Careful with Your Old TV Set.

• Author: Scott, Julia
• Position: Essay

FOR AMERICANS WHO ARE upgrading their televisions in time for the digital conversion on February 17, getting rid of the old analog clunker in the basement may be an afterthought. Not so for Barbara Kyle, who cringes at the thought of millions of old discarded television sets making their way to the landfill or bumping down a conveyor belt to be recycled--their parts most likely sent overseas to be sold or incinerated.

Government officials are "ushering in the biggest e-waste tsunami in history," says Kyle, national coordinator for the Electronics TakeBack Coalition. This is the biggest planned obsolescence effort in the history of the U.S. government, she says, but officials have engaged in no national dialogue about where all the old TV sets ought to go.

"That's just an incredible oversight, especially considering they're pushing a huge amount of toxins into the trash," says Kyle.

The main toxin she's referring to is decabromodiphenyl ether, or Deca-BDE, a brominated fire retardant used in most American televisions that has been banned across the European Union because of widespread health concerns. It's added to plastic television casings during the manufacturing process and can't be removed or recycled.

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The chemical, which first entered the waste stream in the 1960s and '70s, has a been detected in high concentrations in children, human breast milk, house dust, and sewage sludge, as well as in fish and wildlife around the world. It's been found to cause behavioral problems when introduced to rats and mice, along with tumors in the liver and thyroid. The Environmental Protection Agency points to "suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential" for Deca-BDE but does not consider it dangerous enough to warrant any restrictions under the Toxic Substances Control Act. The agency has given the American Chemical Association until 2010 to do its own tests on the compound's environmental fate.

Those who know it best describe Deca-BDE as the terminator chemical--no matter where it's dumped, it manages to morph into another, more dangerous form. Left to degrade in a landfill, it breaks down into Penta- and Octa-BDE, more hazardous flame retardant chemicals that were phased out by chemical makers in 2004 after they were banned in Europe and several U.S. states. When incinerated, Deca-BDE releases dioxins and furans.

"These are really toxic chemicals and in their brominated form, they go into the atmosphere and last hundreds of...