Giant Circuit Board in the Sky!

Another wonderfully strange spot on this Earth :).  Guiyu, China is the world's largest e-waste dumping site in the world.  E-waste includes old TV's, refrigerators, air-conditioners, old desktops, laptops, gadgets and so forth.  Oddly enough, many (if not most) of these gadgets were originally made in China, distributed around the globe, then return to China for their final resting place.  The United Nations report that about 70% of electric waste generated ends up in China. Unfortunately, much of the e-waste that finds it's way to China comes through illegal channels from developed countries such as the United States.   For the past 10 years,  the town of Guiyu, located in China's manufacturing zone, has been the major hub for tech trash.  As a result, hundreds of thousands of Chinese have become experts on dismantling the world's junk.  On every street, you will find laborers sitting outside dismantling of a variety of appliances with a variety of tools.  The local roads are lined with bundles of wires, cables, circuit boards and other e-waste.  Women can be found roadside raking in ankle deep fields of plastic chips.  This is most likely one of the world's largest informal recycling operations of electronic waste. As it is not regulated,  it can be quite hazardous and hugely dangerous for the environment. Local children have high levels of lead in their blood,  buffalo graze around ponds filled with  electronic components with lables such as IBM, Epson and Dell. Mercury escapes into the environment when dismantling flat screen TVs and other tech trash, effecting mercury levels in the fish we each.  The workers seem to be somewhat aware of the hazards related to the job, however most of these workers come from areas of great poverty. The locals  fear drinking well water or eating locally grown foods such as rice.  When asked who eats the rice,  a one man reported "How should I know?  A lot of it is sold off.. they don't dare label the rice from here as 'grown in Guiyu'.  They'll write it's rice from some other place." Most of the toxic pollution is a result of burning circuit boards, plastic and copper wires or washing with hydrochloric acid to recover valuable metals.  First time visitors to Guiyu reports burning sensations in their eyes and nostrils.  So next time you toss out your tech trash,  you have a pretty good idea where it might be heading :(.