still find their way into the country.
Ora county MP Lawrence Songa, an environmental activist, says little information has been availed to the public about the dangers of disposing electronics waste on the environment.
“When you talk about climate change, people think about only tree planting; when it is environmental degradation, they think of wetlands only. We need to sensitize people so that they change their mindset and dispose of these electronics properly,” Mr Songa says.
But even if there was proper disposal mechanism, Dr Okurut says, currently there is no proper place to keep e-waste ranging from computers, printers, refrigerators, among other electronics.
He says Nema has for now guided all the institutions to keep their electronics as they establish an e-waste collection centre across the country, which he says could be in place by July.
He cautions against burning e-waste, saying the practice releases a lot of dangerous gases into the atmosphere.
Mr Twinamasiko, however, says Nema and manufacturers or importers of these electronics should come up with a long term solution where end users will be given incentives to properly dispose of used electronics.
A possible incentive, Mr Twinamasiko says, could be for users to return used gadgets to sellers when they are old or invite companies that can sort electronics to extract useful parts for export or local use.
“Telecom companies should be able to invest in this,” he adds. Dr Okurut says after establishing collection centres, Nema will invite private companies that will sort useful parts from the crap for recycling.
Worse danger
But as the country grapples with electronics waste management, Ms Christine Kasedde, a senior environment assessment officer at Nema, says there are bigger problems with what are collectively called Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in Uganda.
POPs, according to the Stockholm Convention on protecting human health and environment, “are organic chemical substances - that is – they are carbon-based. They possess a particular combination of physical and chemical properties such that once released into the environment, they remain intact for exceptionally long periods of time.
The POPs also become “widely distributed throughout the environment as a result of natural processes involving soil, water and, most notably, air; accumulate in the fatty tissue of living organisms including humans, and are found at higher concentrations at higher levels in the food chain; and are toxic to both humans and wildlife”.
Ms Kasedde lists some sources of POPs in Uganda from their recent inventory to include; endosulfan pesticide, firefighting foam which is widely used by the Uganda Police, textiles, synthetic leathers, shoes and bags.
“We do not manufacture POPs but we import them, and we live with them in everyday life,” Ms Kasedde says.
With time these POPs, Ms Kasedde says, may cause cancers, allergies disruption of the immune system and reproductive disorders among others.
Worse still, she says, many farmers have turned to anti-pests and diseases agrochemicals, insecticides, herbicides, acaricides, fungicides, rodenticides, nematicides, avicides and fertilizers, which all end up in the environment.
Although chemicals offer many benefits to users, Ms Kasedde advises sound management of the lifecycle of a chemical from production to disposal to avoid basic exposure pathways: inhalation, ingestion, and skin contact remains a challenge.
The use of potentially hazardous chemicals, Ms Kasedde says, is denying Ugandans clean environment. She lists Aldrin, chlorane, DDT, endosulfan as the most used chemicals for most agriculturists.
Mr Isaac Ntujju, the principal Environment Inspector at Nema, says these chemicals might be responsible for the rampant cancer cases in the country although there has never been a study to ascertain his assertions.
Available cancer statistics from the Uganda Cancer Institute indicate that 2800 new cancer cases were registered in 2012, compared to 1800 in 2011 with an estimated 60,000 people living with the deadly disease in the country.
Of those, only 20 to 40 per cent manage to seek medical attention at Uganda Cancer Institute in Mulago hospital.
Globally, according to WHO statistics, 8.8 million people worldwide died of cancer in 2015. That is nearly 1 in 6 of all global deaths. It is not clear how many of these cases are a result of POPs, but scientists highly believe a significant number of these are attributable to POPs.
The challenge is how to keep safe from e-waste.
