BOOK REVIEWS
effects Information Age technology might be having on human health and on the environment.” She also wanted to know “what is being done to solve these problems and improve past practices to ensure a safer, cleaner, and healthier future.” Grossman takes readers to Superfund sites, visits with people whose homes are contaminated from toxic vapors, sites with “tons of discarded and dismantled computer equipment,” and conversations with “dozens of scientists who are trying to discover how chemicals embedded in and used to manufacture computers have wound up in people and in the food we eat.” She highlights problems caused by the manufacture of semi-conductors, which requires huge amounts of wa- ter and entails the exposure to dark black smoke when removing and recycling the metals. National Science Foundation scientists “have found that at least 1600 grams of fossil fuels and chemicals are needed to produce one two-gram microchip.” Some batteries and circuit boards contain cad- mium, a “known carcinogen.” Mercury, a potent neurotoxin, is also used in electronics to supposedly make the products more energy ef- ficient. The chapter titles draw attention to many of the problems we should all be concerned about: “Producing High Tech: The Environ- mental Impact,” “Flame Retardants: A Tale of Toxics,” and “Not In Our Backyard: Exporting Electronic Waste.” This book is a good read with very important messages. In addition to instructions on how to recycle digital devices, her last chapter sets forth “A Land Ethic for the Digital Age.” Alyce Ortuzar is a freelance medical and social science researcher, writer, and editor living in Montgomery County, Maryland. She runs the Well Mind Association of Greater Washington, a holistic medicine information clearinghouse that focuses on environmental and nutritional influences on our mental and physical well-being. For five years, she edited the U.S. Surgeon General’s smoking and health reports. She can be reached at (301) 774-6617 and by email at alyceortuzar@gmail.com.
REVIEW BY ALYCE ORTUZAR
High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
By Elizabeth Grossman 2006; Island Press 334 pp. (HB); $47.00 ISBN: 9781559635547
The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetus and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature. — Rachel Carson, Silent Spring , 1962 If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than with sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technol- ogy. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as God really made it, not just as it looked as we got through with it. — Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965 The production of high-tech electronics involves many toxic and hazardous materials and takes place on a global scale. The environ- mental impacts are now being felt by communities from the Arctic to Australia, with poorer countries and communities receiving a dispro- portionate share of the burden. If not addressed comprehensively with solutions that show we have learned from past mistakes, these problems risk undermining the ecological and economic sustainabili- ty of affected communities worldwide — whether in Silicon Valley, the American Rust Belt, or Southern China. — Excerpted from High Tech Trash These cautionary warnings are in Chapter One, “The Underside of High Tech,” of this engaging and informative book. Readers learn that a San Francisco Bay harbor seal, herring swimming off the coast of Holland, a polar bear settling down in a den on the Arctic ice, a whale cruising the depths of the North Sea, a Chinook salmon heading into the Columbia River “on her way home to spawn,” a bottlenose dolphin leaping above the waves in the Gulf of Mexico, a seagoing tern laying an egg, and a mother nursing her baby in Sweden and another mother nursing her infant in Oakland (California), all have tissue samples that contain synthetic chemicals used to make fire-resistant plastics. These are the plastics found in “computers, televisions, cell phones, and other electronics.” Among the wide range of people tested for these chemicals, “Americans have the highest levels of these compounds in their blood.” Elizabeth Grossman is a terrific writer and researcher. She im - presses upon her readers that “how we choose to manufacture our high-tech products and how we remove our high-tech trash will have worldwide effects lasting decades, if not longer.” Even though we can replace cell phones and computers when needed, she reminds us that “watersheds and humans cannot have their hard drives wiped and their operating systems reinstalled if something goes wrong.” The Willamette River flows “very close” to Grossman’s front door. When she realized that high-tech manufacturing processes were com - promising the quality of the river, she “set out to explore what other
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