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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
and I was always jealous of everyone with an "IBM" job. .
at least working in the pr0n industry I'll only go blind. .
I know you are trolling, but I doubt that would matter in this case. The families of the victims would receive the compensation (as they would still have to assume the debt due to the high cost of medical bills, funeral arrangements, etc)
Does anyone know of exposure to harmful substances in other companies that do similar manufacturing? I mean, surely, IBM does not have dramatically different methods of manufacturing hard drives and semiconductors from the rest of the industry.
after all, semiconductor industry isn't _that_ old (few _decades_) and generally usage of chemicals a few decades ago wasn't often so well thought and their long term effects weren't usually that well laid out in ANY industry. and even more common is that employees in those old times didn't care themselfs at all about protection("what, i can't see it it cant hurt me don't tell me boy how to do this i've been doing this for 30 years") and general awareness about such things wasn't exactly stellar.
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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Whe I worked as a software Engineer for a small manufacturing company, many of the Electrical Engineers had many many problems relating to exposure to chemicals.
One had an enlarged liver, another had a nerveous dis-order. There was cancer. I think it stems from an over all lack of knowledge of hazordous chemicals.
When I worked there OSHA (Sp.?) had done a lot to make things better. A LOT of chemicals where removed and cleaned up. I was still nerveous about standing next to a pot of molten solder, etc.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Despite that, I think the employees have a fairly good point. Even if IBM didn't know about the toxic conditions, it was IBM who put the employees there, and they should likely have to deal with the consequences. Its really sad that it had to turn out this way.
I went to news.google.com to search for the google partner link, but "IBM lawsuit" turned up all this shit about some company called SCO. Who are they, anyway? They say they've got some sort of Unix, but I've never seen or even heard of anyone who runs it.
Must be some two-bit company...wonder why they're getting so much press.
Please help metamoderate.
A) Can't always stop it.
B) Powerful solvents are rarely good for you. Same for heavy metals.
C) Not everyone read MSDS like they should.
D) Proper saftey gear can be very uncomfortable and unwieldy, esspecially if it's fitted correctly. (I fog up goggles like you can't believe, even when I put anti-fog crap in them.)
E) Stress can accelerate cancer.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Original found on Usenet.
okra - sterculic acid (anti-metabolite)
celery - psoralins (light-stimulated carcinogens)
crucifers - goitrin (turns off your thyroid)
litchee - hypoglycin-A (L-a-amino-b-[methylene
cyclopropyl]propionic acid)
peanuts - aflatoxcins (fungal metabolites; hepatic carcinogens)
lima beans - cyanogenic glycosides
carrots - carotatoxin (neurotxin)
mushrooms - hydrazines (carcinogen; holy Alar, Batman!)
tomatoes - tomatine (neurotoxin), quercetin glycosides (carcinogens)
broccoli - benzpyrene (carcinogin), goitrin (shuts down thyroid)
potatoes - solanine (toxin; causes spina bifida), chaconine
(neutrotoxin), isoflavones (estrogens), arsenic
cassava - linamarin (cyanogenic glycoside)
broad bean - vicine (hemolytic)
chick pea - beta-N-oxalylamino-L-alanine (lathyrogenic factor)
fiddlehead - ptaquiloside (leukopenia, thrombocytopenia, hemolysis;
bladder and intestinal carcinogen)
comfrey - pyrrolizidine alkaloids (hepatotoxin)
cabbage - thiocyanates (shuts down thyroid)
spinach - phytanic acid (chelates iron adn zinc - no absorption)
soy - genistin, daidzin, coumesterol (phytoestrogens)
wheat germ - phytoestrogens
nutmeg - myristicin (hallucinogen, spasmodic)
mustard - allyl isothiocyanate (war gas)
alfalfa sprouts - canavanine (arginine mimic; highly toxic to growing
mammals)
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).
C) Not everyone read MSDS like they should.
I don't think MSDS rules existed in the time period they're talking about (mid-60's to late 70's).
Mandatory access to MSDS is relatively recent. A quick web search indicates that the OSHA "Hazard Communication" law came into effect in 1983.
"statistical analyses", "troubling elevations", "younger than the U.S. average", "chilling", "sadly", "Incredibly", "More than 200 plaintiffs", "serious illnesses", "vehemently denied"
Phew, with all those emotive phrases, I'm finding that I have strong opinions on this, despite not having access to the data behind the complaint, and not seeing the phrase "standard deviations" appearing once. I guess because IBM are a big company, they must be evil and therefore guilty, except that they're being sued by SCO, so perhaps they're good and therefore innocent.
One thing's for sure though, I'm not going to wait for them to muddy this with boring old "facts" before jumping to my conclusion.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Now, if you can show me a few hundred people with the SAME ailment, you might have something. But this suit is fishing with a gill net.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This is statistical hogwash. You can't take a sample like "all IBM employees" and compare it to "all the people in the United States." Analysis needs to be tuned to a population that has a similar demographic. Age, geography, economic background, pollution, family history, smoking, and even diet affect cancer rates tremendously.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Go into hardware, die from nasty production chemicals
Go into software, die from a Doritos or Mountain Dew overdose.
Either way, you're screwed
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
White mice exposed to flourscent lights die.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
"When I worked there OSHA (Sp.?) had done a lot to make things better."
You know you're on Slashdot when someone is unsure of the spelling of "OSHA".
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Although this kind of threat to workers' health is an outrage, in the real world, companies just move overseas when the US cracks down with safety/anti-pollution regulations or if the lawsuits start to pile up. Instead of fixing the problem, it is much cheaper to just move overseas and keep on doing what they have always been doing. There is practically *ZERO* enforcement of workplace safety regulations, environmental pollution regulations, and workers rights in China. The right to sue your employer in China only exists on paper and there are no independent labor unions.
What is needed here is both strict safety regulation and a ban or heavy tariff on goods from countries that do not enforce a basic level of similar reguations. This will force IBM and others to clean up their act and prevent them from just transfering the plants overseas.
At that time, the long-term dangers of those chemicals were not appreciated. However, can they clearly pin it on the IBM process lines? How about the Reynold's plant, auto body shops, plating factories, and the rest fo the crap that was being dumped into the Silicon Valley air, dirt and water?
Agreed, but it isn't fair for you to blame IBM for this. Their competitors do it, so if they don't, they go out of business. It really is that simple. Sometimes the government tries to erect tariffs to balance the playing field a bit, but then everybody starts screaming about protectionism and corporate welfare. It's a no-win situation for all involved.
I think a stronger case can be made, though: all of these countries which have weak employee protection laws now will get stronger laws and start having retroactive lawsuits (ala tobacco or asbestos) which will probably cost the companies a lot more down the road than it would cost them to avoid those areas now. And I'll bet they're not factoring that risk into their cost analyses.
Companies that provided chemicals to I.B.M. are also defendants in the suits. The workers were not told of the risks, according to the lawsuits, even after they began showing symptoms of systemic chemical poisoning.
This show's they are after money, and not information. IBM bought these chemicals.... why is it the fault of the company that sold them to them?
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.
For a year as a contractor in the late eighties. There was always a nasty stink of fumes around the entire plant. It would hit you as you drove up to the place.
I didn't work in a clean room, although I spent my 12 months there slicing silicon wafers and then bathing them in a solvent (do not remember exactly what it was) that dissolved the bond between each wafer and a strip of caulk. The protection I was given was for my eyes (goggles) and hands (rubber gloves).
I do remember that my lungs would burn after shifts, particularly by the end of the week. I don't have cancer, yet, but I do have diminished lung capacity and chronic bronchitus now. Are they fallout from my stint at IBM? Possibly. Doctors always ask me if I smoke (never have) when they give me lung capacity tests and get back these crappy results.
Do I suspect I was taken advantage of? Again, possibly, but you need to understand that at the time it was a big deal to get any job at IBM in Duchess county. Seven dollars an hour was considered a king's ransom since just about all the other work available was for minimum wage. All of the contractors I worked with applied to become full-time employees, and a "lucky" few were accepted when their temp stints ran out. Hopefully, since I wasn't one of the "lucky" ones, I'll be one of the truly lucky ones that doesn't develop a serious illness from my time spent there.
Overall I'm a little worried but as I said, I don't have cancer yet and I take care of my health. I feel bad for my co-workers who are very sick now or who have died. There were a lot of good people working there and I think IBM is no different than any other large corporation in the borderline craven way they put profits above all other considerations.
Be careful out there, is all I can say.