Environmental toxins in WEEE

Treatment of products containing brominated flame retardants
In 2008, Elretur collected 1,053 metric tons of printed circuit boards containing brominated flame retardants. Environmentally treating printed circuit boards involves destroying the brominated flame retardants the printed circuit boards are covered with. Brominated flame retardants is a generic organic term for some special substances that retard the development of fires. The element bromine possesses this property. The different types of brominated flame retardants are destroyed by thermal destruction – this means that the chemical compounds are broken down into new, harmless compounds at very high temperatures. Large quantities of the plastic that surrounds electric products are also treated with brominated flame retardants. Both printed circuit boards and plastic go to energy recovery in which the energy inherent in the plastic burnt in incineration facilities is used in, for example, district heating plants. Large quantities of valuable metals can be found in printed circuit boards and this metal has to be recovered once the brominated flame retardants have been destroyed. The metals in printed circuit boards first need to be melted so they can be recovered. They are then separated into the different metals by advanced chemical processes and we are left with metals such as gold, silver, copper and palladium.