E-waste and other toxic pollution threatens hundreds of millions

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide risk exposure to toxic pollution, environmental groups warned, publishing a list of the world's worst areas, including an African processing site for European electronics.

"We estimate that the health of more than 200 million people is at risk from pollution in the developing world," said Richard Fuller, who heads US-based environment watchdog the Blacksmith Institute.

The institute and Green Cross Switzerland on Monday published a new top 10 list of what they say are the "World's Worst Polluted Places" - their first since 2007 - based on more than 2,000 risk assessments at contaminated sites in 49 countries.

Unlike the list six years ago, which was dominated by Chinese and Indian sites, those two countries are missing from the list published on Monday. "There has been a reasonably strong movement towards clean-up in India and China," Blacksmith research director Jack Caravanos told reporters.

West Africa's second largest processing area for the world's piles of electronic waste, at Agbogbloshie in Ghana's capital, Accra, was among the new additions. Each year, Ghana imports about 215,000 tonnes of secondhand consumer electronics, mainly from western Europe. That amount is expected to at least double by 2020, according to the report.

The main health concern linked to e-waste processing in Ghana is the burning of sheathed cables to recover the copper inside, the report said, pointing out that the cables can often contain a range of heavy metals, including lead.

Soil samples from around Agbogbloshie have shown concentrations of that toxic metal that are 45 times more than accepted levels, the report said.