Graduation date: 1994

Graduation date: 1991

This study compares the procedures of formal and informal e-waste recycling; and investigates the relationship between informal e-waste recycling and the health of residents living near the recycling facilities. The informal e-waste recycling facilities are mainly located in developing countries and are operated by illegally receiving e-waste from developed countries. In these informal recycling businesses, the procedures are raw and crude without any measures in pollution control and state-of-the-art technologies, suggesting the health of the workers and residents living nearby are at risk. By conducting human health risk assessment based on the data from Guiyu town located in China, the actual exposure level of PCDD/Fs for infants is estimated. The total exposure level of infants to PCDD/Fs in Guiyu is 61.5 pg WHO-TEQ 〖kg〗^(-1) 〖day〗^(-1); among the total exposure level, dietary route accounts for over 90%. The total exposure value has also exceeded the WHO standards by 61 times at most, which reflects a harmful level of local PCDD/Fs exposure to the infants and management measures are needed. Implication can be drawn that not only the infants, but also people living near the facilities of informal e-waste recycling, including the mothers and residents are under high level of exposure to PCDD/Fs and other hazardous chemicals presented in the recycling process. Management and regulations are the weaknesses of developing countries to handle the issues on e-waste. The study reviews the e-waste management and regulations in China, India and Nigeria; their common properties have been revealed, including the lack of enforcement and the misconceptions of e-waste. Regarding the national level of regulations and legislations, recommendations have been drawn. Measures in adopting licensing system for recycling business, adopting financial mechanism on top of the existing the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system to limit the use of hazardous chemicals, setting up special department for better regulating and enforcing e-waste related issues and enhancing the public education towards e-waste are of benefits. The study suggests an action plan using China as an example to illustrate how the country could act upon the existing regulations and legislations of e-waste issues. The plan could also be adopted by the other developing countries regarding their own conditions. / published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

Every day a vast number of electrical and electronic equipments (EEE) end up as waste (e-waste); some of them would be scrapped, others were just obsolete. Without adequate infrastructure to manage e-waste, developing countries are suffering severe environmental impacts induced from e-waste which is either internally generated or imported illegally and facing huge challenges in managing it properly. This study aims at evaluating environmental impacts at prominent primitive e-waste recycling domains in China and proposing integrated approaches to its e-waste management. To explore the severity of environmental impacts due to primitive e-waste recycling, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) were selected to be the contamination indicator in this study because of their high deployment in EEE as flame-retardants and high toxicity. The levels and distributions of PBDEs in air, soil, sediment, biota and human from the two most prominent informal e-waste processing domains in China, Guiyu and Taizhou, were evaluated and all resulted in several orders of magnitude higher than those international comparison values, suggesting a causal relationship between the release of PBDEs during e-waste recycling and the determined concentrations in environmental components, biota and humans. The findings clearly indicate an urgent need for better monitoring and control of the informal recycling sector in China. However, the distinct situations in China pose challenges in managing e-waste: (i) profitability of informal e-waste recycling; (ii) environmental undesirability of trial take-back scheme; (iii) lax governance and law enforcement; and (vi) problems of orphan waste and free riders. To address these challenges and effectively manage e-waste in China, a three-pronged practicable approach, consisting of global initiatives, regional initiatives, and voluntary private initiatives, is proposed. / published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation was motivated by the problem of pattern and scale in ecology. All chapters present models that aim at predicting species’ responses to habitat fragmentation. Chapters differ mainly in the nature of the responses being investigated: spatial variation in abundance, or dispersal. In each chapter, I illustrate how current models can be modified to incorporate species’ perception of the landscape. Three sources of bias have been examined here: interspecific variation in (i) ecological neighborhood, (ii) ecological generalization, and (iii) in the response to regional processes. I have deliberately moved away from traditional single-scale, patch-based measures of landscape connectivity. Great emphasis has been placed on the anthropogenic aspect of the landscape, and on the role of the landscape matrix. Habitat fragmentation is a common feature of most (if not all) biodiversity hotspots. I hope the tools shown here can serve as general approaches to study how species are differentially affected by habitat fragmentation, and to ultimately understand how disturbed landscapes can “filter” natural communities. / text

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