Researching Health Impact Disparities Among Women at the Agbogbloshie E-Waste Site an Interactive Qualifying Project Submitted to the Faculty of The
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Project Number: E-project-032421-123026 Researching Health Impact Disparities Among Women at the Agbogbloshie E-Waste Site An Interactive Qualifying Project Submitted to the Faculty of the WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science by Nada Abojaradeh Jackson Hauman Architectural Engineering Mechanical Engineering Alexa Freglette Samuel Leonard Computer Science Mechanical Engineering & Professional Writing & Mathematics 18 March 2021 Approved by: Professor M. S. Fofana, PhD, Advisor MIRAD Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering Department Professor Robert Krueger, PhD, Co-Advisor Department of Social Sciences and Policy Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 ABSTRACT 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 3 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 4 CHAPTER 2. THE ETHOS OF OUR APPROACH 5 CHAPTER 3. CHEMICALS AND OTHER PATHOGENS FROM E-WASTE 8 CHAPTER 4. THE PATHWAYS OF EXPOSURE 10 4.1 Air Pollution 11 4.2 Water and Food Pollution 12 4.3 Soil Pollution 12 CHAPTER 5. HEALTH IMPACT DISPARITIES AMONG WOMEN 13 CHAPTER 6. DISCUSSION 17 CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS 18 Images 21 Quotes 24 REFERENCES 25 1 ABSTRACT Agbogbloshie, the largest electronic waste dump in the world and home to about 80,000 women, men, and children, is located in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Agbogbloshie is a thoroughly polluted place, and those who work there are exposed to serious health and safety risks (Srigbho, Basu, Stephens, et al., 2016). In this area, the urban poor of Accra have spent years dismantling, recovering, weighing, and reselling parts and metals extracted from the scrapped devices and from the heaps of electronic waste, or e-waste. Women, although not directly interacting with e-waste, are an integral part of the site. Often working as traveling merchants, women sell items such as food and water to other workers. This results in continuous exposure to many of the same toxic hazards and elements as the male workers. They are also in charge of the work associated with a family, increasing their risk. However, minimal research has been conducted on these female residents. The purpose of this study is to focus our concern on these female workers, as well as other demographics of the community, to characterize their exposures to e-waste hazards in regard to health. In this project, we consulted feminist methodologies to help us better understand the effects on different groups within Agbogbloshie, which allowed us to capture the experiences of women who are usually disregarded when it comes to policy (Woodward, Duncanson, and Jenkings, 2017). Due to the research imbalance in such areas and the gender gap in exposure to e-waste hazards, our group has decided to highlight the negative health impacts that women face in the e-waste sector by identifying these gaps and creating recommendations for a future more-in-depth scientific approach to work on solving these issues. 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Professor Krueger and Professor Fofana for their guidance, encouragement and critique that allowed the project to come to fruition. Through them, we were also able to work more closely with Ghanaian partners. We thank Hector Boye and Julian Bennet for providing us with the information that allowed us to explore the lives of the Ghanaians during the Pandemic. Finally, we would like to thank our WPI associates Ben Nephew and Hermine Vedogbeton for helping provide us with the information and tools necessary to complete the project. We would like to thank everyone once again for their adaptability to the virtual setting we had to utilize this year 3 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION Agbogbloshie, the largest electronic waste dump in the world and home to about 80,000 women, men and children, is located in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Agbogbloshie is a thoroughly polluted place, and those who work there are exposed to serious health and safety risks (Srigbho, Basu, Stephens, et al., 2016). In this area, the urban poor of Accra have spent years dismantling, recovering, weighing, and reselling parts and metals extracted from the scrapped devices and from the heaps of electronic waste, or e-waste. INSERT IMAGE 1 HERE Women, although not directly interacting with e-waste, are an integral part of the site. Often working as traveling merchants, women sell items such as food and water to other workers. This results in continuous exposure to many of the same toxic hazards and elements as the male e-waste workers. They are also usually in charge of the unpaid work associated with a family, increasing their exposure. However, minimal research has been conducted on these female residents. INSERT IMAGE 2 HERE The purpose of this study was to focus on the disproportionate effects that hazards have on women. In this project, we performed research to reveal the health effects on women living on the site, bringing attention to those who are often overlooked in policy and academic research. We elucidate the pathways in which women of Agbogbloshie are exposed to e-waste to provide a better understanding of how the hazards of e-waste can affect non-workers. By doing this, we hope that future policymakers will be better informed about women’s lived experiences. This project builds the foundation for and offers direction to future research in the area. We have discovered all those living on the site receive a similar exposure to pollution, regardless of work. Despite the comparable environment, effects across genders are different. For example, while men might be burning wires on the e-waste site, women work as traveling merchants and run the household. When they perform unpaid work, they may breathe in hazardous fumes and can face the danger of indoor air pollution. Furthermore, women are physiologically different from men meaning the same exact exposure to an environmental hazard 4 is likely to impact women differently. While compiling our information of the Agbogbloshie site, we came to the realization that the focus was rarely on women, resulting in arbitrary risk assessments. Because of this, we decided that it was important to highlight women in our research in order to draw attention to their disparities. 5 CHAPTER 2. THE ETHOS OF OUR APPROACH Traditionally, international development projects rarely address community needs. Instead, Western nations generally act in their best interests without adapting to different cultures and customs. This reinforces the colonial aspect of any project in which developed nations pursue to “help” an underdeveloped nation. Ideally, research projects are meant to serve the greater good of humanity. However, assuming that every researcher upholds this goal is unrealistic. In many cases, instead of serving marginalized people, Western researchers and academics make their own assumptions about these communities based on a few - if any - encounters with them (Smith, 2013). Nowadays, we see improvement by holding designers accountable for their actions and the intentions behind their projects. This is very important; keeping the intent in mind while making something sustainable for nations in need is a start, but it is not targeting the core problem. Development has come a long way, but without reallocating power back to countries healing from the impacts of colonization and allowing the most marginalized to make their own decisions, we will not progress. For our project to truly benefit the community, it was necessary to disregard Western ideas of development that contribute to silencing the most marginalized. Instead, we decided to follow multiple guiding ethos such as feminist methodologies, co-design and generative justice. INSERT QUOTE 1 Our research design process incorporates feminist methodologies to help us better understand how e-waste in Agbobloshie affects everyone in the community. Feminist methodologies capture the experiences of women who are often disregarded when it comes to academic research and policies (Woodward, Duncanson, & Jenkings, 2017). It is a way of conducting research that addresses the historical power structures and inequities in research that have served to silence the most marginalized individuals in society. In the spirit of co-design, we cannot execute a project for an entire community without having a diverse representation of its people. To gain this perspective, it was necessary to dig deeper into the different narratives regarding harmful effects of e-waste, making sure to incorporate that into our research. By including a variety of different people, feminist research 6 gives a voice to those who are often neglected in society. Furthermore, this methodology exudes the principles of co-design by identifying false assumptions about women and honoring lived experiences, allowing research to be both for and about women (Somekh & Lewin, 2005). Due to a lack of feminist perspective in policies and regulations, women are often overlooked; false assumptions are made about how they live their day-to-day lives and how their bodies function. Therefore, it was critical to include these feminist methodologies in our research as a form of resistance against power structures that uphold these norms. Engineers are wired to solve narrowly defined technical problems, but when it comes to complex socio-technical issues such as those at Agbogbloshie, we need to recognize that working on solutions requires more than strictly moving through steps. Interdisciplinary projects require both problem solving, social science, and human-centered design skills, and one cannot exist without the other. Solving problems without working with the community may result in unsuccessful projects. This project is primarily a scientific study into women’s pathways of exposure to toxins from e-waste processing. To conduct a project in the best interest of the community, we should collaborate alongside those who live and work in Agbogbloshie. Unfortunately, the ongoing pandemic has made direct community engagement nearly impossible. Although we couldn't incorporate co-design as we had originally planned, we established the necessary first steps towards prioritizing policy and action around the implications of e-waste for women living in Agbogbloshie.