After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
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Contaminated computers
Is your computer loaded? I don’t mean with software, speed and memory—I’m talking toxins.
The answer, in fact, is yes, but computer makers are dead set against telling us about this dirty little secret of their industry.
The typical PC contains about four pounds of toxic materials, including lead (in the circuit boards), which can damage the central nervous system; mercury (in the flat panel displays and switches), which can cause brain and kidney damage and birth defects; and PVCs (in the plastic wire coatings), which can produce dioxins.
Four pounds per PC adds up to real problems, since there are some 300 million computers that will be discarded in the U.S alone in the next couple of years.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Alternative materials are available to the corporations making these dirty machines, and the industry could implement take-back programs to recycle discarded computers, as is already done in Japan and much of Europe.
U.S. computer makers, however, insist that they aren’t in the recycling biz and that “consumers will tell manufacturers what they want.” How convenient! The industry doesn’t tell us about the toxic-waste dumps in our computers; then, since it’s not getting complaints, it assumes we approve.
To find out how your PC ranks on the dirty scale, contact the Silicon Valley Toxins Coalition: 408-287-6707.