CSIphone

this excellent video is just greenpeace’s latest effort to PRessure apple into adopting somewhat better environmental policies – using the dissection of a popular device to reveal the inherent ugliness of what lies inside. in this case, brominated fire retardants and phthalates in PVC. while shown to be somewhat toxic, these compounds have remained legal for now. the city of san francisco has signed into law a bill that would ban phthalates from children’s toys because they have been shown to cause mutations in rats. of course the phthalates information center would have you believe otherwise (and their industry has sued to keep the law from being enacted). and while alternatives to brominated fire retardants exist and competitors such as dell have vowed to eliminate them completely, guess who – the bromine science and environmental forum – has lambasted greenpeace for assuming that the toxic compounds in the iphone are illegal. they aren’t yet. this table points out that all forms of BFR are banned in the EU except one pending further study