In a happy coincidence, given the movie I saw last night, I read an article on the front page of the Marketplace section of today’s Wall Street Journal (“Lead Toxins Take a Global Round Trip” by Gordon Fairclough) that the Chinese are unwittingly returning to America its exported toxic waste. According to recent studies, costume jewelry, of the sort sold in malls and discount stores in the U.S., often contains high levels of lead, which comes from computers and other electronics that are discarded by Western countries, then shipped to China as landfill scrap or for recycling.
This toxin could be racking up serious frequent-flyer miles. Most electronics sold in U.S. are made in China. So the lead starts there, as solder for electronics that are shipped to the U.S. where they’re eventually discarded and shipped back to China where the lead is stirpped, made into jewelry and shipped back to the U.S.