SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the never-met-a-problem-we-couldn't-solve-by-outsourcing dept.
Results in epidemiology often are equivocal, and money can cloud science (see: tobacco companies vs. cancer researchers). Clear-cut cases are rare. Yet just such a case showed up one day in 1984 in the office of Harris Pastides, a recently appointed associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
A graduate student named James Stewart, who was working his way through school as a health and safety officer at Digital Equipment Corp., told Pastides there had been a number of miscarriages at the company's semiconductor plant in nearby Hudson, Mass. Women, especially of childbearing age, filled an estimated 68 percent of the U.S. tech industry's production jobs, and Stewart knew something few outsiders did: Making computer chips involved hundreds of chemicals. The women on the production line worked in so-called cleanrooms and wore protective suits, but that was for the chips' protection, not theirs. The women were exposed to, and in some cases directly touched, chemicals that included reproductive toxins, mutagens, and carcinogens. Reproductive dangers are among the most serious concerns in occupational health, because workers' unborn children can suffer birth defects or childhood diseases, and also because reproductive issues can be sentinels for disorders, especially cancer, that don't show up in the workers themselves until long after exposure.
Digital Equipment agreed to pay for a study, and Pastides, an expert in disease clusters, designed and conducted it. Data collection was finished in late 1986, and the results were shocking: Women at the plant had miscarriages at twice the expected rate. In November, the company disclosed the findings to employees and the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade group, and then went public. Pastides and his colleagues were heralded as heroes by some and vilified by others, especially in the industry.
As the effects of the chemicals used in chip manufacturing became known, production was shifted to South Korea where the problems continued.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Sunday June 18 2017, @02:49AM (3 children)
I once worked for a semiconductor manufacturer.
People remarked that one department that had been sited in the same building as one or more fabs had a a high rate of unusual cancers. These were not fab workers: they probably stepped into the clean rooms only a handful of times. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, perhaps not: I don't think it was ever investigated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @06:30AM
One of the darker sides to globalism, not just finding cheaper labor but also dupes who don't know better when they're being poisoned. No need to spend money fixing the system, just hurt some people who can't fight back!
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday June 18 2017, @04:54PM (1 child)
I once worked for an electronics manufacturer: PCBAs, circuit breakers, toggle switches, lots of solvents around - open 55 gallon drums of Freon-8 while I was there in 1987. A few years earlier when the plant opened, the girls (women in early 20s) who worked the PCB cleaning lines were losing sensation in their fingers, not just a little, like total loss of feeling. Management had them back off exposure to the solvents and the feeling came back. When I arrived I noticed that the same girls who had gone numb in the fingers a few years before were pretty seriously spaced out, mentally. Slow response times, not making connections that most people would make, etc. Pleasant enough to work with, but the implications were beyond scary.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 18 2017, @06:08PM
I have a similar story, except that this company refurbished rather than manufactured -- refurbishing and reselling hard drives back when it was economical to do so. Apparently whatever chemicals they used were really nasty, and a disproportionate number of workers got cancer.
Fortunately the company exited the hard drive refurbishment business before I started working for them -- although the company was still a house of horrors, performing warranty repair for Best Buy and other large retailers. Ever buy one of those ripoff extended warranty plans with your new laptop? You'll wish you didn't when you send your laptop in for repair and get it back with your keyboard keys 2 or 3 different shades of color and the case screws super-glued in their holes.