Toxic Prison Labor.

• Author: Cusac, Anne-Marie
• Position: Essay

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They remember dust. Noise, too, but first dust--lodging in their hair, penetrating face oils in a mask. They wore dust, smelled it, tasted it.

"It was a dirty job," says Tina Rosser. She's referring to the computer recycling she did for Unicor while serving time for a drug crime at Marianna Federal Prison Camp for minimum-security female prisoners in Florida. She says the job was a coveted one at the federally owned company that runs the recycling operations.

"Any Unicor job pays a little more than other jobs in the camp," she says. "Then, too, they were hyping it up like it was something you could take home, work at a company, and get a job like that."

Rosser explains that the workers would usually try to open the computer casing with screwdrivers first. But some screws were stripped. In such cases, "we used hammers" on the monitors "to break off pieces and get in," she says. "Any way we could get it open, they wanted us to open it. We had to get it open to get the parts out."

The cathode ray tubes inside computers can contain both lead and cadmium. The women were told to pile parts into boxes. But the tubes "still got broken," says Rosser. "Sometimes, you'd hear the things explode" and they'd release what she calls "powdery stuff." Other times, "if you opened up something and it was real dusty, it would like poof up in the air," she says. Rosser remembers black layers accumulating on the floors, and her fellow inmates trying to find time to sweep.

"Our clothes would be black from all the dust in there," she says.

The inmates took their lunch breaks in the clothes they worked in, she says, and they wore those clothes back to their cells. Three or four times a week, Rosser says, she washed her dusty clothes in the prison laundry, which she shared with the other inmates.

The dust also stuck to her skin. "When you left you could see it in the hairs of your arm," says Rosser. "I hated that--for that crap to get on my face."

Rosser says she and her fellow inmates had no respiratory protection. The only safety equipment the prison provided her, she says, included steel-toed boots and work gloves.

Today, out of prison, Rosser describes respiratory problems. "I always have something stuck in the back of my throat," she says, and claims to have been "coughing up blood and mucus." She says the prison did not test her blood for possible exposures. "They never gave us any idea that it wouldn't be safe," she says.

Though the dust bothered them, though they blew their noses and found the cloth black, they lived with it in a kind of innocence at first.

Nita Molsbee also served time at Marianna--for making false statements on a Medicare cost report, and failing to report income.

"You could walk through the door of the Unicor building and see the dust in the air," she says. Only a wall separated her job from the recycling operation, she says, and she saw the women working with the computers. "The women's hands were always dirty," she says.

Molsbee reports having respiratory problems, gall bladder surgery, and sores that travel slowly along her body. "I get one on my foot, then it will go to my chest, and then it will go to my hand," she says. "It takes about two to three weeks to heal, and then it will show up in another spot."

They got used to dust. The fine, slow snow was just always there. But there's a problem with dust in the air, coating skin and clothing and eyelashes. It can enter bodies.

Maxie Carroll also served time at Marianna, where she transported Unicor employees and worked in the prison laundry, washing the dusty uniforms. She describes "little sores that pop up in my hair." She, too, says she's had respiratory problems--along with a kidney attack, a hysterectomy, and breast cancer. "I just fell apart, I guess," she says. "I had always been so healthy."

C omputers are, among other things, containers of heavy metals. They can hold five to seven pounds of lead, for instance. Exposure to this element "affects practically all systems within the body," says the EPA. High levels of exposure "can cause convulsions, coma, and even death. Lower levels of lead can cause adverse health effects on the central nervous system, kidney, and blood cells." Even very low levels "can impair mental and physical development," and "the effects of lead exposure on fetuses and young children can be severe."

Cadmium is also a problem. OSHA notes that chronic cadmium exposure can cause "cancer (lung and prostate) ... kidney damage ... pulmonary emphysema and bone disease."

In addition to lead and cadmium, computers can also contain arsenic, barium, beryllium, chromium, mercury, phthalates, and selenium. Some of these metals can damage the skin and organs, such as the kidneys, liver, and lungs, as well as the central...