Can metals be used as tracers for organic contaminants in potentially e-waste-polluted environmental media?

Rüdel, Heniz, Abbasi, Golnoush, Popoola, Oluseun and Purchase, Diane ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8071-4385 (2017) Can metals be used as tracers for organic contaminants in potentially e-waste-polluted environmental media? In: 16th International Conference on Chemistry and the Environment (ICCE 2017), 18-22 June 2017, Oslo, Norway. . [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Abstract

Scientific literature reports on contamination of the ambient environment of e-waste dismantling and recycling facilities. Typical compounds emitted during e-waste recycling-related activities are toxic brominated flame retardants (BFR) and metals (including toxic metals like cadmium or lead).
E-waste recycling facilities are often operated in developing countries where the capabilities for environmental monitoring are limited. An environmental monitoring in order to protect the health of people living in the vicinity of such sites is often not implemented.

Since organic (trace) analysis is expensive and sophisticated analytical equipment may not be commonly available in smaller laboratories, the use of tracers for e-waste contaminations as a screening tool would be beneficial.

Here it will be discussed if one or several metal(s) could serve as tracer(s) for organic contaminants of e-waste. Analysis of most of the relevant metals is cheap and relatively easy to perform. At least a pre-selection of samples may be possible by this means so that only a few suspicious samples (high content of tracer(s) indicating possible e-waste impact) may have to be analyzed for organic pollutants to assess the potential risk.

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