Old electronics don’t die; they live on as e-waste. Ever wonder what became of all those shiny new gadgets that were on your wish list a few holidays back?

Those “must-have” video games, laptops, and cell phones that have long since broken or otherwise outlived their usefulness to you are getting a second lease on life in China, according to the Telegraph, which reports that a million tons of e-waste is annually “broken apart, melted down, and washed in acid to be recycled into a new flood of imports for Christmas future.”

Sadly, this demand for parts from discarded electronics has turned several towns in China into giant scrap heaps, with residents systematically poisoning themselves, their children, and their entire communities as they melt down old circuit boards and salvage the gold and copper from the world’s cast-off consumer goods.

In one such village, Guiyu, a study from a nearby university found that 82 percent of the children between the ages of one and six had clinical lead poisoning, which is known to cause brain damage.

The European Union has banned the export of e-waste, but the practice is still legal in the U.S. despite campaigns to end it. To learn more about e-waste and what you can do about it, go to greenpeace.org.