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The increasing demand for indium, gallium, and germanium driven by high-tech industries has spurred extensive research into their environmental interaction, despite their rarity in the Earth's crust. Understanding the chemical forms and mechanisms of occurrence of these elements – from production through – and their interactions with the environment is crucial for future environmental impact assessments. The aim of this paper is to highlight: (i) the compounds and applications of indium, gallium, and germanium in high-tech manufacturing, (ii) the complexes of these elements, their reactivity, and stability under specific conditions, (iii) possibilities for recovering and recycling these elements from end-of-life (EOL) products through leaching and extraction, (iv) their toxicity and health impacts, and (v) pollution indices affected by background concentrations of these elements in soils or sediments. Despite their low natural abundance and low recycling input rates (IRI), the lack of comprehensive toxicity data poses a significant challenge in assessing the potential ecological risk index (RI). Moreover, insufficient background data on the concentration of these elements in various environmental samples underscores the need for further research and investigation in the future.
Yandem et al. (Tue,) studied this question.