There are three poisonous elements in the Apple iPhone I’d like to spotlight here to put you on the spot. There are many more horrific aspects to the high tech gadget — relating to the product itself and how it manages to get produced — but I don’t want to overload you at present. Right now… I just want to get you to act on this hot issue.
Bromine (Br), Chromium (Cr) and Lead (Pb) are considered highly toxic if you cross paths with them in a more than 20 parts per million (ppm) capacity. Well, take a gander at the eleven elements listed below, your takeaway focusing on the ppm designation.
- Flouride antenna circuit board, Br 100,000 ppm.
- Flexible printed circuit board, Br 90 ppm, Cr 180 ppm, Pb 80 ppm.
- Plastic surrounding headphone socket, Br 41,000 ppm, Cr 100 ppm.
- Flexible camera housing, Cr 160 ppm.
- Silver-colored battery casing, Cr 280 ppm.
- Foam rubber material surrounding microphone, Pb 60 ppm.
- Surface material of Samsung NAND flash memory chip, Br 2,400 ppm.
- Main rigid circuit board, Br 14,000.
- Solder connection to battery, Br 150 ppm.
- Surface material of chip with blue sticker, Br 3,200 ppm.
- Rubberized base material of USB cradle, Pb 50 ppm.
The above is drawn from documentation I have from 2008. Materials used have gotten worse since then, if you can believe that! Just as conditions in the Congo — the source of necessary minerals — have deteriorated immeasurably, immiserating many more than ever before.
What to do about this hot topic?
Rilke, in a poem published 100 years ago, said,
“You must change your life.”
Valleria Ruselli can be reached at [email protected]. The Oxman Collective, of which she is a member, has a “game plan” for dealing with the above, and specific advice on how to deal with the daunting challenge of radical personal transformation and the overall dynamic imposed on us by the proliferation of high tech gadgetry.