Assessment of air pollution caused by illegal e-waste burning to evaluate the human health risk

The onset of the 21st century has started a corresponding change in consumer lifestyles, resulting in the generation of a huge amount of the end-of-life electronics, known as e-waste. The e-waste recycling activities can pose a high risk to the environment and human health. We monitored air pollution levels (PM₁₀) and heavy metal concentrations (Pb, Cu, Zn, Ni and Cr) in the air for three consecutive months in an area where illegal e-waste recycling was in operation and compared the results with other two residential sites. In addition, we measured the concentrations of the same heavy metals in human blood to find out if there exists any correlation between environmental and biological exposure. Hypoxemia and hypertension were also determined for the comparison of health status amongst the study population. The study design comprised of three sites, which were selected on the basis of different major activities in the respective areas. Air samples were collected with the help of RDS and subjected to heavy metals analysis by ICP-OES, whereas blood samples were analyzed by ICP-MS. Results showed that amongst all study sites significant highest mean concentration of PM₁₀ (243.310 ± 22.729 μg/m³) and its heavy metal was found at e-waste burning site (SIII). High levels of heavy metal in the air were responsible for the higher exposure to the residents of SIII. Therefore, the study concluded that e-waste burning by the informal sector has significantly contributed to the high levels of the air pollution, which in turn was responsible for the highest level of heavy metal exposure to the residents. This was also associated with the occurrence of cardiovascular morbidity namely hypertension amongst the inhabitants of SIII may indicate the effect of chronic exposure to the air pollution due to e-waste processing activities, which needs to be studied further.