Your Smartphone’s Dirty, Radioactive Secret
Your Smartphone’s Dirty, Radioactive Secret
IT’S A SWELTERING LATE FEBRUARY afternoon when I pull into the Esso gas station in the tiny town of Bukit Merah, Malaysia. My guide, a local butcher named Hew Yun Tat, warns me that the owner is known for his stinginess. “He’s going to ask you to buy him tea,” Hew says. “Even though he owns many businesses around here, he still can’t resist pinching pennies.”
An older man emerges from the station office. His face and hands are mottled with white patches, his English broken.
“I’ll talk to you,” the man says, “but only if you buy me tea.” He grins.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” says Hew, laughing. “A rich man like you.”
At a bustling open-air café nearby, we order tea and ais kacang, giant shaved-ice desserts laden with chopped-up jello and sweet, sticky red beans. I dig in, but the station owner—I’ll call him Esso Man, since he doesn’t want me to use his real name—is moodily stirring his into a slushy puddle. We’re here to ask him about something he doesn’t like to talk about: a job he did 30 years ago, when he owned a trucking company. He got a contract with a local industrial plant called Asian Rare Earth, co-owned by Mitsubishi Chemical, that supplied special minerals to the personal electronics industry.