Electronic waste and their leachates impact on human health and environment: Global ecological threat and management

TLDR

Electronic waste, a major component of global solid waste, contains hazardous halogenated compounds and heavy metals that adversely affect plants, microbes, and human health, and current disposal technologies are inadequate, especially in developing countries. This review investigates the global generation of e‑waste and its impact on soil, plants, microbes, animals, and humans, while also exploring strategies for recovering valuable metals. The authors examine various recovery methods for extracting valuable metals from e‑waste. The review concludes that conventional disposal practices must be replaced with advanced, eco‑friendly approaches to manage e‑waste.

Abstract

Electronic waste is an important part of solid waste management around the world. Being a large part of the solid waste, e-waste contains numerous hazardous components in the form of halogenated compounds like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), etc. along with other toxic materials which cause an adverse impact on the plants, microbes and human beings. One of the major toxic components of e-waste are heavy metals (HMs) like As, Cr, Cd, Cu, and Hg, which needs to be handled carefully at the time of dismantling the e-wastes, being managed by informal sector in developing countries compounds the problem, also, the available disposal/treatment technologies of e-waste are inadequate, and they have a direct as well as indirect impact on human health and the environment. This review deals with the quantity of e-waste generated globally and how its different components affect important factors of the ecosystem like soil, plants, microbes, and animals, including humans. This review also deals the recovery of valuable metals using various methods. This review concludes that, there is a quintessential need to replace conventional traditional procedures with futuristic state of the art eco-friendly approaches to manage e-waste.