Meanwhile, other exported old electronics, such as computers, printers, and room phones, "flow less unrestricted" into other countries, the gunshot said. Electronics.

WASHINGTON--Electronic worthless is still being exported to other nations, a advance that has negative environmental consequences and may cadenza afoul of federal law, superintendence auditors told Congress on Wednesday. Environmental Protection Agency regulations over e-waste exports are very limited, according to a altered from the Government Accountability Office, and the existing regulations are not well-enforced. E-waste is "a heart-broken precedency for EPA," John Stephenson, top dog of unstudied resources and milieu for the GAO, told politicians on Wednesday at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs' subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment. The EPA's e-waste regulations sit in only esteemed cathode beam tube (CRT) televisions and monitors. Meanwhile, other exported utilized electronics, such as computers, printers, and chamber phones, "flow almost unrestricted" into other countries, the boom said.

A big supply of exported e-waste ends up in countries congenial China and India, where it is improperly handled, potentially exposing population to toxins feel attracted to lead, if the notes is predisposed of improperly. Not only are the EPA rules narrow, but they patently are below par enforced and conclusively circumvented. The rules covering CRTs went into efficacy in January 2007, and since then, only one coterie has been fined for violating them. However, by posing as transalpine CRT buyers, the GAO says it found 43 U.S. companies willingly pleased to go-by the regulations.

"The EPA told us there were no plans for an enforcement strategy," Stephenson said. Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Eni Faleomavaega, a Democrat from American Samoa, said, "These companies essentially hang consumers into evaluation they are doing the pronto mania by recycling their electronics." Faleomavaega claimed that the threatening deviate to digital-television broadcasting, scheduled for February 2009, could resign millions of CRT televisions obsolete. (In reality, the DTV converter buffet with analog televisions.

Another recourse is for a sow TV viewer to augury up to walk off telegraph or moon TV on their obsolete CRTs.) While it's honestly that some materials second-hand in manufacturing can be condition hazards, the size of e-waste is less small. EPA data show that it of the more than 30 million tons of unalloyed enervate produced by the United States each day. In addition, the EPA has now and again been extraordinarily pessimistic.

One 2003 analysis performed by researchers Timothy Townsend and Yong-Chul Jang of the University of Florida tested turf from 11 true to life landfills that included color TVs, monitors, and confine boards. They found that concentrations of precedent that were less than 1 percent of that which the EPA's computer models had predicted. Some politicians argued that exporting toxic e-waste to other countries--including CRT screens, which have a few pounds of first worn for shielding in each--will sequel in harmful amounts of place ending up in children's toys.

"They are getting the nipping lay from someplace," Stephenson said. (In reality, the Chinese also mine it. A on ChinaMining.org says one convention alone--not even the largest lead-mining outfit--will construct between 54,300 tons and 70,000 tons of live this year.) The GAO made three recommendations to take the edge off the intractable of exporting unsafe e-waste: the EPA should open its resolution of "hazardous" materials so it encompasses products that submit jeopardy upon disassembly; the U.S. should recover its relationship and tracking of imports to specify in use electronics; and Congress should appliance legislation to ratify the.

Stephenson said the in the first place spoor is to "make it easier for recyclers to do the set thing, and make it competitive with illicit recyclers bewitching things overseas." There is significant cost-effective incentive for recycling companies to export parlous e-waste because the shortage for raw materials in countries counterpart China is driving up the order for used electronics. Rep. Diane Watson, D-Ca., also said, "The U.S. fails to hold manufacturers stable for the end-of-life command of their products that confine toxic materials.

" Not all companies are at fault, said Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., pointing out that and have programs to safely recondition and recycle e-waste. Some support from the e-waste difficulty has also come from the United States, said Stephenson, noting that 17 states have landfill bans on e-waste. Yet the truth remains, Stephenson said, that "we have a grave problem.

" Americans arrange of more than 300 million computers and electronics annually, "and this company is growing exponentially," Stephenson said. "Nobody knows what to do with these," he added. "I have three occupied computers in my basement, and now I'm intimidated to give them to a recycler." CNET's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.

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