New Delhi, India – Mateen Malik sits inside a cramped workshop in New Delhi’s Mustafabad area, carefully separating copper wires from piles of discarded electronics.

Around him lie broken air coolers, tangled cables, scraps of metal, and old computers and laptops stacked against the workshop’s blackened walls.

Malik’s bare hands move quickly as he strips the wire’s plastic coatings to uncover the copper inside. He often uses blow torches to dismantle the electronics, a process that releases highly toxic chemicals into the air, posing serious health risks.

“Sometimes the extraction is difficult, and I don’t have any protective gear – no gloves, no mask. Often, I get burns on my hands as well. This is routine in our job. The chemical residue is also there,” Malik told Al Jazeera. “But I am dependent on this job.”

Malik, who is in his early twenties, is an untrained, informal e-waste segregator in Mustafabad, one of India’s informal waste hubs, whose narrow and dusty lanes are overwhelmed with the sound of continuous hammering and the smell of burned plastic and metals.

An average worker here makes about a dollar for dismantling a mobile handset and twice that amount for dismantling a television set, altogether making about $8 a day for 12 hours of gruelling work – without gloves, masks, or protective gear.

The hidden costs of such work, therefore, are far greater: Chronic illnesses, environmental contamination, and generations exposed to toxic substances.

‘Hazardous work’

India is the world’s third-largest generator of electronic waste after China and the United States, with the volume of recycled waste increasing by nearly 23 percent every year.

In March this year, the federal minister of state for environment, forest and climate change, Kirti Vardhan Singh, told the parliament that India generated more than 1.4 million metric tonnes of electronic waste in 2025-2026, of which about 979,000 metric tonnes were recycled.

According to a report submitted by India’s Central Pollution Control Board to the National Green Tribunal, New Delhi alone accounts for nearly 10 percent of India’s total e-waste generation, producing an estimated 230,000 metric tonnes annually.

Behind these discarded electronics lies a sprawling network of scrap dealers, repair shops, and back-yard dismantlers who often work with little awareness of the toxic risks they face.

As India’s digital consumption grows and electronic waste continues to mount, the burden of managing that waste falls largely on workers like Malik, with little protection from the risks surrounding them every day.

Inside another small workshop, thin streams of black smoke rise as Muhammad Faizan burns insulated wires to extract copper.

The visible areas of the walls inside the workshop have turned black from continuous burning. The smell of melted plastic lingers as the migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district works with three other men in the tiny space.

“It is hazardous work. I sit in the same place every day from 9 in the morning to 8 at night. While dismantling electronics, I often get cuts on my hands. And when we burn plastic to extract the metal, I end up inhaling the smoke,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We are paid according to the amount of metal we extract, so it depends on how many kilogrammes I can separate each day.”

Nearby, a group of women workers are huddled in a group in another shop, separating copper, silver, and even traces of gold from electronic chips and discarded hard drives with their bare hands.

The heat trapped inside the room is suffocating, as piles of electronics dominate the narrow space, leaving little space to move.

“The working conditions are tough, the space is smaller, with only a few fans that hardly provide any relief in this heat,” Shakila, a 48-year-old migrant worker from West Bengal state, told Al Jazeera. “We also get frequent cuts on our hands and infections.”

Sometimes, she said, she is not able to complete her share of work and takes it home. “We also get paid less than men, but at least we make some money,” she says.

Al Jazeera reached out to India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee regarding worker safety and enforcement of related rules, but did not get any response.

Families also affected

Bharati Chaturvedi, founder and director of Chintan, an environmental research and action group, says one of the defining characteristics of India’s informal e-waste economy is the overlap between homes and workplaces.

“Very often, a worker is living on the upper floor, and dismantling is done on the ground floor or on the roof,” she told Al Jazeera.

“The first thing that strikes a person is the proximity of these items, many of which are broken, thrown out with lead dust and other toxins. They can catch fire,” she said.

“Workers often use blow torches while dismantling them, releasing even more toxic substances into the air.”

The consequences extend far beyond workers themselves. Families, including children, are frequently exposed because they live in the same spaces where the e-waste is processed.

“There is an impact, particularly on children, due to extreme toxins. There is a lack of accountability on improving the workers’ conditions,” Chaturvedi said, describing a range of health risks associated with informal recycling, including cuts, infections, lead exposure, toxic dust, and hazardous chemicals.

“If you’ve been exposed to lead, absorbing iron becomes very difficult. People can remain anaemic and weak. The same applies to women and children, because they live in the same spaces where they work,” she said.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), informal recycling activities can release toxic substances, including lead, mercury, cadmium, and dioxins into the environment. WHO has linked exposure to such pollutants with impaired neurological development, reduced lung function, and respiratory illnesses, particularly among children living near the recycling sites.

Last year, a study of informal e-waste workers in Delhi’s Seelampur area found that they faced significant occupational health risks while possessing limited awareness of the hazards associated with e-waste handling. Despite the risks, only about 10 percent of the workers regularly used personal protective equipment (PPE), citing cost and discomfort as the main barriers.

While India has laws and rules to regulate e-waste management, the informal recyclers have managed to flout them, as opposed to the licensed workshops. Government data shows that India has only 322 authorised e-waste recyclers, while researchers estimate that the informal sector still handles nearly 95 percent of the country’s discarded electronics.

Rehman, who only wanted to share his last name, owns a small workshop in Mustafabad, where he employs six workers. He said the profit margins in the recycling business are extremely thin, making it difficult for small operators like him to provide protective gear and other workplace facilities.

“We cannot afford the kind of infrastructure and facilities that larger recycling companies have. Here, we pay workers based on the amount of waste they process. How will the business survive if we increase the costs?” he told Al Jazeera.

A 2019 report by Toxics Link, an environmental NGO, identified at least 15 informal e-waste hotspots across New Delhi that did not follow occupational safety measures or environmental safeguards, exposing the workers and nearby communities to hazardous pollutants.

Calls for reform and inclusion

Chaturvedi said the government should focus on integrating informal workers into the formal economy rather than framing policies that eliminate them.

“The way I look at it is that you have to formalise people. You can’t keep them informal,” she said.

Earlier versions of India’s e-waste policies allowed cooperatives, self-help groups, and associations to obtain licences for aggregation and dismantling. Those provisions no longer exist, she said.

“When you don’t include people, you can’t make them compliant. And if you don’t include them, you also can’t help them improve their working conditions,” Chaturvedi said, stressing the need for affordable workspaces, policy support, and training programmes.

Satish Sinha, associate director at Toxics Link, said India’s informal workers continue to play a central role in the e-waste economy despite being excluded from it.

“By law, informal workers are not expected to handle or deal with this waste. But that is not how the law has been implemented. The informal sector still plays a major role. They collect, aggregate, transport, and, to a large extent, dismantle electronic waste. Some also recover metals from it,” he told Al Jazeera.

According to Sinha, informal workers should be included in the system, but a number of activities require stricter controls.

“I think they can certainly be engaged in collection. They can transport material under certain guidelines and requirements, and they can trade in it. I am not suggesting they dismantle electronic waste or recover metals from it. Those processes should be carried out under tightly controlled conditions that are environmentally safe and sound,” he said.

As evening falls in Mustafabad, the sounds of hammering and tearing of electronics continue behind closed doors, as workers sort components that may eventually return to the supply chain.

“We have no other work; we are dependent on this. It gives us income and helps us survive in a city like New Delhi,” says Shakila.