We love our smart phones and flat screen TVs, but they might not love us. An international research team led by University of Saskatchewan environmental toxicologist John Giesy has discovered 362 chemicals in the pixels in our electronic displays including phones, computer monitors, flat screen televisions, tablets and solar panels. Of these, nearly half have significant potential to cause toxicity.
Giesy says there are currently no standards for quantifying these chemicals, and no regulatory standards. Once these liquid crystal monomers were found, the team tested dust in various environments and found them in nearly half of the samples.
The chemicals are released during manufacturing and during recycling, and can be released if your screen breaks or heats up.
Giesy explains that in China, people are hired to break down e-waste from around the world, and often it’s done by starting them on fire in a backyard or neighbourhood to melt the plastic, so that would be a time when lots of these chemicals would be released, more so than what the average Canadian would experience. He doesn’t know at this point how toxic these chemicals are, but says at one of the sites they studied, 27 per cent of the birth outcomes were either stillborn or there was a deformity.