Occupational and Environmental Hazards:

the Campaign in Silicon Valley

Presented at the International Symposium on Labor Rights and

Environmental Justice in the Electronics Industry

Graduate School of Public Health

Seoul National University

Seoul, Korea

November 12, 2011

Ted Smith, Founder,

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition;

Electronics TakeBack Coalition; and

International Campaign for Responsible Technology

www.icrt.co

Silicon Valley used to be

known as the

“Valley of Heart’s Delight”

Transition from Valley of Hearts

Delight to Silicon Valley

• In the 1970s, farming and the canning and

food packaging industries started to move

away

• A new industry started to grow up based

on new technologies – it became known

as the high tech electronics industry and

produced semiconductors, printed circuit

boards, disk drives and computers

History of organizing for better conditions

• In the mid 1970's, a small group of people started meeting to discuss concerns over the chemical-handling aspects of the semiconductor industry and what might be done to raise these issues publicly. The group was called ECOSH, Electronics Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. ECOSH members included electronics workers, occupational nurses, attorneys, industrial hygienists, engineering and medical students, labor, environmental and religious leaders.

History of organizing for better conditions

• Organized an effort to ban the use of TCE

• Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health (SCCOSH) was formally organized in 1978. ECOSH continued as a SCCOSH project into the early 1980s, gaining recognition for a vigorous and largely successful campaign to ban TCE as well as energetic support and advocacy for many workers trying to win better conditions for themselves and co-workers.

History of organizing for better conditions

• Another early SCCOSH project was

Injured Workers United, a support group

for workers already affected by chemical

exposures, trying to secure fair

compensation, decent medical care and

retraining. The Silicon Valley Toxics

Coalition (SVTC) also started out as an

early project of SCCOSH.

History of organizing for better conditions

1978 Community testing for TCE in breast milk –

organizers use fliers, newspaper, radio, phone hot line -

500 people are tested for TCE

1978 Campaign to Ban TCE (Cal-OSHA lowers PEL from

100 to 25 ppm.)

1980 NIOSH HHE finds narcotic and irritant symptoms

in clean room environment; all solvent exposures below

PELs, yet workers are getting sick.

1981 HESIS reproductive hazard alert on glycol

ethers

1983 Cal- OSHA semiconductor study does not

investigate reproductive and cancer hazards

1983 Cal- OSHA semiconductor study does not

investigate reproductive and cancer hazards

1985 Media charge chip makers with keeping two sets of

records for toxic exposures and systematically

underreporting # of affected workers.

History of organizing for better conditions

1981 – Toxic leaks into the water supply discovered at Fairchild

and IBM

1982 – Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition formed as a project of

SCCOSH

1983 Cal- OSHA semiconductor study does not investigate

reproductive and cancer hazards

1984 - “The not so clean business of making chips” by Dr. Joseph

LaDou published in Technology Review from MIT

1985 Media charge chip makers with keeping two sets of records

for toxic exposures and systematically underreporting # of

affected workers.

History of organizing for better conditions

1986 - First report of elevated miscarriage and illness rates in clean rooms reported at Digital Equipment Corporation

1986 - IBM workers ask about cancer in clean rooms. IBM says ‘no problem’

1992 – Results of epidemiological reports by IBM and Semiconductor Industry Association report high rates of miscarriages

1992 - First call for replacement of ethylene glycol ethers: “Campaign to end the Miscarriage of Justice”

2000s – HealthWatch organizes WE LEAP OSH trainings for 12 ethnic groups, including Chinese, Cambodian, Indonesian, Indian, Korean, Latino, Vietnamese, etc.

Unions

Organizing Silicon Valley's High Tech Workers

by David Bacon

• From the beginning, high tech workers had to face an industry-wide anti-union policy. Robert Noyce, who participated in the invention of the transistor, and later became a co-founder of Intel Corp., declared that "remaining non-union is an essential for survival for most of our companies. If we had the work rules that unionized companies have, we'd all go out of business. This is a very high priority for management here. We have to retain flexibility in operating our companies. The great hope for our nation is to avoid those deep, deep divisions between workers and management which can paralyze action."

CAL OSHA report in 1981

Toxic Trouble in Silicon Valley Newsweek 1984

High-tech Organizer’s Retreat

• In 1985 "High-Tech Organizer's Retreat" held

in California, brought together twenty labor,

occupational health, and environ-mental

organizers. The Integrated Circuit, a national

coalition, formed out of the retreat and

resulted in the publication of the newsletter

Around the Circuit. This later evolved into

Campaign for Responsible Technology

(CRT), then ICRT.

AMRC Handbook - 1985

The Reality of

High Tech Impact

• Semiconductor workers experience illness

rates 3 times greater than manufacturing

workers in other industries

• In 3 epidemiological studies, women who

worked in fabrication rooms were found to

have rates of miscarriage of 40% or more

above non-manufacturing workers

• Silicon Valley has more EPA Superfund sites

than any other area in the USA

New York Times – November 10, 1984

Clean rooms and

miscarriages

“ new concerns … may prove a potential black eye for a high technology industry that … sought to portray itself as clean and with little impact on the environment.

Women exposed to certain chemicals … in the nation’s semiconductor factories face a significantly higher risk of miscarriage, a broad industry-financed study has found. The study is the 3rd in 4 years to find that … glycol ethers have toxic effects. “

Oct 12 and Dec. 4, 1992

IBM Corporate Mortality File http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626450/

• IBM maintained records of 30,000 workers that

identified cause of death over 30 years

• Records were analyzed by Dr. Richard Clapp,

epidemiologist at Boston Univ.

• Breast cancer deaths in women at IBM were

2.42 times the expected number

• Similar findings for brain cancer, kidney cancer,

non-Hodgikins lymphoma

IBM settles chemical suit

January 23, 2001 Case involved

microchip site workers' son

• By Craig Wolf Poughkeepsie Journal A lawsuit described as the first to test claims that chemicals in a microchip plant could be harmful to people has been settled, the parties said Monday. IBM Corp. and attorneys for Zachary Ruffing, a 15-year-old whose parents both had worked in the 1980s at IBM's East Fishkill plant, confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

• Settlements typically involve payment by the defendant. Neither side would disclose what IBM or two chemical companies involved in the suit would pay.

• IBM said ''human factors'' played a role in the decision. It still denies guilt.

• ''I think it's an enormously important case, partly because of the really serious damage suffered by Zach Ruffing and his family, and partly because this is the first major test case of its kind involved the high-tech industry,'' said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in San Jose, Calif.

Practice precaution: close the gap

between environmental and workplace

PELS

68 chemicals known to the State of California to

cause cancer or reproductive harm are totally

unregulated by Cal-OSHA or regulated only for non-

cancer effects

There is a huge disparity between workplace and

environmental protections against carcinogens and

developmental toxicants everywhere.

Workplace PELS (if any) for carcinogens and

developmental toxics are much weaker than

environmental standards

•If the air you breathe at work contains 1 ppm

benzene, you are getting over 500 times the

dosage set by EPA to protect the most

vulnerable level of benzene with every breath

you take (industrial health standards are not

set to prevent birth defects in workers kids)

•If you breathe1 ppm of benzene at work, it

takes only 166 hours to get a complete lifetime

dose (using the federal public health exposure

limit. )

Toxic Agent Best OCC STDD

8 hr. TWA Best Env. STDD

NSRL or MCL

Env. STDD converted to 8

hr. TWA

Yield in improved worker

protection

Benzene 1 part per

million 7 ug/day 1 part per billion 1,000:1

TCE 25 ppm 80 ug/day 7 ppb 3,571:1

Perc 25 ppm 14 ug/day .3 ppb 8,333:1

Methylene Chloride 25 ppm 0.005 mg/L 1 ppb 25,000:1

The wake up call !!

The Fairchild Case --Groundwater pollution in Silicon

Valley poisons families

Right-To-Know Grows in

1982

Labor unions were central to SVTC

TRI Releases for 2007

for Selected Electronics Companies

Facility City State Total On-site Disposal or Other Releases

Total Off-site Disposal or Other Releases

Total On- and Off-site Disposal or Other Releases

IBM CORP HOPEWELL JUNCTION NY 1074661 22249.4 1096911

SILTRONIC CORP. PORTLAND OR 635958 3.3 635961

SANYO SOLAR (USA) LLC CARSON CA 8069 234714 242783

IBM CORP ESSEX JUNCTION VT 185718 2645.1034 188363

SONY ELECTRONICS INC. DOTHAN AL 74820 16891.52 91711

MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC BOISE ID 88375 864.3 89239

PHILIPS LUMILEDS LIGHTING CO SAN JOSE CA 73231 0 73231

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC DALLAS TX 23652 44124.89 67776

DU PONT ELECTRONICS MICROCIRCU ITS INDUSTRIES LTD. MANATI PR 1428 34679.232 36107

INTEL CORP RIO RANCHO NM 18193 3589.9 21783

The footprint of high-tech

development

Body Burden (1000+ Chemicals Used in Electronics Production)

Moore’s Law

Apple Campaign

Inside an iPhone

Inside your iPhone

Our movement expands as

Industry moves out of S.V.

Global High-Tech Production is Undergoing the Largest

Industrial Expansion in the History of the World

Electronics Supply Chain Research done by Sarah Boyd

Unraveling the High-Tech Supply Chain

International Campaign for

Responsible Technology

(ICRT)

Global Symposium on Strategies for a

Sustainable High-Tech Industry

November 14-17, 2002

San Jose, CA

http://www.svtc.org/icrt/index.html

International Campaign for

Responsible Technology

(ICRT)

Mission Statement,

adopted November 16, 2002

• We are an international solidarity network that

promotes corporate and government

accountability in the global electronics industry.

We are united by our concern for the lifecycle

impacts of this industry on health, the

environment and workers' rights.

Consumer Education:

The Story of Electronics

• The Story of Electronics explores the high-tech

revolution's collateral damage—25 million tons of e-waste

and counting, poisoned workers and a public left holding

the bill. Host Annie Leonard takes viewers from the mines

and factories where our gadgets begin to the horrific

backyard recycling shops in China where many end up.

The film concludes with a call for a green 'race to the top'

where designers compete to make long-lasting, toxic-free

products that are fully and easily recyclable.

• http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-electronics/

Delegates to Vienna SAICM

Meeting – March 2011

UN expert meeting charts the way forward on

hazardous chemicals in electronic products

Historic meeting addresses entire lifecycle of electronics

For the first time, more than 100 experts from

around the world gathered in Vienna, Austria to

make recommendations for a UN process on

reducing and eliminating hazardous chemicals in

the design, manufacturing, and end of life stages

of electronic products. Concerns over toxic

exposures during manufacturing, use, and

recycling of electronic products provoked

governments, the private sector, and public

interest NGOs from around the world to call for

the meeting at a global conference in 2009.

Key Recommendations from

SAICM in Vienna

Delegates developed key recommendations:

• eliminating chemical hazards during design;

• phasing-out hazardous substances;

• improving information transparency and flow;

• ensuring equal protection of workers,

communities, and consumers;

• preventing export of hazardous electronic

wastes from developed to developing countries;

• and controlling export and import of near-end-

of-life equipment.

Health-Based Exposure Limits

• Governments should formulate, promote, and implement

health-based exposure limits for workers. These

exposure limits are to be based on thorough and

adequate hazard testing of all chemicals and mixtures

used and produced throughout the life cycle. Producers,

manufacturers and suppliers of chemicals are

responsible for performing these tests. Exposure limit

values should be protective of the most vulnerable

populations, and should provide equal protection in the

workplace and the community; In cases where data are

not yet sufficient to develop a health-based exposure

limit value, the precautionary principle should be applied,

namely by eliminating exposure to chemicals or reducing

it as low as possible.

Health Surveillance

• Producers and manufacturers, with oversight by the government and the full

participation of worker and community representatives should ensure (and

report the results to appropriate governmental authorities of):

– comprehensive, occupationally relevant health surveillance for all of its

workers;

– comprehensive ongoing industrial hygiene and environmental

monitoring to measure the release and exposure to all hazardous

materials used in manufacturing and production;

– access to these data (and adequate funding) to ensure comprehensive

and independent epidemiological assessments of worker health;

– Action plans to preserve and protect worker health based on these data.

– In situations where pollution from electronics production facilities has

been found in surrounding communities, the manufacturers and

producers should cooperate with health researchers and investigators to

assess and control adverse health impacts, especially with respect to

vulnerable populations.

Ma Jun’s slide from IPE in China

Electronic Sustainability

Commitment

Each new generation of technical

improvements in electronic products

should include parallel and proportional

improvements in environmental, health

and safety as well as social justice

attributes. Adopted by the Trans-Atlantic Network for

Clean Production, May 16, 1999

For Further Information:

Ted Smith – International Campaign for Responsible Technology;

Electronics TakeBack Coalition

tsmith@igc.org; +408-242-6707

www.icrt.co; www.electronicstakeback.com/home/

http://www.archive.org/details/pioneeractivistsil00smitrich

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt2b69r7hf;style=oac4;view=dsc