The environment watchdog on Thursday voiced concerns over its ability to clean up electronic pollution as the Chinese dumped roughly 1.11 million tons of electronic wastes from trashed home appliance.

"We are under increasing pressure to clean up electronic pollution," said Zhong Bin, official with the State Environmental Protection Administration. "The technology is fast upgrading and the market demand is swelling."

Every year, China disposed off at least 5 million television sets, 4 million refrigerators, 5 million washing machines, 5 million computers, and dozens of millions of cellphones, government statistics shows.

Health specialists say e-waste contains excessive poisonous elements such as lead, mercury and cadmium that are extremely harmful to both human and the environment.

Meanwhile, China has a large number of illegal e-waste collectors, who often take away the precious metal to exchange for money, and the less valuable parts they throw away can cause serious pollution to soil, air and ground water, Zhong said.

"Electronic wastes pose severe harm to the environment and human health," said Zhou, who was attending a workshop on electronic waste treatment at the eastern city of Qingdao in Shandong Province.

China is expected to enforce regulations governing the treatment of waste electrical and electronic equipment this year. The regulations will make producers to be responsible for the collection, recycling and reuse the product wastes.

(Xinhua News Agency September 23, 2005)