High technology feels so clean—no coal or steam or mess, just cool aluminum, sleek plastics, and polished glass. But that clean surface hides an interior that is far messier and more toxic. In partnership with HealthyStuff.org, we bring you a chemical analysis of 36 mobile phones, including the iPhone 5.
Of course, many people realize that electronics manufacturing requires enormous amounts of energy, materials, and toxic chemicals. The highly neurotoxic n-hexane, used during manufacturing to clean glass, is still poisoning cell phone plant workers more than a year after reports of sick workers first surfaced. But it’s easy to forget that toxic chemicals also lurk behind your phone’s smooth face and behind your computer’s keyboard. Yet lurk they do: high tech parts are made up of hazardous flame retardants, PVC, bromine, and heavy metals such as lead, mercury, tin, cadmium, and chromium. The list is long and rightfully intimidating. These are not things we want in our water or air.
What hazardous chemicals, precisely, are found in mobile phones? Until recently, most answers to that question were speculative. Manufacturers are tight-lipped about their secret recipes, which they keep under strict lock and key. The only sure way to know what is in today’s mobile phones is to take them apart and analyze their chemical contents. So we teamed up with HealthyStuff.org to do exactly that.
In general, the results are hopeful. Newer phones are being made with fewer hazardous chemicals: every phone that was ranked of “high concern” was released before 2010. The newest phones, including the iPhone 5, are some of the best. Nevertheless, many toxics remain.
Why does it matter? Toxic chemicals don’t disappear when you throw your phone away. Though electronics recycling is up in general in the US, cell phone recycling rates lag behind. Each year, Americans discard 130 million cell phones, of which only 8% are recycled properly. When phones are not recycled, they often end up in landfills or incinerators, which can release heavy metals into groundwater and air, respectively.
Some states ban electronics from landfills and incinerators, but currently, 32 states have no such ban. After a company dumped electrical equipment at one landfill in Indiana, for example, 41,748 tons of land, including the groundwater underneath, were contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, which are linked to liver, thyroid, and immune diseases. Though operating landfills are required to keep leachate within EPA limits, when the landfill is full and finally capped, liners stop undergoing repair and the remaining electronics will continue to leach toxics into the soil. Researchers at a Florida university found that lead from cathode ray tubes leached at more than three times the EPA regulatory limit.
Even sending a phone to an electronics recycler will not always keep it from polluting the environment. Some “recyclers” actually ship used electronics overseas to places such as Ghana, China, and India. In the best cases, these electronics are refurbished or repaired, used, and eventually dumped (usually in landfills without expensive liners to protect groundwater). Unfortunately, formal recycling practices in developing countries are currently minimal at best, where they exist at all.
Occasionally, unsalvageable electronics are informally recycled in much more harmful ways—for example, dissolved in open-acid baths in Guiyu or burned by young workers in Agbogbloshie. There are precious metals in electronics. One million recycled phones contain 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, and 75 pounds of gold. Thus, dissolving or burning circuit boards to get at the copper within can be profitable, but it can result in elevated blood lead levels and poses many other serious risks to workers’ health.
Throwing a phone away doesn’t make it disappear. As William McDonough and Michael Braungart, authors of Cradle to Cradle, put it, “‘Away’ does not really exist. ‘Away’ has gone away.” The chemicals inside phones have a serious and far-reaching global impact.
So, to learn more about chemicals in phones on the market today, HealthyStuff.org researchers took apart 36 phones and submitted their components to X-ray fluorescence spectrometry—a process that determines the chemical composition of a material. The researchers then rated and ranked the phones on a scale of 0 – 5, lowest being best, in three ways: by chemical (for each of 12 commonly found hazardous chemicals, such as bromine, mercury, and lead), by component (case, screen, solder, circuit board, etc.), and overall.
By overall ranking, six of the 36 phones are of “low concern” (including the iPhone 5, the Motorola Citrus, and the Samsung Captivate). Twenty-four of the phones are of “medium concern” (including the Samsung Eternity, the Motorola Droid X, and the BlackBerry Curve 8530). The remaining six phones are of “high concern” (including the Nokia N95 and iPhone 2G).
As Apple is the biggest company in the world, we expect them to set the bar high when it comes to environmental responsibility—especially since they claim to make “the most environmentally responsible products in our industry.” The HealthyStuff analysis demonstrates that Apple is actively reducing toxic chemicals in their products. The iPhone has undergone a steady, gradual toxic chemical improvement in the last five years: the iPhone 2G received the worst overall score of all ranked phones, but the iPhone 4 and 5 are now among the top ten percent of phones. Nearly all the other phones that were marked “low concern” are specifically marketed as green phones. The Motorola Citrus, for example, is called “easy on the eyes, earth and pocketbook.” Samsung calls their Evergreen, similarly, “a phone that fits your eco-friendly view as easily as it fits your pocket.” Of the high market share phones analyzed, the iPhone 4 and 5 easily rank best, with fewer toxic chemicals both by component and by chemical.
Curiously, manufacturers are not consistent about their use of toxic chemicals across their product lines. Samsung makes three of the best-ranked phones: the Captivate, Evergreen, and Reclaim. Yet it also makes the much more poorly rated SCH-U410, which received an overall score of 4.18.
Also worthy of note, phones that scored well overall did not necessarily fare well in every category. The “low concern” Samsung Reclaim had a “high concern” proportion of arsenic. Twenty-four of the phones (nearly 70%) had a “high concern” proportion of copper.
Major cell phone manufacturers and providers play up their green image. Sprint currently brags on every page about having been ranked #3 among the 500 greenest companies in America. Apple has bragged for a long time about their superior “toxic substance removal” (for the record, less than 500 parts per million counts as “removal”), touting their elimination of many hazardous chemicals, such as brominated flame retardants.
There is a trend of less toxics over time—especially for Apple. That’s good, but it’s not good enough. We can’t just pat ourselves on our backs and rest on our laurels. Many toxics remain.
Toxic chemicals do not disappear when we finish with our electronics. We cannot simply throw them away—whether electronics are shredded, landfilled, or exported, the toxics must come out somehow. “Better” is not “perfect.” There is room for improvement in every phone, by every manufacturer. Health is at stake—the health of Americans, the health of children burning electronics in Ghana, and the health of the people who inherit our landfills. So we must encourage manufacturers to make cleaner devices, to use our devices as long as possible before discarding them, and to support better recycling practices around the world.
More information, including diagrams of many of the other phones analyzed and a full list of rankings, is available here, at HealthyStuff.org.
I really appreciate all the work your team does with tear downs and other repair information. I believe in making things work for as long as possible, even if it’s not the latest and greatest. I feel so validated through your web site and blog, et. al.
Thank you for testing all of these products and posting the results. Valuable information!! It’s good to see improvement over the years, however, it’s a little distressing to realize that “recycling” doesn’t always mean what you think it means. And, I agree, we/companies/countries can do better for ourselves and generations to come.
Wow I never thought about it liek that dude.
http://www.AnonProject.tk
If you take 5 years old non-Apple devices to compete against latest Apple devices, you might get these results. Nokia has constantly beaten Apple in these comparisions. Nokia manufacturing has been for a while bromine, chlorine and antimony trioxide free. Of which Apple has reached only on power cords.
Apple has also been scrutinized on respective Green Peace studies not fulfilling these targets. This year Apple did not respond to that study at all (if the news was true). Apparently due the fact, that it has not managed to get rid of bromine and that would be bad for company image.
http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/people-and-planet/strategy/management/phasing-out-restricted-substances-/
“From the beginning of 2010, all new Nokia products must be free of bromine, chlorine and antimony trioxide as defined in the Nokia Substance List.”
Nokia devices seems also to be lead free nowadays:
http://i.nokia.com/blob/view/-/262160/data/6/-/Nokia-Substance-List-2012-xls.xlsx
How come you get that kind of results, if Apple is touting iPhones to be lead free and BFR (Bromine) free behind the link you provided in this article (http://www.apple.com/environment/)? Is Apple not telling the truth to consumers?
Len, according to HealthyStuff, Apple considers any material with less than 500 ppm of Chlorine or Bromine to be PVC- or BFR-free, respectively. The chemicals may still be there, just in very small quantities. I’m not sure of Apple’s exact limits for lead, but they’re likely similar, probably somewhere around 600 ppm.
This is great work that you’ve done. One more thing that would really be helpful is measuring the radioactivity of touch screen devices. There have been a number of iPhones that have tested positive for radioactivity quite a bit above the background. In the past, thorium has been used for making optical glass. I wonder if there is thorium in today’s glass panels. A screen with thorium in it would give off a moderate dose of alpha and beta particles, but the user would be exposed to this dosage for a good chunk of time almost every day. When the is particle dose to the cornea of the eye (more for phones than tablets), it can cause cataracts and other problems. The surface of the eye is quickly harmed by alpha and beta particles, and at closer ranges, the cumulative dose can be very high. Of course, it could be something other than thorium glass as well.
In short, it’d be great if you could test phones and tablets for radiation. It’s an important part of safety, especially for kids who are using phones and tablets at very early ages.
“Alarmingly, one screen component in the Samsung Propel had 780,474 parts per million of mercury.”
You should probably double check this number since that means that the component was 4/5ths mercury which doesn’t make any sense.
How were component sampled? Some of the components are not homogenous (e.g. processor and case) – did you pulverise the component and measure the powder, make spot measurements across the component etc?
Also did you calculate the mass of each item in the phone? Seems that’s a more meaningful figure than concentration.
XRF is not a very accurate methodology particularly for Chlorine and is only used by manufacturers for spot checks, with Acid/Microwave digestion and spectrography used for definitive analysis.
I appreciate your intentions and effort, but would simply like to point out that the international standards for “Halogen Free” materials (IEC, ANSI/IPC, JPCA) are:
Combined Br & Cl 1500ppm
Br or Cl as individual elements 900ppm
And by that standard, most of the products tested would fail.
However, with a detection limit on the order of 2.5%, the high readings you report are essentially meaningless and should be disregarded.
Otherwise, thanks for the work and for highlighting the hazards to consumers, that is good.
Dera all,
I’m Alice Turchini Photo Editor assistant of Wired magazine the italian edition.
We are writing an article about iphone 5 and we are very interested a your photos (iphone inside) and we’d like to publish it on our magazine.
Can you send me a hight photo (300ppi) please or a contact for dowloading??
Regard
Alice Turchini
WIRED
Assistente Photo Editor
Piazza castello 27
20121 Milano
aturchini.ext@condenast.it
The problem is that the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is not defined by the toxics in the device. When they replaced toxic lead in solder with tin, mined from Indonesian coral reefs, they dredged up more lead as a byproduct in mining than they displaced in the solder. Diverting hazards from regulated nations landfills into coral islands isn’t my definition of progress.
You’re listing “chlorine” as a toxic chemical? FAIL.
Chlorine *gas* is toxic, but chloride ion isn’t– natural sea water, for example, is nineteen THOUSAND ppm chloride. If 2 parts per thousand chlorine counted as “toxic,” everything you ate would be toxic, since most food contain at least that much sodium chloride.
I find the ranking a bit misleading. It doesn’t put the risk in context. The greatest cell phone risk to human health is car accidents. While noting instances of mismanagement of waste is true, that does not make it a major risk.
To much such reports on toxics mislead people on the real risk…imo. As another posted mentioned…we fear chlorine in plastic, but love it as salt on food.
I do very much agree that people should do a better job of recycling….while corporations have been recycling electronics for decades, the average consumer, who is exempt from allwaste disposal regulations…take the easy, cheap way out and throw them into the trash.
But it is a good topic, we only do better by challenging the norm.
To the previous post: I’m not a chemist, but CHLORINE and CHLORIDE are two different things.
We salt our foods with sodium chloride, not sodium chlorine.
Lower per phone toxicity doesn’t translate to lower environmental pollution. For example, although an individual iPhone 5 has lower toxicity than other phones, their environmental impact is potentially huge because they are sold in extremely high numbers compared to other phones. The total pollution load of all phones sold of a particular model should be accounted for in its rating.
Hey cool stuff, thanks for this great published information.
If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to see some of Sony mobile especially this link below.
http://www.androidcentral.com/sony-wins-eisa-green-smartphone-award-xperia-p
Regards
Phenomenal report that is. !
thanks you guys about this ‘EYE OPENER’. We at least deserve to know what we are holding in our hands. And afterall , all these big mobile giants do howsoever much of bragging, normal person is always kept from the truth and slayed.
Liked that!
Look, this is great, and its really fantastic that people are thinking hard about the toxicity and environmental impact of everything they buy. But we have two much more fundimental problems; The consumption itself , and the life-span of the products. To give you an example, I have had my iphone 3gs for 2.5 years now, its still going strong, and I will keep it for as long as It still performs the function I intended, In the mean time, though, my friend has updated from 3gs to 2 to 4gs to 5 in the same amount of time. BTW, he has also updated his computers to match, he does this because he firmly believes that every time he updates his life will become somehow better…..the idea that he learns to work with what he’s got, and to stop waiting for someone, who lives a seperate life from him,
So, my point is this: given the HUGE environmental impact of every phone we buy, making people feel smug about consuming more of them, regardless of their apparent green statistics, is actually just feeding the consumers with more justification for their ‘lifestyle choices’.
When you bother to peer into the very small minds, and ponder the extremely base motives of the people who choose to work in marketing, selling and advertising products to us, its completely astounding how many people simply accept the poisonous future this extrapolates into.
Great testing but I’m wondering what was the base to chose the models on the list to be tested, as are “missing” phones such as:
– Samsung Galaxy SII
– Samsung Ace S
Both top 5 sellers last year and still selling millions
– Blackberry torch one of the latest BB released
Agree with above comment-surprises Galaxy and torch did not make the list.
Another concern not mentioned in comments or testing article is the fact that when swutching providers you cant take your ph with you-its locked. We shouldnt be forced to continue with a provider when our contract is complete-the ph should be unlocked.
Love that you guys did all tjis testing, so intensive. Outstanding as always!
Chlorine????????? !!!!!!
Chlorine is in EVERY bite of food you eat!
The ocean has endless tons of it.
While we are on the subject, Bromine is present anywhere you find Chlorine.
You people are not qualified for this study. Not even close. Get a real job.