‘Daily cuts… infections’: India’s e-waste workers face toxic health risks
As India’s digital consumption grows and electronic waste mounts, the burden of managing that waste falls on workers with little protection. New Delhi, India
As India’s digital consumption grows and electronic waste mounts, the burden of managing that waste falls on workers with little protection. New Delhi, India – Mateen Malik sits inside a cramped workshop in New Delhi’s Mustafabad area, carefully separating copper wires from piles of discarded electronics. Around him lie broken air coolers, tangled cables, scraps of metal, and old computers and laptops stacked against the workshop’s blackened walls. Malik’s bare hands move quickly as he strips the wire’s plastic coatings to uncover the copper inside. He often uses blow torches to dismantle the electronics, a process that releases highly toxic chemicals into the air, posing serious health risks. “Sometimes the extraction is difficult, and I don’t have any protective gear – no gloves, no mask. Often, I get burns on my hands as well. This is routine in our job. The chemical residue is also there,” Malik told Al Jazeera. “But I am dependent on this job.” Malik, who is in his early twenties, is an untrained, informal e-waste segregator in Mustafabad, one of India’s informal waste hubs, whose narrow and dusty lanes are overwhelmed with the sound of continuous hammering and the smell of burned plastic and metals. An average worker here makes about a dollar for dismantling a mobile handset and twice that amount for dismantling a television set, altogether making about $8 a day for 12 hours of gruelling work – without gloves, masks, or protective gear. The hidden costs of such work, therefore, are far greater: Chronic illnesses, environmental contamination, and generations exposed to toxic substances. ‘Hazardous work’ India is the world’s third-largest generator of electronic waste after China and the United States, with the volume of recycled waste increasing by nearly 23 percent every year. In March this year, the federal minister of state for environment, forest and climate change, Kirti Vardhan Singh, told the parliament that India generated more than 1.4 million metric tonnes of electronic waste in 2025-2026, of which about 979,000 metric tonnes were recycled. According to a report submitted by India’s Central Pollution Control Board to the Green Tribunal, New Delhi alone accounts for nearly 10 percent of India’s total e-waste generation, producing an estimated 230,000 metric tonnes annually. Behind these discarded electronics lies a sprawling network of scrap dealers, repair shops, and back-yard dismantlers who often work with little awareness of the toxic risks they face.
As India’s digital consumption grows and electronic waste continues to mount, the burden of managing that waste falls largely on workers like Malik, with little protection from the risks surrounding them every day. Inside another small workshop, thin streams of black smoke rise as Muhammad Faizan burns insulated wires to extract copper. The visible areas of the walls inside the workshop have turned black from continuous burning. The smell of melted plastic lingers as the migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district works with three other men in the tiny space. “It is hazardous work. I sit in the same place every day from 9 in the morning to 8 at night. While dismantling electronics, I often get cuts on my hands. And when we burn plastic to extract the metal, I end up inhaling the smoke,” he told Al Jazeera. “We are paid according to the amount of metal we extract, so it depends on how many kilogrammes I can separate each day.” Nearby, a group of women workers are huddled in a group in another shop, separating copper, silver, and even traces of gold from electronic chips and discarded hard drives with their bare hands. The heat trapped inside the room is suffocating, as piles of electronics dominate the narrow space, leaving little space to move. “The working conditions are tough, the space is smaller, with only a few fans that hardly provide any relief in this heat,” Shakila, a 48-year-old migrant worker from West Bengal state, told Al Jazeera. “We also get frequent cuts on our hands and infections.” Sometimes, she said, she is not able to complete her share of work and takes it home. “We also get paid less than men, but at least we make some money,” she says. Al Jazeera reached out to India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee regarding worker safety and enforcement of related rules, but did not get any response. Families also affected Bharati Chaturvedi, founder and director of Chintan, an environmental research and action group, says one of the defining characteristics of India’s informal e-waste economy is the overlap between homes and workplaces. “Very often, a worker is living on the upper floor, and dismantling is done on the ground floor or on the roof,” she told Al Jazeera.
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