VANCOUVER – Elizabeth Grossman, author of “High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health” will be speaking at WSU Vancouver at 3 p.m., Nov. 7 in the Administration building room 110.
Grossman will be speaking about the problems generated by electronic waste and her current work, describing how plastics are changing our health and the world’s chemistry.
Her research methods as a freelance writer, articulate the environmental issues posed by high tech manufacturing and disposal and the affects of plastics on human development and behavior.
Grossman follows computers throught their life cycle,from the manufacturing process to their end (in “closet landfills” at home or “recycling” with hammers and open fires in China, India, and American prisons).
She finds surprises at every stage by taking a closer look at “the global and local movement and impacts of persistent and pervasive pollutants-synthetic chemicals that emerge from finished products as well as from industrial and waste sites and which are changing the world’s chemistry on both a cellular and landscape scale.”
Grossman also looks into potential solutions to these issues through “green chemistry” and engineering with alternative materials.
For more on Grossman’s work, see http://www.hightechtrash.com
Her current research on plastics and human development see http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/02/bisphenol/index_np.html
