Workers in Guiyu scavenge precious metals inside unwanted computers, exposing themselves to toxic hazards in the process. -- AP

In towns such as this one on China's south-eastern coast, vast quantities of obsolete electronics shipped in from the United States, Europe and Japan are piled in mountains of waste.

Even as entire communities, including children, earn their livelihoods by scavenging metals, glass and plastic from the dumps, the technological garbage is poisoning the water and soil and raising serious health concerns.

China's role as dumping ground for the world's unwanted gadgets is an outgrowth of efforts by wealthy countries to protect their own environments.

Many governments are encouraging the recycling of computers to keep them out of landfills and prevent heavy metals from seeping into drinking water. But breaking computers down into reusable raw materials is labour-intensive and expensive.

In the US alone, where more than 40 million computers became obsolete in 2001, according to a National Safety Council report, as much as 80 per cent of the machines collected by recyclers are being sold to Asian middlemen, put on ships and sent to Asia.

The real costs are being borne by the people on the receiving end of the 'e-waste'. In towns along China's coast as well as in India and Pakistan, adults and children work for about US$1.20 (S$2.08) a day in unregulated and unsafe conditions.

As rivers and soils absorb a mounting influx of carcinogens (cancer-causing agents) and other toxins, people are suffering high incidences of birth defects, infant mortality, tuberculosis and blood diseases, as well as particularly severe respiratory problems, according to recent reports by the state-controlled Guangdong Radio and the Beijing Youth newspaper.

At the same time, China's transition to a market economy has sharply widened the gap in living standards between thriving coastal regions and impoverished interior areas.

That explains why so many have come here from other places to try to harvest fortune out of the electronics refuse from abroad.

'It's a little bit dirty, but OK,' said Mr Wang Guangde, 27, a farmer from Szechuan.

The workers acknowledge the cuts on their fingers - infections that do not heal. Stubborn, hacking coughs testify to the poorly-ventilated places in which they breathe noxious fumes.

Mostly, they focus on the cash they are earning.

'It's dangerous, yes, but no money is more dangerous,' said an 18-year-old woman named Lin, who came to Guiyu from a neighbouring province for work.

'No money means you'll die of hunger.' -- LAT-WP

THIS DUMP IS OUR SURVIVAL

'We need this work. If the government shuts it (the computer dump) down, it will just move somewhere else and we'll move with it.'
- A farmer from Guizhou province