Safety First – Even Outside Our Industry

One man stands with what appears to be an old seat cushion strapped to the top of his head, while another man welds steel while wearing a pair of cheap sunglasses and a piece of newspaper over his face. In another image, three hefty men stand on one end of a flimsy wooden plank while their coworker stands on the opposite end, which extends like a narrow bridge over a precipice so he can reach his work target.

Because of my interest and reputation in environmental health and safety standards, a friend of mine in the healthcare industry forwarded some photographs depicting a few obvious safety violations in China. The pictures feature what appear to be shipbuilders working with tools and without any kind of protection. At first I was amused by the ridiculous imagery, until I suddenly realized these poor workers were merely trying to protect themselves from the hazards offered by their jobs. These individuals have nothing more than handmade protective devices torn from newspapers or discarded seat covers because no one provides them with the appropriate safety gear to protect them from on-the-job dangers or long-term exposure to toxic chemicals.

Redemtech often expounds on its philosophy to properly dismantle and dispose of electronics equipment and in particular, to keep e-waste from being shipped to other nations like China, where environmental standards do not exist or are systematically ignored. But our interest in environmental, health and safety standards for all people and all industries extends to situations like those depicted in the photographs I received.

Part of the reason we in America pay so little for Chinese-manufactured goods is because many of the companies producing those items pay no heed to safety, health and environmental concerns we take for granted in the U.S. We never want to see people exposed to toxic chemicals or work situations where a dirty old cushion takes the place of a hard hat, but unfortunately these scenes are common in China and other nations.

According to an Associated Press news media article that captured our attention in late 2007, China now produces more than 1 million tons of e-waste each year, with most of it originating in Western nations that dump their electronics in Asia. More than 90% of e-waste ends up in dumps that observe no environmental standards. In fact, the only standards that exist in these places are the universal use of makeshift shredders, open fires and acid baths that permit low-paid workers to extract the precious metals from electronics equipment and discard the rest.

The results are obvious. People get sick from handling and inhaling fumes from toxic waste. Others can be permanently injured or even killed by the dangerous conditions they must face to work. Our efforts must be united to do what we can to fight against dangerous work conditions in Asia and elsewhere, where a lack of environmental, health and safety policies is as useless as a paper mask against a shower of deadly fumes.