Electronic Waste (e-waste) Assignment

E-WASTE

Contents
• How much e-waste is generated?..................................................................................................2
• Hazardous characteristics of e-waste............................................................................................2
• Regulatory requirements for e-waste............................................................................................3
• What currently happens to e-waste?..............................................................................................3
• Is current regulation enough to protect the public from e-waste both here and abroad?..............4
References........................................................................................................................................5

• How much e-waste is generated?
As per the analysis, it is seen that there is an e-waste generation from the discarded TV,
computers including the printer, scanner, fax machines. With this, there are issues related to the
metric tons of e-waste where the cell phones and the other electronic items contain a high
amount of metals like the gold or silver (Al-Anzi et al., 2017). In 2014, it was seen that
approximately 41.8 million tons of e-waste was generated with the quantity that included 12.8
million tons of the other small equipment where 11.8 million were the large equipment as well.
Here, there were 6.5 million tons of the total global e-waste generation in 2014 which was
mainly treated with the national electronic take-back systems. Here, US generated 11.7 million
tons of e-waste in 2014, where the EPA also claim about the e-waste that is from the screens and
the monitors. There is a need to work over the wastes from mobile phones, TVs and the
computers which are recycled completely (Breivik et al., 2014).
• Hazardous characteristics of e-waste
The hazardous waste has an adverse effect of the exposure of lead which includes the impaired
cognitive function with some cognitive functions, behavioural disturbance and the attention
deficits with hyperactivity. It also effects the children where the damage is of the nervous
systems that is susceptible to the damage mainly due to the lead, cadmium and the mercury. The
other health effects include the impairments due to the sensory approach, memory loss and the
muscle weakness (Dutta et al., 2017). There is a major exposure that cause the fatal deficits in
the motor function attention and the verbal domains. The inhalation of the cadmium can directly
cause the damage to the lungs which is associated to the deficiency in cognition learning,
behaviour and the neuromotor skills in children. The evidences are about the inhibit cell