1. 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

2. Silicon Valley used to be
known as the
“Valley of Heart’s Delight”

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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."

11. CAL OSHA report in 1981

12. Toxic Trouble in Silicon Valley
Newsweek 1984

13. 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.

14. AMRC Handbook - 1985

15. 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

16. New York Times –
November 10, 1984

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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. )

22. Env. STDD Yield in
Best OCC STDD Best Env. STDD
Toxic Agent converted to 8 improved worker
8 hr. TWA NSRL or MCL
hr. TWA protection
1 part per
Benzene 7 ug/day 1 part per billion 1,000:1
million
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

23. The wake up call !!
The Fairchild Case --
Groundwater pollution in Silicon
Valley poisons families

25. Right-To-Know Grows in
1982

26. Labor unions were central to SVTC

27. TRI Releases for 2007
for Selected Electronics Companies
Total On-site Disposal or Total Off-site Disposal Total On- and Off-site Disposal
Facility City State Other Releases or Other Releases 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

29. The footprint of high-tech
development

30. Body Burden
(1000+ Chemicals Used in Electronics Production)

32. Moore’s Law

33. Apple Campaign

34. Inside an iPhone

35. Inside your iPhone

36. 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

37. Electronics Supply Chain
Research done by Sarah Boyd

38. 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

39. 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.

41. 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/

42. Delegates to Vienna SAICM
Meeting – March 2011

43. 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.

44. 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.

45. 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.

46. 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.

47. Ma Jun’s slide from IPE in China

48. 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

49. 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