The other day, we posted an image on our Facebook page of a computer monitor enduring its final hell on earth: Sitting left to rot in a sulfur creek–or the shit crick–in Tharptown PA..
A comment on the post was true:
It really angers me the amount of TV’s old CRT monitors, and mattresses I see littering the roadside and landscape. Way too many.
How true that is..
The dangers of throwing monitors away are known–imagine if those same dangers are just left to rot in water..
Hazardous materials in electronics that are dumped and left alone can leach into the earth and make their way into water supplies. If the devices are incinerated, there are additional dangers when the ashes produced by burning heavy metals and plastics are carried into the atmosphere and settle on land and in water, where their detrimental effects can become part of the food chain..
Cathode ray tubes in older televisions and computer monitors typically contain lead and other metallic elements and compounds that have immediate adverse health effects on humans and animals. Heavy metals, including mercury and chromium, also reside in components like switches, connectors, and circuit boards.
These monitors, TVs, and other electronics, are littering the landscape of the former great coal region.
Like that in Tharptown, now dyed brown by history’s refuse…
