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Semiconductor Employees Suing IBM
An anonymous reader writes "According to the NYTimes's Bob Herbert, IBM has been killing its employees by exposure to dangerous chemicals - evidence is being offered by stricken employees that unusually
large numbers of men and women who worked for the giant computer corporation over
the past few decades have been dying prematurely."
As usual....Same article without registration
Expected troll inside...
Four of the 40 lawsuits in San Jose are due to go to trial next month. All the suits are being watched extremely closely by the semiconductor industry, which had been warned for years that chip-making and other processes requiring the use of tremendous amounts of toxic chemicals (such as Rob Malda's manseeking semen) might be associated with cancers, miscarriages, birth defects and other very serious health problems.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
For a while the company WAS the industry. Not too many computer manufacturing companies that have been around long enough to show these statistics.
Typical chemicals used back then as far as I can remember (unless my memory was affected) were; hydrofloric acid (maybe mixed with nitric acid so you would know if it splashed on you), arsenic and phosgene used as dopants, various solvents mostly zylene which is a known carcinogen (but you can buy it at Home Depot so it must be safe for you), acetone, and silane (methane with Si instead of C) which burns on contact with air to make silicon dioxide (glass).
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF- 8&oe=UTF-8&q=spit+goggles
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
We're not talking about a small age difference here. Quote:
People dying of cancer in their thirties is not normal. Especially not when its several of them who worked in the same conditions. My understanding is that people who smoke chronically die of cancer in their 50s to 60s for the most part. These people are dying 10-30 years earlier then that, and it seems to be a significant number of them.
On a more general note, I am amazed at the amount of potentially dangerous stuff people expose themselves to on a daily basis because some government think-tank deemed it safe while ignoring the fact that repercussions such as cancer or birth defects are unlikely to show up immediately and may result not from initial exposure but from very long term exposure.
Those depleted Uranium shells we used in Iraq in '91 weren't dangerous, and there's no reason to think that depleted Uranium could be causing the high rate of cancer and birth defects seen in Gulf War vets. The government said it was safe...
Think about how many chemicals have been added to foods, medicine, even clothing in the last 25 or 50 years; we're only now starting to see long term effects from that. This IBM case isn't isolated, it's just a very large and visible company so the footprint is more obvious.
Someone asked if I had patched against MSBlast; I said yes, I installed Linux.
I can't speak to the merits of the case either way, but for some perspective it might be helpful to note that this is an OP-ED piece, and not a news story, from the NY Times. So although everything stated in the article may in fact be plain vanilla truth, your usual spin filters should be engaged.
The chemicals get into these "victims" by breathing in the fabs. Chemical spills also are another common way.
As for environmental suits. These are really just coveralls for "high tech" workers made of a thin nylon. The "bunny suits" are meant to prevent things like hair and flakes of skin floating around in the air. People are the single biggest source for particlulate contamination in any fab.
The "bunny suits" protect the wafers from the people, they are not meant to protect the workers from hazards in the workplace. Many fabs prefer workers to wear synthetic fibre clothes because cotton clothes shed fibers like you would not believe. Don't wear perfume, hairspray, make-up, cough, sneeze, tear paper, use non-clean room paper, use pencils, chew gum, etc., ect., in a fab.
Put on in order: gloves, hair net, shoe covers, (enter the changing room) hood, coveralls (and don't let the coveralls touch the floor as you put them on), booties over the shoe covers, a second pair of gloves, step on a sticky mat, pass through an air lock and air shower to blow off any particles, and your in the fab. Easy! To leave, just go through the door into the change room. Lots of protocol to get in, simple to get out.
Most new fab designs are highly automated to try and eliminate workers and keep them from contaminating the wafers (one reason anyway).
A group of IBM fab workers (presumably the same group) made an appearance on NBC's Dateline to discuss this very issue five years ago. Here's a transcript.
Even if IBM didn't know, they still deserve compensation for harm that IBM exposed them to. Just because IBM didn't know, shouldn't mean that these people are screwed.
That's my opinion. My other opinion is they if IBM did know, and didn't tell the workers, the people responsible should face jail time for criminal negligence. But that could never happen because in the US, corporations are people, and since it was the corporation that did it, only the corporation can be charged with anything. Yay!
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
2 If it is workplace related exposure, then the people exposed to it should generally come down with the SAME TYPE of cancers/diseases(e.g. radium watch makers all came down with bone tumors, aniline dye workers all came down with bladder cancer) . If someone has esophagous cancer (prob from smoking+drinking) and somebody else has a bone tumor and someone else has brain cancer then these things DON'T ADD UP.
We need to see a GOOD epidemiological investigation before IBM is accused of increasing the cancer risk in it's manufacturing divisions. These things are almost always related to
Selection bias
..........FULL STOP.
"Even if IBM didn't know, they still deserve compensation for harm that IBM exposed them to."
This is where I tend to disagree with people. I believe that people need to take responsibility for there own actions and companies cannot be held responsible for all the worlds' ills. IBM may have had a harmful environment and they may have paid people to enter into that harmful environment. They did not force anyone. Anyone who entered into that environment did so of there own free will and was paid to do so. If IBM didn't force people into a harmful environment and they didn't deceive anyone about working in this environment why should they be held accountable for a decision made by an individual about working in that envirnment?
You seem to believe that companies should be held accountable for not knowing everything however the individual who actually made the decision to place themselves into that environment are not accountable for that decision.
I am sorry but it has not been shown that IBM has made money dishonestly and the employee was paid for the work they performed. You may look back and say they got the raw end of the deal and I may agree with you however, that does not add up to a lawsuit because when it was all said and done the company didn't do anything dishonest and the employees chose to be there.
The technician was seated when he knocked over a small quantity (between 100 and 230 ml) of hydrofluoric acid (HF) onto his lap, splashing both thighs.
The technician sustained burns to 9% of his body, despite washing his legs with water at 6 liters/min. No calcium gluconate gel was applied to the affected area and contaminated clothing was not removed during the flushing with water. His right leg was amputated 7 days after the incident. He subsequently died from multi-organ failure 15 days after the hydrofluoric acid spill.