刚看了 CBS 网站的一则消息，心情很沉重。
这则报道说，几个 CBS 记者调查每年美国扔掉的计算机，手机到哪里去了，最后发现某个（某些）公司把电子废料非法运输到中国南方。当地政府先是给来访的记者参观一些先进的处理车间，可是第二天记者们想方设法找到了更多的处理地点。许多农民们正在用原始的化学方法溶解，熔炼这些电子废物里的金属，造成废水，浓烟对环境的大范围污染。在那里生活的十个孩子中有八个体内含铅量超标，许多化学毒物令当地工人身患癌症。
如果觉得下文太长，只看黑体字部分也能了解大致情况。
Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste
60 Minutes Follows
(CBS) 60 Minutes is going to take you to one of the most toxic places on Earth - a place government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. It's a town in
It's worth risking a visit because much of the poison is coming out of the homes, schools and offices of
That wasteland is piled with the burning remains of some of the most expensive, sophisticated stuff that consumers crave. And 60 Minutes and correspondent Scott Pelley discovered that the gangs who run this place wanted to keep it a secret.
What are they hiding? The answer lies in the first law of the digital age: newer is better. In with the next thing, and out with the old TV, phone or computer. All of this becomes obsolete, electronic garbage called "e-waste."
Computers may seem like sleek, high-tech marvels. But what’s inside them?
"Lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides. All of these materials have known toxicological effects that range from brain damage to kidney disease to mutations, cancers," Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist and authority on waste management at the Natural Resources Defense Council, explained.
"The problem with e-waste is that it is the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide," he said.
Asked what he meant by "fastest-growing," Hershkowitz said. "Well, we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the
And he said over 100 million cell phones are thrown out annually.
At a recycling event in
Asked what he thought happens once his e-waste goes into recycling, one man told Pelley, "Well my assumption is they break it apart and take all the heavy metals and out and then try to recycle some of the stuff that's bad."
Most folks in line were hoping to do the right thing, expecting that their waste would be recycled in state-of-the-art facilities that exist here in
Executive Recycling, of
That policy helped Brandon Richter, the CEO of Executive Recycling, win a contract with the city of
Asked what the problem is with shipping this waste overseas, Richter told Pelley , "Well, you know, they've got low-income labor over there. So obviously they don't have all of the right materials, the safety equipment to handle some of this material."
Executive does recycling in-house, but 60 Minutes was curious about shipping containers that were leaving its
It turns out the container that started in Denver was just one of thousands of containers on an underground, often illegal smuggling route, taking America's electronic trash to the Far East. Our guide to that route was Jim Puckett, founder of the Basel Action Network, a watchdog group named for the treaty that is supposed to stop rich countries from dumping toxic waste on poor ones. Puckett runs a program to certify ethical recyclers. And he showed 60 Minutes what's piling up in
"It's literally acres of computer monitors," Pelley commented. "Is it legal to import all of these computer monitors into
"No way. It is absolutely illegal, both from the standpoint of Hong Kong law but also
(CBS) 60 Minutes followed the trail to a place Puckett discovered in southern
So he personally drove us to a shop.
"Let me explain what's happening here," Pelley remarked while in Guiyu. "We were brought into the mayor's office. The mayor told us that we're essentially not welcome here, but he would show us one place where computers are being dismantled and this is that place. A pretty tidy shop. The mayor told us that we would be welcome to see the rest of the town, but that the town wouldn't be prepared for our visit for another year.
"So we were allowed to shoot at that location for about five minutes,” Pelley explained further. “And we're back in the mayor's car headed back to City Hall, where I suspect we'll be given another cup of tea and sent on our way out of town with a police escort no doubt."
And we were. But the next day, in a different car and on a different road, we got in.
"This is really the dirty little secret of the electronic age," Jim Puckett said.
Greenpeace has been filming around Guiyu and caught the recycling work. Women were heating circuit boards over a coal fire, pulling out chips and pouring off the lead solder. Men were using what is literally a medieval acid recipe to extract gold. Pollution has ruined the town. Drinking water is trucked in. Scientists have studied the area and discovered that Guiyu has the highest levels of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. They found pregnancies are six times more likely to end in miscarriage, and that seven out of ten kids have too much lead in their blood.
"These people are not just working with these materials, they're living with them. They're all around their homes," Pelley told Allen Hershkowitz.
"The situation in Guiyu is actually pre-capitalist. It's mercantile. It reverts back to a time when people lived where they worked, lived at their shop. Open, uncontrolled burning of plastics. Chlorinated and brominated plastics is known worldwide to cause the emission of polychlorinated and polybrominated dioxins. These are among the most toxic compounds known on earth," Hershkowitz explained.
"We have a situation where we have 21st century toxics being managed in a 17th century environment."
The recyclers are peasant farmers who couldn't make a living on the land. Destitute, they've come by the thousands to get $8 a day. Greenpeace introduced us to some of them. They were afraid and didn't want to be seen, but theirs are the hands that are breaking down
"The air I breathe in every day is so pungent I can definitely feel it in my windpipe and affecting my lungs. It makes me cough all the time," one worker told Pelley, with the help of a translator.
"If you're worried about your lungs and you're burning your hands, do you ever think about giving this up?" Pelley asked.
"Yes, I have thought of it," the worker said.
Asked why he doesn't give it up, the worker told him, "Because the money’s good."
"You know, it struck me, talking to those workers the other day, that they were destitute and they're happy to have this work," Pelley told Puckett.
"Well, desperate people will do desperate things," Puckett replied. “But we should never put them in that situation. You know, it's a hell of a choice between poverty and poison. We should never make people make that choice.”
Pelley, Puckett, and the 60 Minutes team passed by a riverbed that had been blackened by the ash of burned e-waste.
"Oh, man, this is - it's unbelievably acrid and choking," Pelley said, coughing.
"This is an ash river. This is detritus from burning all this material and this is what the kids get to play in," Puckett explained.
After a few minutes in the real recycling area, we were jumped.
Several men struggled for our cameras. The mayor hadn't wanted us to see this place, and neither did the businessmen who were profiting from it. They got a soil sample that we'd taken for testing, but we managed to wrestle the cameras back.
What were they afraid of?
"They're afraid of being found out," Puckett said. "This is smuggling. This is illegal. A lot of people are turning a blind eye here. And if somebody makes enough noise, they're afraid this is all gonna dry up."
(CBS) Back in
And Brandon Richter, CEO of Executive Recycling, was still warning of the dangers of shipping waste to
Then Pelley told him we'd tracked his container to
"This is a photograph from your yard, the Executive Recycling yard,” Pelley told Richter, showing him a photo we’d taken of a shipping container in his yard. “We followed this container to Hong Kong."
"Okay," Richter replied.
"And I wonder why that would be?" Pelley asked.
"Hmm. I have no clue," Richter said.
"The Hong Kong customs people opened the container…and found it full of CRT screens which, as you probably know, is illegal to export to
"Yeah, yep," Richter replied. "I don't know if that container was filled with glass. I doubt it was. We don't fill glass, CRT glass in those containers."
"This container was in your yard, filled with CRT screens, and exported to
"No, absolutely not. Yeah," Richter said.
"Can you explain that?" Pelley asked.
"Yeah, it's not - it was not filled in our facility," Richter said.
But that's where 60 Minutes filmed it. And we weren't the only ones asking questions. It turns out Hong Kong customs intercepted the container and sent it back to Executive Recycling, Englewood, Colorado, the contents listed as "waste: cathode ray tubes."
"I know this is your job," Richter told Pelley. "But, unfortunately, you know, when you attack small business owners like this and you don't have all your facts straight, it's unfortunate, you know?"
But here's one more fact: the federal Government Accountability Office set up a sting in which
原文链接：
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/06/60minutes/main4579229.shtml
