Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.

Given the hazards posed by landfilling and incinerating high-tech electronics, the safest way to dispose of them is to separate their materials, which can then be reprocessed as feedstock for new products. But these materials are tightly packed, largely unlabeled and of variable design, making that separation process both expensive and labor intensive.

That's where UNICOR comes in. The United States--unlike the European Union and several other countries, including Japan--has no national laws requiring electronics recycling. Yet over the past few years, individual states and local governments have begun enacting legislation to keep high-tech trash out of their landfills. At the same time, a growing number of businesses and organizations, concerned about the liabilities posed by dumping old computers, are opting to have equipment recycled. To save money many are sending equipment to UNICOR.

"UNICOR's program is labor intensive, so capital machinery and equipment expenses are minimized, this helps keep prices low," says a company brochure. With a captive workforce UNICOR's electronics recycling program can afford to be labor intensive. Because it is run by the Bureau of Prisons, UNICOR does not have to pay minimum wages--recent wages were $0.23 to $1.15 an hour--or provide benefits. Though UNICOR is not taxpayer supported, its pay scale would not be possible without taxpayer support of the inmates.

The savings payoff for UNICOR: In 2004 UNICOR's Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, prison facility won a contract from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection with a price one-quarter of that bid by private-sector recyclers. "I welcome the competition, but let's level the playing field," says Andy Niles of Scientific Recycling in Holmen, Wisconsin. Niles says he had to lay off about one-quarter of his staff after losing business to his state's prison industry.

"Busting up monitors exposes you to a lot more risk. But broken monitors saves on shipping costs," says Greg Sampson of Earth Protection Services, another private recycler. "Broken, you can fit about 100 into a carton, whereas only thirty-five or so will fit if they're intact. We don't break ours up." Neither do other private recyclers I contacted. "It's more expensive, but we pack them in lined boxes that are shipped with a manifest indicating hazardous material contents, and we use special machines to deactivate CRTs," explains Scott Sodenkamp, operations manager at the Noranda Recycling plant in Roseville, California. At Atwater, Leroy Smith told me, broken CRTs are packed in cardboard cartons and sealed with plastic wrap.

UNICOR doesn't just save money by busting up monitors and paying prison wages. Instead of investing in state-of-the-art disassembly equipment and durable safety gear, UNICOR reportedly distributed ball-peen hammers and cloth gloves to inmates working at Atwater. "The gloves ripped easily and there were lots of bad scratches and cuts," a former Atwater UNICOR worker told me. Staff and inmates who worked at UNICOR's Elkton, Ohio, and Texarkana, Texas, operations have similar accounts of broken glass, noxious dust and injuries resulting from inadequate tools.

UNICOR declined my request to visit the Atwater facility. But an OSHA inspector who toured it in late 2004 confirmed many of the inmates' complaints: "While conducting sampling, I observed, and numerous workers reported, the improper use of tools and techniques due to the lack of appropriate tools to more safely dismantle monitors."

"We were given light-particle dust masks and the stuff would get in behind them," the former Atwater inmate told me. "In the glass-breaking room, guys would be pulling junk out of their hair and eyebrows. We were coughing up and blowing out all sorts of nasty stuff, and open wounds weren't healing." The coveralls inmates wore on the job--kept on during breaks and meals--would come back from laundering with glass and metal dust in rolled cuffs, he says. Work boots were worn outside the factory, too, potentially contaminating other areas of the prison--something OSHA regulations are designed to avoid. Prison staff, say Smith and others, wear regular uniforms and shoes in the factory, allowing contaminated dust to be transferred to their cars, homes and families.

In 2002, air samples taken at Atwater found lead levels twice OSHA's permissible exposure level, and cadmium ten times the OSHA standard. Wipe samples found lead, cadmium and beryllium (which causes severe lung disease) on work surfaces and inmates' skin. Blood and urine testing found barium, cadmium and lead, some at elevated levels.

UNICOR's computer disassembly process releases so much lead, in fact, that its dust qualifies as hazardous waste. Smith and former staff at UNICOR's Elkton, Ohio, facility say this waste has been improperly handled. "Prison staff were removing the filters that collect the dust from the glass-breaking without wearing respirators, and putting these filters in the general prison trash," says Smith, who showed me photographs of worktables covered with thick layers of pale gray dust.

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