Toxic TVs

What are the Toxics in TV?

Televisions contain toxic materials harmful to humans and our environment, including heavy metal like lead, mercury, and cadmium, brominated flame retardants, and PVC.

CRT monitors and TVs contain between four to eight pounds of lead. 1   As they break down in a landfill, they can leach toxic chemicals into groundwater. This has led some states to ban them from their landfills, and the EPA to classify them as hazardous waste.

Now with LCDs dominating the TV market, we face mercury contamination problems, since LCDs use mercury lamps to light their screens.  Milligrams of mercury are used in each LCD, but it is so toxic that as little as one gram of airborne mercury deposited per year to a 20-acre lake is enough to maintain mercury contamination at a level where the fish are unsafe to eat. About 40% of the heavy metals, including lead, mercury and cadmium, found in landfills come from electronic equipment discards.

Toxin Where is it in a TV? Health Effects
 Lead: CRT TVs have 4-8 lbs of lead in them, mostly in the CRT tube itself, with some lead in circuit board solder. The health effects of lead are well known; lead exposure causes brain damage in children and has already been banned from many consumer products.
Mercury: Many flat panel TVs contain several mercury lamps to light the screen. Mercury is toxic in very low doses, and causes brain and kidney damage. It can be passed on through breast milk. In a 2000 report, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that over 60,000 babies are born each year at risk for neurodevelopmental (nervous system) defects associated with high exposure to methylmercury in the womb.2
Cadmium: Cadmium is contained in the phosphor coating inside most color CRT TVs and monitors. Cadmium is a known cancer-causing substance.3 It accumulates in the body and can cause kidney damage.
BFRs: BFRs are flame retardants used both in TV plastic housings (cases) and on circuit boards. Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) may seriously affect hormonal functions critical for normal development. A recent study of dust on computers in workplaces and homes found BFRs in every sample taken. One group of BFRs has been found in alarming rates in the breast milk of women in Sweden and the U.S.Incineration of plastics containing BFRs generates toxic brominated dioxins and furans.
Plastics: lastics, including PVC, are used in printed circuit boards, in connectors, plastic covers & cables. Hazardous chemical additives (like phthalates) can leach when PVC components of electronic products are landfilled, and burning PVC produces dioxins, a group of the most potent synthetic chemicals ever tested, which can harm the immune and reproductive systems, and some of which are known to cause cancer.4The U.S. EPA estimates that levels of dioxin contamination in the general population is at or near the level at which adverse health effects can be observed in both humans and animals. PVC manufacture and disposal adds to both the phthalate and dioxin body burden in all of us.5
Beryllium: Beryllium is commonly found on connectors, switches, relays. Beryllium is a human carcinogen.6

 

1 Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC). 1996. Electronics IndustryEnvironmental Roadmap. Austin, TX: MCC.

2 National Academy of Sciences, Toxicological Effects of Methyl Mercury, 2000. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309071402

3 Greenpeace, Toxic Tech–Chemicals in Electronics, 2005

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/toxic-tech-chemicals-in-elec4 “PVC: Bad News Comes in Threes”, Center for Health and Environmental Justice, December 2004. Page 23.

5 Coming Clean, Body Burden Case Studies http://www.chemicalbodyburden.org.

6 Greenpeace, Toxic Tech–Chemicals in Electronics, 2005 http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/toxic-tech-chemicals-in-elec