Study Shows Vaporizing E-Waste Makes it Easy to Recover Precious Metals at 13-Times Lower Costs

– credit Alexandre Debiève

By instantaneously heating electronics to 3,000°C via an electrical current, scientists have found a way to extract decent grades of precious metals without creating hazardous waste.

According to their analysis, relying on e-waste for a precious metals supply could be 13-times cheaper than mining them from the ground. However, previous methods have involved throwing this or that broken gizmo into a furnace powered by copious amounts of energy while also releasing toxic substances into air.

By contrast, “flash joule heating,” a way of using electrical currents to vaporizing the valuable metals from the materials that hold electronics together is between 80 and 500-times more energy efficient.

One 2008 study calculated that one ton of mobile phones without batteries contains about 130kg of copper, 3.5kg of silver, 340 grams of gold, and 140 grams of palladium.

Those totals, if assayed as part of a drilling survey at a mine, would be considered world class results in the 99th percentile of grades.

Most open pit mining operations will run at a rate of between 0.5 and 1.8 grams per-ton gold and 100 to 180 grams per-ton silver. Some 40 million tons of e-waste is produced annually, so some simple mathematics reveals the potential economy to be found in harvesting e-waste for metals—a process termed “urban mining” by scientists.

Scientists at Rice University shredded a printed circuit board for their experiments, and mixed it with carbon black as a conductive additive. Once in the flash joule chamber, the current applied is so high that the precious metals, like rhodium, copper, and gold, turn briefly to vapor, while the carbon-based components like the plastic, are carbonized. This same process has been used to turn plastic into diamonds.

Mining companies for base and precious metals use a variety of patented recovery processes to separate gold, zinc, or nickel from the ore body.

Just like in mining, additives enhanced the recovery percentage of the metals from their vaporized form, including halides or fluorine-based substances. These brought the recovery of rhodium up to greater than 80%, and palladium to 70%. Bleach and other chlorine-based compounds brought the silver recovery rate up to greater than 80% as well.With the prices of these metals skyrocketing of late, new and cheaper supplies will be crucial to ensure important industries remain intact and competitive. Study Shows Vaporizing E-Waste Makes it Easy to Recover Precious Metals at 13-Times Lower Costs

Read More........ → February 16, 2026

Lead Pollution Has Dropped 100-Fold in the U.S. Over the Last Century

Pollution from smokestacks at the US Mining and Smelting Co. plant in Midvale, Utah in 1906 – via SWNS

Lead pollution today compared to 100 years ago has dramatically declined—by 100-fold over the last century—according to new research.

Lead is a dangerous neurotoxin that accumulates in human tissues and is linked to developmental deficits in children. Due to the health risks, the United States and other countries start phasing out lead in the 1970s, with the US achieving total elimination for on-road vehicles by 1996.

The UK followed, banning general sale of leaded auto fuel by early 2000—and the last country, Algeria, stopped sales in July 2021.

Researchers examined hair samples from local residents going back a century to document how banning lead in gasoline has been a major success in reducing environmental pollution.

Before the 1970 establishment of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans lived in communities awash with lead from industrial smokestacks, paint, water pipes, and—most significantly—exhaust emissions.

The analysis of hair samples conducted by scientists at the University of Utah show “precipitous” reductions in lead levels since 1916.

“We were able to show through our hair samples what the lead concentrations were before and after the establishment of regulations by the EPA,” said University of Utah Professor Ken Smith.

“Back when the regulations were absent, the lead levels were about 100 times higher than they were after the regulations.”

The study showed that after the Nixon administration banned lead in gasoline in the 1970s, even as fuel consumption escalated in the US, the concentrations of lead in the hair samples plummeted, from as high as 100 parts per million (ppm) to 10 ppm by 1990.

And in 2024, the level was less than one part per million.

He says the findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), underline the vital role of environmental regulations in protecting public health.

The study notes that US lead laws are now being weakened by a White House administration moving to ease environmental protections.

“The lesson is: those regulations have been very important,” said study co-author Professor Thure Cerling.

“Sometimes they seem onerous and mean that industry can’t do exactly what they’d like to do when they want to do it, but it’s had really, really positive effects.”

Lead is the heaviest of heavy metals and, like mercury and arsenic, accumulate in living tissue, and are toxic at even low levels. By the 1970s its toxicity became well established and EPA regulations began phasing it out of paint, pipes, gasoline and other consumer products.

The researchers acquired multiple hair samples from 48 participants—both recent and when they were younger—which offered a window into lead levels along Utah’s ‘Wasatch Front’, which historically experienced heavy lead emissions from industrial sources.

Some participants were even able to find ancestors’ hair preserved in family scrapbooks dating as far back as a century.

“The Utah part of this is so interesting because of the way people keep track of their family history,” said Prof. Smith.

“I don’t know that you could do this in New York or Florida.”

He explained that this particular Utah region supported a vibrant metal smelting industry through most of the 20th Century. Most of Utah’s smelters were shut down by the 1970s, after the EPA clamped down on the use of lead in consumer products.

The research team ran the hair samples through mass spectrometry equipment and says the surface of the hair is special.

“Lead is not lost over time,” said research team member Professor Diego Fernandez. “It is concentrated and accumulated in the surface. It tells you about that overall environmental exposure.”

Before the 1970s, gasoline contained around two grams of lead per gallon, which added up to nearly two pounds of lead per person a year released into the environment.

“It’s in the air for a number of days and it absorbs into your hair. You breathe it and it goes into your lungs,” explained Prof. Cerling.But, thanks to federal regulations, the median blood lead level today in children, aged 1–5 years, fell from over 15 in the late 1970s to just 0.6 in 2020. Lead Pollution Has Dropped 100-Fold in the U.S. Over the Last Century

Read More........ → February 14, 2026