Yes it’s extremely toxic there’s a reason why manufacturing moved from the US (and probably EU/UK but I’m not certain). It’s horribly toxic and you can read this about Samsung[1].

Asia has what some would call almost slave labor and a complete lack of care for workers. Many countries don’t care about pollution either.

US and European countries will gladly clean up manufacturing at home while shifting to countries who could care less about employees or environmental impacts.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46060376

So I’ve seen conditions in some poorer nations in Asia be described as similar to slave labour, but we’re talking about Taiwan and South Korea aren’t we? These are high-income countries, so I’d be really surprised if they had such conditions.

I could believe EU has some stricter environmental regulations than both, though