THE CHIPS ARE FALLING: Health Hazards in the Microelectronics Industry

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THE CHIPS ARE FALLING: Health Hazards in the Microelectronics Industry

by Ken Geiser

‘Science for the People’ Vol. 17, Nos. 1 & 2, March/April 1985, p. 8 — 11 & 45 — 50

Ken Geiser teaches in the Urban and Environmental Policy Program at Tufts University. He is actively involved in hazardous waste issues, and has participated in efforts to pass state Right to Know legislation.

In May of 1984, Jay Zemotel died of an overexposure to arsine gas at one of Massachusetts’ leading semiconductor plants. His death sparked a local controversy that has added fuel to an emerging national debate about the health and environmental hazards posed by America’s high-tech industry. 1 

Joseph Bothwell, a vice president at M/ACom’s Burlington, Massachusetts plant where Jay Zemotel worked, called Zemotel’s death an apparent suicide. Alleging that Zemotel deliberately exposed himself, Bothwell points to a state investigation that concludes that the plant was operating within governmental guidelines. But others dispute these findings. The Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health challenges the state study, and Rand Wilson, an organizer for the Communication Workers of America, claims that the company was negligent in its employee training and in its management of toxic chemical procedures in the plant. Wilson is not hesitant: “This is not a suicide as the company alleged to the press. It’s a case of industrial homicide.” 2

The high-tech industry is often praised for having clean facilities with bright, attractive labs and safe and comfortable work settings. It is contrasted with older industries like steel and chemical where work is risky and smokestacks belch out odors and soot. The popular image of high-tech work envisions technicians in white lab coats working on intricate tasks at comfortable lab benches. It is this image that attracts prospective job applicants and it is this image that encourages local community planners across the country to try to lure high-tech firms to their new industrial parks. But as gradually as pollutants percolate into groundwater, an alternative image of the high-tech industry as a toxic and hazardous workplace is seeping into national consciounsess.

The evidence of toxic and hazardous chemicals in high-tech firms did not originate in Burlington, but, rather, on the West Coast in America’s other major center of high-tech industry, Santa Clara County’s fabled “Silicon Valley.” In this rapidly industrialized valley south of San Francisco, among orchards and quiet subdivisions, the first alarm about high-tech chemicals arose not about deaths, but about reproductive failure. June Ross and her neighbors in South San Jose first began by joking about their propensity for miscarriages. The jokes soon grew humorless when the news media revealed that the groundwater from which they received their drinking water had been contaminated with trichloroethane, a toxin to internal organs and a suspected carcinogen. The trichloroethane was found to be leaking from underground storage tanks at a nearby Fairchild microelectronics production plant. 3

While events have moved dramatically in California and Massachusetts, consciousness and science have lagged. Health professionals, public officials and corporate management have been hesitant to acknowledge that high-tech production may be hazardous to workers and local neighbors. The myth that high-tech is clean is not easily retired. Yet, there is increasing evidence that the high-tech industry manifests significant health and environmental hazards. It is not that the high-tech industry is dramatically more dangerous than other industries. It is the perception that it is cleaner and safer that is dangerous. 

What is the Microelectronics Industry? 

While the term “high-tech” is used loosely by a wide range of manufacturers, microelectronics is central to the industry. 4 The microelectronics industry has largely developed in the past 30 years, with roots in the early post-World War II development of the transistor at Bell Laboratories. This little amplifier, first made of a germanium chip and later produced more cheaply with silicon, revolutionized everything from radios and hearing aids to military armaments. In the 1950s, many now well-recognized corporations were small highly innovative garage-scale laboratories. Texas Instruments produced the first silicon transistor in 1954, and Fairchild Semiconductor produced the first silicon transistor by the planar method in 1957. 

The so-called “planar technique” became the standard production process for the industry. This process involves three operations: oxidation, photo-etching, and diffusion. A small sheet or wafer of silicon is oxidized and then coated with a polymer sensitive to ultraviolet photographic light. A desired pattern of circuitry is then photographed onto the surface making the pattern vulnerable to certain etching chemicals. Next the etching chemicals are applied to cut into the silicon oxide underneath. Thus, after a solvent bath, the pattern is etched into the wafer. Highly conductive chemicals are then washed over, or diffused, into the rawly exposed pattern and the wafer now has a conductive circuit etched upon it. 

This etching and diffusion process can be repeated several times to build up intricate layers of currents before the wafer is finely cut into tiny little circuit disks called “semiconductor chips.” Such chips are typically no larger than a stamp. Hundreds of these little chips may then be inserted, or “stuffed,” into laminated insulators called printed circuit boards or “PC boards.” 5

While the first semiconductors were used in telephone equipment and hearing aids, the real revolution in the industry occurred in computers. The development of the stored program digital computer and the semiconductor chip was synergistic. The chip made it possible to reduce the size and cost of the computer from the room-sized equipment of the 1950s to the desktop models of today. Computer production created the voracious market for millions of chips. 

From its beginning the microelectronics industry has been highly innovative and profitable. By 1968, Intel had become the leader in chip production and IBM was the giant of the computer business. Fairchild and National Semiconductor in California and Digital and Wang in Massachusetts became the seed bed for the spinning off of hundreds of small firms. Many of these failed within several years, but others prospered and grew. Two industrial centers soon emerged in the country: the Santa Clara, Silicon Valley area and the Route 128 region around Boston. Both these areas provided the right combinaion of venture capital, creative entrepreneurs, skilled labor and access to major technical universities needed by the growing industry. The significant role played by Stanford University in California and MIT in Massachusetts combined with the easy access to federal Department of Defense contracts in determining the rapid growth of the two centers. Defense contracts for missile systems, fire control mechanisms, radar systems, computers, and other technology-intensive hardware provided an early market for many products first produced with semiconductors and printed circuit boards. 6

Today, high-tech industrial centers are emerging throughout the country and the world. New centers are being developed in Texas, Illinois, North Carolina and Arizona. In Oregon, there has been a 60% increase in the number of high-tech firms in the past decade. 7 These new centers are developing as congestion and limited industrial space are limiting new growth in Massachusetts and California.

Increasingly, the high-tech industry has become global. Semiconductors are still produced domestically (25% in Silicon Valley), but much of the “stuffing” of chips into printed circuit boards is being done by workers in Ireland, the Philippines, Korea, Singapore, Puerto Rico and Mexico. 8 Today some 70% percent of printed circuit board assembly is “offshore.”9 Firms seek foreign shores for production and assembly due to low wages and the absence of various regulations including health and environmental standards. 

Is the Microelectronics Industry Clean and Safe? 

Among the worst consequences of the clean image of the high-tech industry is how it deflects research interest in occupational and public health issues. While there are increasing stories of reproductive hazards, organ damage, skin, throat and eye harm, cancer, and death, there is very little scientific study; a search of the literature reveals little research of consequence. 

The best work to date comes from Sweden which maintains the best occupational statistics covering toxic chemical exposure. A longitudinal study of Swedish workers in the electronics industry revealed a slightly elevated incidence of all cancers among workers, particularly cancers of the larynx and respiratory system. 10 During the mid-1970s, the U.S. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) completed specific health hazard evaluations of firms in the electronics industry. At the conclusion of the study, NIOSH reported: “It is NIOSH’s opinion that a significant occupationally related health problem exists.” 11 

Two U.S. studies sponsored by NIOSH since then have explored health problems in the semiconductor industry. One study by the Battelle Institute found that etching equipment can produce above-standard exposure to radiation. Further, production and maintenance workers can be exposed to large doses of arsenic and toxic gases such as arsine and phosphine under normal working conditions. 12 A second study by the Research Triangle Institute suggested that synergistic effects of exposure to the wide array of toxic chemicals used in semiconductor production may put workers at greater risk than computable when Computing the Future chemicals are considered individually. 13 

In 1981, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health completed a study based on 42 California semiconductor firms. Not only did the data indicate three times as many cases of occupational illness in semiconductor production as in general manufacturing (1.3 illnesses per 100 workers for semiconductors compared with 0.4 cases per 100 workers for all manufacturing), but also during the same period compensation statistics show that 46.9% of all occupational illnesses among semiconductor workers resulted from systemic poisoning (mostly toxic chemical exposure ). 14

Why is the Microelectronics Industry Particularly Risky? 

Myths persist where facts are absent. The microelectronics industry is perceived as clean due to the absence of contrary facts, and because there is so much to be gained by neglecting the bad news about high-tech. The high-tech industry is touted by both liberal and conservative politicians as the industrial salvation of the U.S. economy – the jobs and investment replacement for the faltering American steel and auto industries. 15 Local politicians promise jobless workers new employment opportunities as high-tech firms are lured to new industrial parks and recycled mill buildings. And, beyond hope and rhetoric, high-tech firms are highly profitable. A recent report in Massachusetts found that the top nine Massachusetts firms earned $939 million in profits in 1981 or a return on investment of 13.3%.16 

With so much to be gained by maintaining a positive popular image of high-tech, it is not surprising that so little citicism exists. But, while political and corporate leaders may consciously neglect the potential costs of high-tech production, it is not personal malevolence that leads high-tech production to be particularly risky. Instead, these risks are a consequence of the industry’s current state of development. Capitalist enterprises develop around particular technological innovations and this development occurs within the context of certain social relations between corporate owners, workers, financers and consumers. The particular combination of these factors that has made the high-tech industry boom, is also responsible for the significant health and environmental hazards that have resulted. First, the microelectronics industry is developing in a new age of synthetic chemicals. Since World War II, major technical innovations in the petrochemical industry have produced a wide range of synthetic chemicals for industrial production. Early work by the National Bureau of Standards and the American Petroleum Institute during the 1930s shifted the focus of hydrocarbon production from coal to petroleum. Combined with the heavy defense investments in chemical research during the war, this led to an explosion of new chemicals on the market following 1945. The total U.S. production of synthetic chemicals increased from about 1 billion pounds in 1940 to 30 billion in 1950 and 300 billion in 1976. 17 

This rapid increase in the quantity and variety of new chemicals paralleled the development of the microelectronics industry. Unlike older industries that developed when resources were more limited and naturally occurring, the high-tech industry capitalized on new solvents such as ethylene, toluene, benzene, and styrene, complex halogenated hydrocarbons like trichloroethylene and methylene chloride, and various new ketones and resins. 

Second, many of the hazards in microelectronics production are derived from long-term exposure to toxic chemicals, the consequences of which may not be experienced for years after the exposure. Such latency periods are always common with cancers and frequently with other severe problems such as organ damage, cell damage, or reproductive disorders. Among the chemicals commonly used in microelectronics production there are suspected carcinogens, teratogens and mutagens, and chemicals adversely affecting major organs. Some of these substances have been known to be hazardous for centuries, but many of the newer chemicals used in microelectronics have had little effective testing or long-term observation experience. Finally, workers in the industry are often exposed not simply to one chemical, but to a multitude of substances. Workers exposed to chemicals above standards set for individual chemicals may be in significant jeopardy because of synergistic effects among chemicals or because some chemicals may inhibit the body’s normal resistance to the toxic effects of other chemicals. 

Third, the large number of firms in the industry with a wide variability in production makes government regulation difficult. The microelectronics industry is composed of thousands of highly competitive firms, and production is, thus, spread among them. For instance, the top 26 printed circuit board producers account for only 41% of the market.18 With many small competitive firms, the emphasis in production is on innovation and experimentation. Because competition is fierce, innovation and proprietary knowledge are often key determinants to success. This highly experimental and competitive environment means that hundreds of chemicals are used in the industry with relatively little experience and testing. Competitive advantage means that such chemical inputs, quantities and methods are closely guarded trade secrets. The variability of production and products and the trade secret protections make it quite difficult for health professionals, industrial hygienists, toxicologists, and public inspectors to know or predict what chemicals are used where and in what manner and quantity. Government regulation is, thus, very difficult to effectively create or enforce. 

Fourth, workers in the industry, those most predisposed to show strong concern over chemical hazards, are seldom organized in unions and, thus, have little capacity to protest or defend themselves without risking their employment. Unionization among the high-tech work force is decidedly low. Of the roughly 1.8 million workers in high-tech firms, no more than 5 to 8% are organized. The American Electronics Association counts no more than 90 contracts among its 1900 member firms.19 Without contract protections workers are cautious about protesting working conditions. The Occupational Safety and Health Act, and various state regulations set standards for exposure and provide inspections, but enforcement is often predicated upon workers knowing enough to raise questions and taking the initiative in calling for inspections. 

Workers in microelectronics plants who work the assembly lines and lab benches or who work in maintenance and services are often the least knowledgeable about toxic chemicals and are the least likely to protest. All of these conditions are typically worse where microelectronics firms have established production operations in Third World countries where regulations are more lax, workers are less educated and unions are discouraged, sometimes brutally. 

What are the Hazards? 

Much of microelectronics production involves chemical interactions, chemical cleaning and various light and radiation exposure. Most work is completed on an assembly line and at a very fine scale of detail and precision. Hazards range from acute and chronic exposures to toxic chemicals to radiation and electric shock and to stress and fatigue. In general, hazards can be categorized as resulting from exposure to solvents, alkalis, and metals, exposure to gases and vapors, and exposure to radiation and workplace stress.20 The table on health hazards in this article displays the range of exposures that are presented by various production processes. 

Solvents, alkalis and metals. These are the basic materials of many production operations including electroplating, etching, stripping, soldering and degreasing. Substances range from common trichloroethane and methyl alcohol to lead, arsenic, cadmium, sulfuric acid and nitric acid. Many of these substances can irritate or burn the skin where exposed, but their more serious effects are derived from either inhaling or ingesting small quantities on one’s fingers or lips. Once in the lungs or stomach, these substances can cause breathing difficulties, cramps and headaches. Prolonged inhalation or ingestion can lead to various kinds of blood or organ damage, cancer and reproductive difficulties. In 1979, an acid vat explosion at Fairchild Instrument in San Jose hospitalized three workers and sent fourteen home sick. 21 

Gases and vapors. Gases are used in doping, cleaning, decomposing or inhibiting oxidation. Vapors arise from uncontaminated solvents. Most can cause eye, skin and nose irritation. Prolonged exposure to gases like phosphine, arsine or phosgene can lead to respiratory damage and blood disorders. High-dose exposures can be immediately lethal. The build-up of gases in tight work rooms can lead to combustion and explosions. In June 1982, 61 employees at a Massachusetts Analogic plant were hospitalized for overexposure to methylene chloride from leaking storage tanks. Later testing proved that the chlorinated solvent had been mixed with 1,1,1-trichloroethane, a suspected carcinogen.22 

Radiation. Both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation are found in the microelectronics industry. X-rays are often used in quality control, microwave radiation is used in etching and lasers are used in masking and cutting. Standards have not been established for radiation, but eye and organ damage can result from direct exposure and burns and skin irritation can result from prolonged indirect exposure. 

Stress. Stress results from detailed, repetitive, monotonous work done under time pressures. Stress is increased by shiftwork, overtime and speedups. Microelectronics production and assembly conditions often involve such conditions. Stress can result in fatigue, irritability, muscle aches and over long time periods can lead to ulcers, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks and strokes. 

A good example of a high-tech health hazard is the arsine gas used in gallium arsenide chip production.23 It was this overexposure that led to Jay Zemotel’s death at M/ A-Com. Gallium arsenide is increasingly being substituted for silicon oxide as a base for chips because of its more rapid conductivity.24 It is purported to be advanced by the Defense Department because it will better withstand nuclear radiation.25 Arsine gas is used as a dopant in gallium arsenide chip production. Inhaled arsine is rapidly dissolved in body fluids and degraded to trivalent arsenic, which is a well-established carcinogen. Recent studies of the current Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard for arsine – 200 milligrams of arsine per cubic meter of air – report it may be too high to prevent chronic toxicity.26 

M/A-Com’s Burlington facility is one of five semiconductor manufacturing firms in the Boston area using gallium arsenide. In March of 1984, Robena Ried, a lab technician, began to raise criticism about the mishandling of chemicals in the lab. At first management was resistant, but after she complained to the state Division of Occupational Hygiene for an investigation, the company’s insurance agent conducted its own investigation.27 The result of these investigations led to the closing of one laboratory found to have an excessive level of airborne arsenic.28

Another outcome of these investigations was the discovery of an elevated level of arsenic in the urine of several lab workers, including Jay Zemotel. Zemotel, whose urine analysis was reported to be three times the “occupational threshold,” was removed from the lab until April, when his arsenic levels had returned to normal.29 Working on a late night shift on June 10, 1984, Zemotel apparently entered a closed lab and, alone in the lab, opened a locked cabinet and was exposed to arsine gas stored there in a tank. Twelve days later he died. 

Who Can Protect Workers? 

The hazardous conditions of microelectronics production continue as a result of the particular work relations of the industry. The absence of union organization means that workers must consider and negotiate their safety as individuals. The individual worker-manager relations mean that management’s only obligation in designing work settings is meeting government standards, which are frequently vague, absent or unenforced. Thus, all that really protects workers from toxic exposure is the good will of management.

The U.S.-based electronics industry employs two quite distinct classes of workers. One group includes highly skilled engineers, scientists and managers who are most often well-paid white men with advanced education. While these elite employees are not absent from hazardous work settings, they do have significant flexibility and job mobility and, often, enough training to be aware of hazardous conditions. In the Massachusetts high-tech this group makes up about 40% of the work force. 30 

The other 60% in Massachusetts make up the second worker group. This group includes production, maintenance, service workers, and clerks. These workers are more likely to be women or young men, often non-white, sometimes non-English speaking, and typically with limited education. Almost 30% of the craft workers in Massachusetts are of minority background, and over 70% of the operatives are women.31 It is workers in this second class who are exposed to hazardous work settings and who have the least access to information and the least capacity to protest chemical exposure. 

Without unions, worker protection must depend on governmental regulations and enforcement. OSHA is the primary federal agency setting standards on workplace exposure to toxic chemicals. In the decade following the creation of OSHA, the agency promulgated hundreds of regulations and set as many standards for exposure. But an aggressive OSHA was considered by much of industry to be a restraint on business development, and few agencies were more directly targeted for destruction by the incoming Republican administration in 1980. Between 1980 and 1982 OSHA inspections dropped by 17 percent.32 

The gutting of OSHA at the federal level has turned occupational health activists’ attention to the state level. One result of this has been a renewed effort to pass “right to know” laws in state legislatures. Right to know laws are intended to provide workers with health hazard information about toxic chemicals they may be exposed to. While various state laws differ, most require that containers of toxic chemicals be effectively labeled and that workers’ requests for health hazard information be adequately met with manufacturers’ data sheets and various kinds of education and training. 

The struggle for passage of state right to know laws has been heavily resisted by industrial lobbyists. Among the most ardent opponents has been the high-tech industry. The Semiconductor Industry Association forcefully opposed the passage of local right to know ordinances in California, and in Massachusetts the Massachusetts High Tech Council was an active lobbyist against passage of a statewide right to know law. 

High-tech executives pride themselves on good worker-management relations. It is not uncommon to hear of company picnics, stock options, flex time and tuition reimbursement. Work relations occasionally include “quality circles” and other forms of employee participation. There is a kind of paternalistic attitude to many of these programs, particularly in the face of a strong anti-union management attitude.33 

In general, high-tech management has taken a defensive and critical posture toward health and environmental critics. Health and safety is considered a company-by-company responsibility although the Massachusetts High Tech Council, the industry lobby, is quick to point out that many high-tech firms have won national awards for setting standards.34 The Council as well as various business executives such as James Bothwell at M/A-Com have argued that critics are only interested in using the health hazard issue to organize unions in the industry. 35 The callousness underlying management attitudes was expressed rather bluntly to Robena Ried at M/A-Com who reported that the company responded to her complaints by stating, “No one has been killed yet. Why bother with precautionary measures if no people are dying?”36 

Are Communities at Risk as Well? 

Hazard exposure at high-tech plants not only affects employed workers, but also can affect local residents. The classic case occurs where OSHA inspectors recommend that high levels of chemical contaminants in laboratory air be remedied by installing stronger ventilation systems. Such ventilation, of course, only transfers airborne toxins from the workplace to the local community. 

The Silicon Valley groundwater contamination provides further evidence of problems for the local community. Fairchild Instrument first discovered leaks in underground solvent waste tanks in December of 1981. Company tests at the site soon revealed that 1,1,1-trichloroethane had seeped into a public drinking water well some 2000 feet away. While the well company immediately closed the well, neither the company, state officials, nor Fairchild notified the 16,900 households that were serviced by the well. It was not until late January that the San Jose Mercury acting on an anonymous tip broke the story to the local community.37 It was this story that led June Ross and her neighbors to a dismaying explanation for the perceived high incidence of miscarriages in their neighborhood. Within a year the problem of groundwater contamination by high-tech firms had been revealed in a report by the Regional Water Quality Board to be common throughout the Silicon Valley.

Revelations about other cases of leaking storage tanks under high-tech property soon led Ross, her neighbors and a group of health and legal activists to form the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. By the summer of 1984, the Coalition had identified over 70 cases of leaking underground storage tanks and in June public health officials closed some 125 private drinking water wells found to be contaminated by various computer chip degreasing agents. In October, the EPA added 20 new sites in Silicon Valley to the Superfund national priority program. Of these, 18 were high-tech firms. 38 

The environmental contamination of Silicon Valley may be an early warning for other high-tech centers. Recent cases of groundwater contamination have occurred in Virginia and Massachusetts. In Manassas, Virginia, the site of the Manassas IBM plant was placed on the Superfund priority site list in September 1984. This story began in 1970 when engineers at IBM discovered tetrachloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen, seeping into groundwater under the Manassas plant from underground storage tanks. Monitoring wells drilled around the site have shown movement of the contamination toward the boundary of the site and toward a major aquifer nearby. 39 In May 1979, elevated levels of trichloroethylene forced the closing of two municipal wells in Burlington, Massachusetts. A study completed by a local consulting firm identified the source of the contaminant to be leakage from corroded sewer lines in a nearby industrial park containing over thirty high-tech firms. Once in 1972 and again in 1982, the town of Burlington was forced to replace asbestos sewer lines destroyed by chemical discharges from high-tech firms in the industrial park. Four firms including M/ A-Com agreed to pay damages for the sewer replacement, yet to date no costs have been recovered for the polluting of the well field and several of the wells continue to provide occasional drinking water to the municipal system. 40 

In a recent report in Massachusetts, High Tech Toxies: Communities at Risk, evidence was gathered showing that high-tech firms produce about 20% of the hazardous waste in the state, some of which has shown up in the state’s worst dump sites. The report also documented a wide range of violations of air and water discharge permits by high-tech firms. 41

What Can Be Done? 

With increasing evidence mounting on both coasts that implicates the microelectronics industry as a significant source of environmental and health risk, the clean image cannot long endure. The crumbling of this dangerous myth is the first step to a broader set of strategies to protect workers and community residents from the hazards of microelectronics production. Once it is clear that this industry is not unlike other more mature industries, and once workers, community residents, health professionals, managers and policy makers realize that the benefits of high-tech employment must be balanced with precautions about health and environmental risk, then there are several avenues for effective action.

  • There is a significant need for more research. As stated above, there is a near absence of credible occupational health and epidemiological studies of the microelectronics industry. While health activists warn of serious exposures and consequences and the industry responds with denials and victim blaming, there is no solid research of any real standing. The 1981 California study is a beginning, but more comprehensive research that focuses on priority chemicals and traces health histories of previously exposed workers would begin to build a more effective data base for setting public policy and alerting health professionals. 
  • Education and training are critical to alerting workers, health professionals and management to the possible consequences of chemical exposure. Unions need to develop effective educational packages. Community colleges and vocational schools need to develop strong occupational health programs. Public development programs, like Massachusetts’ new Microelectronics Center, must parallel skill training with health training. Management-sponsored training should be encouraged as well, but only where management no longer seeks to gloss over the risks of chemical exposure. 
  • Workers organized into unions still provide one of the best mechanisms for guaranteeing a safe and healthful work environment. Firms organized by national unions such as the Communication Workers of America at Western Electric, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at Raytheon provide some of the best health and safety records. Union organizing will not be easy in an industry so hostile to collective bargaining. Still there are important efforts at pre-union formations emerging in the industry, such as the Massachusetts High Tech Workers Network, that should be encouraged and supported. 
  • Right to know legislation provides unorganized workers with the best opportunity for learning about health hazards. Right to know laws need to be enacted in all states. Since 1980 it has been common to include right to know provisions for local community people as well as workers. Not only does this form a powerful alliance for legislative campaigns, but it also links people working inside plants with people in local neighborhoods. This is important so that management innovations that reduce exposures for one group do not raise risks for the other.
  • The most effective long-term solution to toxic chemical exposure is to reduce the use of toxic chemicals in production. The first step in any such effort is to inventory all chemicals used in individual plants. The next step is to reduce human exposure by improving management and disposal practices, by automating certain production operations, and by improving containment and shielding devices. The longer-term strategy must be the gradual phasing out of various toxic substances and substituting less toxic and more environmentally compatible ones. Particularly in industries like microelectronics, such significant process changes are practical, because, as noted, the development of the industry itself is requiring frequent process innovations now. The market will not naturally dictate that those changes be health- and environment-regarding. That is a role that must be played by organizations of workers and local community groups. 

Jay Zemotel, June Ross, Robena Ried, and many others, who today would be considered health victims of the microelectronics industry, provide early indications of the kind of tragic toll that may emerge, if the high-tech industries are not more carefully studied, monitored, and reengineered. High-tech industries can set the standard for the kind of workplaces we all would like, but the industry and the government cannot be left to do it alone. People, organized and conscious of their rights, must be a constant catalyst for change. The talent, expertise and resources to implement such changes do exist in the microelectronics firms. It is time these corporations lived up to the promise of their yet-to-be-proven clean image.

>> Back to Vol. 17, Nos. 1-2 <<

REFERENCES

  1. “Critics Raise Questions About Health and Safety of High Tech Jobs,” New York Times, September 3, 1984.
  2. “Probe Demanded in M/ A-Com Worker Death,” Boston Business Journal, July 16-22, 1984.
  3. “Findings of Toxin Leakage in Silicon Valley Hurt Chip Makers’ Reputation for Safety,” Wall Street Journal, August 29, 1984.
  4. By microelectronics industry, I will mean firms classified in the Standard Industrial Code (SIC) 367: Electronic Components and Accessories including electron tube and capacitor production as well as semiconductors. By “high tech” I will mean a broader class of industry including SIC 357, 366, 381, 382, 383. For a full definition see High Tech Research Group, Massachusetts High Tech: The Promise and the Reality, Box 441001, Somerville, Mass., 1984.
  5. A Good description of chip production can be found in the special issue of Scientific American, vol. 237, n. 3 (September 1977). See especially William G. Oldham, “The Fabrication of Microelectronic Circuits.”
  6. Ernest Braum, “From Transistor to Microprocessor,” in Tom Forester, ed., The Microelectronics Revolution (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981).
  7. “Oregon Turns into a Mecca for High Tech,” Wall Street Journal, August 28, 1984.
  8. “U.S. Jobs Going Overseas as U.S. Costs Rise,” New York Times, March 19, 1983.
  9. Lenny Segal, Delicate Bonds: The Global Semiconductor Industry (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Research Center, January 1981).
  10. D. Vagers and R. Ohlin, “Incidence of Cancer in the Electronics Industry: Using the New Swedish Cancer Environment as a Screening Instrument,” British Journal of Industrial Medicine, vol. 40 (1983).
  11. U.S. HEW, NIOSH, Health Hazard Evaluation Project No. HHE 79-66, Signetics Corporation, Sunnyvale, Calif., January 31, 1980.
  12. Reported in Joseph LaDou, “The Not-SoClean Business of Making Chips” Technology Review, vol. 87, no. 4, May/June, 1984.
  13. D. Pasguini and L. Laird Hazard Assessment of the Electronic Component Manufacturing Industry (Draft) Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 1982.
  14. LaDou, 1984, p. 23. The California study is reported in Richard Wade and Michael Williams, Semiconductor Industry Study, 1981, California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, San Francisco, 1982.
  15. A good review of industry projections can be found in a special issue of Business Week, March 28, 1983. For a conservative view see High Technology: Public Policies for the 1980s, National Journal, Washington, D.C., 1983.
  16. High Tech Research Group, 1984, p. 30
  17. Samuel Epstein, Lester Brown, and Carl Pope, Hazardous Waste in America (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982), p. 22.
  18.  “Printed Circuits,” Global Electronics Information Newsletter, n. 46, September 1984.
  19. American Electronics Association, The Trade Union Interface: 1977-1982, Palo Alto, Calif., 1983.
  20. For good reviews of the hazards in terms that are useful on the shop floor, see Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health, Unmasking the Hazards: A Workers Guide to Job Hazards in the Electronics Industry, 361 Willow Street #3, San Jose, Calif., 1981, and North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Project, Microelectronics: Safety and Health in the Workplace, Box 2514, Durham, N.C., 1982.
  21. Robert Howard, “Second Class in Silicon Valley,” Working Papers, vol. 8, n. 5 (September-October 1981), p. 28.
  22. “61 Overcome by Toxic Fumes at Electronics Plant in Danvers,” Boston Globe, June 25, 1982.
  23. The only study of gallium arsenide itself is in T. A. Roschma, Labor Hygiene and Occupational Hygiene, 10-300-33, 1966.
  24. “Gallium Gains as Substitute for Silicon in Computer Chip,” Wall Street Journal, February 12, 1982.
  25. Gregory Johansen, “Gallium Arsenide Chips Emerge from the Lab,” High Technology, July 1984.
  26. Philip Landrigen, Richard Costello, and William Stringer, “Occupational Exposure to Arsine: An Epidemiological Reappraisal of Current Standards,” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment, and Health, vol. 8 (1982), p. 175.
  27. “Worker Tells of Role in Closing Tech Lab,” Boston Globe, May 13, 1984.
  28. “High Tech: New Products, New Hazards,” Boston Globe, July 23, 1984.
  29. “Negligence Alleged in M/A-Com Worker Death,” Boston Business Journal, July 9-15, 1984.
  30. High Tech Research Group, 1984, p. 14.
  31. High Tech Research Group, 1984, p. 17.
  32. AFL-CIO Department of Occupational Safety and Health, OSHA Enforcement Under the Reagan Administration: An Update, Washington, D.C., May, 1983.
  33. High Tech Research Group, 1984, p. 52.
  34. “High Tech: Low Safety,” Springfield Valley Advocate, July 4, 1984.
  35. “Breath of Death,” Boston Phoenix, August 14, 1984.
  36. Boston Globe, May 13, 1984.
  37. “Leaking Chemicals in California’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Alarm Neighbors,” New York Times, May 20, 1982.
  38. “19 Silicon Valley Sites Listed for Toxic Waste Cleanup,” San Francisco Examiner, October 3, 1984.
  39. “Clean IBM Tackles a New Toxic Problem,” Washington Post, October 15, 1984.
  40. For details see Kenneth Geiser, Rand Wilson, Richard Bird, and Leslie Kochan, High Tech Toxics: Communities at Risk, Task Force on High Tech Toxics, Boston, Mass., October 1984.
  41. Geiser et. al., 1984.