While it is well known that the high-tech revolution has radically transformed late 20th century civilization, it is less well known that high tech development also harms people's health as well as the environment that sustains all life. The dark side of high technology reveals polluted drinking water and birth defects, waste discharges that harm fish and wildlife and high rates of miscarriages and cancer clusters among workers. The high tech electronics industry uses vast amounts of dangerous chemicals and significantly depletes natural resources to fuel its global expansion and rapidly changing product lines. There are few other products for which the sum of the environmental impacts of raw material extraction, industrial refining and production, use and disposal is so extensive.

In general, electronic computer equipment is a complicated assembly of more than 1,000 materials, many of which are highly toxic, such as chlorinated and brominated substances, toxic gases, toxic metals, photo-active and biologically active materials, acids, plastics and plastic additives. Comprehensive health impacts of the mixtures and material combinations in the products are often not known. The production of semiconductors, printed circuit boards, disk drives and monitors uses particularly hazardous chemicals, and workers in chip manufacturing are reporting cancer clusters and birth defects. In addition, new evidence is revealing that computer recycling employees have high levels of dangerous chemicals in their blood.

The list of toxic components in computers also includes lead and cadmium in computer circuit boards, lead oxide and barium in computer monitors' cathode ray tubes, mercury in switches and flat screens, and brominated flame retardants on printed circuit boards, cables and plastic casing. When we consider the fact that all landfills leak--even the best are not completely tight and eventually allow a certain amount of chemical and metal leaching-the mountains of e-waste destined for landfills is particularly disturbing.

The fundamental dynamism of computer manufacturing that has transformed life in the second half of the 20th century -- especially the speed of innovation -- also leads to rapid product obsolescence and insufficient focus on environmental and social impacts of expanding production. The average computer platform now has a life-span of about two years, and hardware and software companies constantly generate new programs that demand more speed, memory and power. Today, it is usually cheaper and more convenient to buy a new machine to accommodate the newer generations of technology than it is to upgrade the old. Experts estimate that by the year 2004, the US will have over 315 million obsolete computers, many of which will be destined for landfills, incinerators or hazardous waste exports.

While the high-tech image makers extol the "clean industry", the majority of high-tech assembly workers are women of color and often immigrants, who toil in the most hazardous and lowest paying jobs. Likewise, residents who live in the most polluted neighborhoods are disproportionately low income and people of color. To make matters worse is the persistence of the digital divide-the difference between the groups with the most and the least access to information technology-between the information rich (typically Whites and some Asians/Pacific Islanders, and those with higher income and education levels) and the information poor (typically African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and many Asian-Americans), those with low income and education levels, those who are younger and those in rural areas or central cities).