Maybe we need to get one of Douglas Adams’ exiled telephone sanitizers.
Maybe we need to get one of Douglas Adams’ exiled telephone sanitizers... Anyway, how toxic is the
iPhone 5? It may or may not surprise anyone to known that mobile phones have long contained toxic materials—stuff such as mercury and lead can be found in components such as the screen, solder, processor, and other internal parts. (This is common to most electronic devices, so phones are not the only ones.) However, a new
study rates the relative levels (note the use of the term “relative levels”) of toxics in 36 different phones from the major handset manufacturers. Says
GreenBiz:
Samsung phones had the highest average rating of all phones tested. While Apple showed the greatest improvement of any manufacturer in the study among phone models released in the last five years, none of the phones tested was free of toxic chemicals.
“Even the best phones from our study are still loaded with chemical hazards,” said Jeff Gearhart, research director at the Ecology Center and founder of HealthyStuff.org. “These chemicals, which are linked to birth defects, impaired learning and other serious health problems, have been found in soils at levels 10 to 100 times higher than background levels at e-waste recycling sites in China. We need better federal regulation of these chemicals, and we need to create incentives for the design of greener consumer electronics.”
The good news is that handset manufacturers are cleaning up their acts, and newer models are increasingly less toxic than previous generations. Some of the improvements, says GreenBiz:
- Using less hazardous resins, including thermoplastic copolymers and polyamide to replace PVC in cabling and other applications;
- Avoiding the need for cabling through simplified design
- Using mercury-free LCD displays and arsenic-free glass
- Using bromine- and chlorine-free printed circuit board laminates
- Moving to less toxic, reactive phosphorous-based flame retardant chemistries
However, that may not necessarily be a good thing: if more people upgrade to less toxic handsets, then that means they’ll be discarding (in some way) their older, more toxic handsets, unleashing them out in the environment. So be careful what you wish for, as they say.
