Workers Poisoned Making Touchscreen Hardware

SocResp writes "A chemical called n-hexane has been poisoning the nervous systems of Chinese workers who assemble touchscreen devices for Apple and other companies, an investigative journalist from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. It's scary to think that people are being damaged to pursue high production rates. For companies with soaring profits and share prices, and elaborate product development and marketing, it seems they should be all the more culpable if they fail to take care of the production workers."

Comments

This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Production lines in other countries don't incur the cost of US worker-safety regulations.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

People always whine about poor working conditions in 3rd world countries, but then end up buying their products anyway because they're cheaper. I do that too, but I'm not being dishonest about it. Frankly, I don't give a damn if some chinese people die to bring be cheaper iPhones and other goodies. The fact that jobs are being transferred to countries with non-existent worker-safety regulations tells me that most people also don't give a damn.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[grumpyman]

Bingo - the reason to get by without strict regulations and legal system is a big factor into outsourcing. Not only cost in ensuring the safety but also the time it saves from going thru government hoops in a regulated environments.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[belthize]

You may not give a damn but I'm willing to bet the workers do. The problem is they're either not aware (very likely) or they're forced to choose between that and eating.

The fact that you're too much of a chicken shit to post your opinion with a name suggests that you do in fact give a damn, enough at least to not associate your own handle with your own oxygen wasting stupidity.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Sylak]

mod parent insightful

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[causality]

You may not give a damn but I'm willing to bet the workers do. The problem is they're either not aware (very likely) or they're forced to choose between that and eating.

The fact that you're too much of a chicken shit to post your opinion with a name suggests that you do in fact give a damn, enough at least to not associate your own handle with your own oxygen wasting stupidity.

The root of the problem is the same blissful, ignorant indifference that is causing the USA to become a soft-tyranny style police state. The products' marketing don't mention the working conditions that made it available at that price, just like the politicians' campaigns don't mention that the removal of freedom is how many of their goals are accomplished. No one really wants to take a look beneath the surface. It's out of sight, out of mind as though there are no externalities, as though there are no secondary and tertiary effects.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese working conditions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMOBqRVDOYQ

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[PCM2]

The problem is larger than that. In economics, there's the phenomenon of "externalities" -- basically, costs incurred by business operations that aren't paid for by the business itself.

In the United States, for example, companies are generally expected to provide health insurance coverage for their workers. If a lot of workers get sick and file health claims, the employer's insurance rates go up -- so it's in the employer's interests to maintain a healthful work environment. But if the company doesn't provide health coverage, the costs are still caused by the business, but the expenses are picked up by someone else -- either the employees themselves or the taxpayers (because the employees end up getting many of their medical expenses waived, either intentionally or through bankruptcy). That's an externality.

The same is true of many of the environmental factors discussed in TFA. If I run a factory that dumps chemicals into a river, and there's no law that says I have to clean up that waste, then that's an externality -- someone is eventually going to have to do something about it, just not me.

The same with air pollution. If someone notices that the air is getting smoggier, but there's no regulation that says how much particulate matter I'm allowed to release into the atmosphere, then obviously nobody is going to be measuring my emissions and there will be no way to know how much of the smog I'm responsible for. Obviously I won't be factoring that into my balance sheet.

I'm further willing to venture that in a tightly-controlled authoritarian economy, such as China's, government and party officials are likely to have significant stakes in the businesses that are causing the pollution and health problems, and therefore the incentive to legislate those businesses will be low. Maybe it's worth considering how American businesses can be regulated such that they will be required to pick up costs incurred by their suppliers overseas. If those costs can't be properly accounted for, maybe the American companies should be required to take their business elsewhere.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[doublebackslash]

The fact that you're too much of a chicken shit to post your opinion with a name suggests that you do in fact give a damn, enough at least to not associate your own handle with your own oxygen wasting stupidity.

*clap clap clap*

Even I caught a little heat off that one.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The root of the problem is the same blissful, ignorant indifference that is causing the USA to become a soft-tyranny style police state. The products' marketing don't mention the working conditions that made it available at that price....

Our government takes steps to protect our workers and we expect the Chinese gov't to do the same. Of course we're apathetic, it's not our problem.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

If you're a member of the human race, it's your problem. If you have a conscience, it's your problem.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[mosb1000]

The powers that be in China basically view the working class as economic cannon fodder. They couldn't care less what happens to those people because they don't think their lives are important. In other countries, someone is expected to provide health care to people as a consequence of this, but in China it is OK if they die because the only externality they have to consider is a loss of productive capacity (and they don't presently have a shortage of that).

The solution is not that US companies should take their business elsewhere, that's not how the system is supposed to work. The solution is we should take our business elsewhere, because we are the ones who care about the human cost. We can't afford to be so complacent. There will come a day (or perhaps it is already here) when our "leaders" will view us the same way. This is a situation that can not be tolerated.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[drunken-yeti]

Perhaps Hilary will bring this up while she is out there. I can't even think of way to outline all the issues I have with China without it sounding like a declaration of war.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

So is it their problem then that there are homeless people near where I live?

Seriously, the US is supposed to keep its nose out of everybody's business... but now we're supposed to set the example. So which is it? Do we starve them by not buying their products or do we exploit them by buying them?

Either is fine, but what are THEY doing to solve their OWN problems? Call that apathy if you like, but the critical factor that is being glossed over in order to criticize the US here is that they are allowing this to happen. It doesn't matter how many insightful-mod-bait rhetoric you spew, they still need to stand up and defend themselves.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. It would be like saying the Chinese are responsible America's national security because they are buying bombs from the USA.
MobileTatsu-- Their arguments only make sense if there is a single global government. Think inside their box and it might make sense, but you would have to be insane to think a global government could ever work.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, this is why the USA needs LESS regulation and more innovation! Let the free market sort this shit out for a change!

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[fishbowl]

So, what is the solution? What should I do in order to improve the lives of factory workers in China? Please be specific.

"Stop buying Chinese consumer products" might sound good, but I'd make two points: I buy relatively few consumer products that are made in China, and if we (the West) stop buying their products it will cause their labor conditions to *decline* not *improve*.

When I got on this anti-China high horse a while back I did some investigation. I ended up with a shirt made in Thailand, an oil filter made in Israel, printer cartridges made in Ireland, food grown in California, Texas, and Ohio, it just went on and on -- all the stuff I assumed was made in China, wasn't. I was shocked.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

Governments are artificial; man-made. Pain, suffering, poverty, these are realities. One-sixth of the world's population is suffering from malnutrition.

When one of us suffers, we all suffer. Yeah, it begs for birth control but we haven't figured out how to get over the religious bias that for millennia, has said: make more babies for armies and to plow fields.

The single global government idea, while with merit, goes against the grain of the fact that we all consider ourselves tribes, a heritage of our nature as animals. If you don't believe we're tribes, look at the denominational list for churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship in your town/city.

There is such a thing as social justice, and we're all responsible for it, ultimately.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[burnin1965]

You forgot the <sarcasm> tags or should it be <stupidity> tags.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

The "think globally, act locally" aphorism might apply here. I try to by locally first, nationally second. Domestic stuff gets harder to find. From that point, I try to spread my money, not favoring one particular country or another. Still, I avoid Chinese products where possible because of the debt that the Chinese government owns of the US government paper.

Can it be avoided? So far, I have an HDTV, but it's an LCD and doesn't use the manufacturing processes involved in touch screens. Indeed almost everything I buy with a touch screen eventually fails anyway, like two Treos and two HTC Touch Pros.

If you know something you're considering buying potentially directly hurts the workers making them, do you buy it anyway?

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[LWATCDR]

Wow this is just silly. How narcissistic can one be? This problem has nothing to do with the US and everything to do with China. If a US company did offer to pay more do you think that they would use that money for safe working conditions or do you think they would just take more profit?
I am all for buying from free nations but that alone will not do much to solve the problem. Until China cares about the Chinese nothing will change.
The rest is just unrelated.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Jurily]

The solution is we should take our business elsewhere, because we are the ones who care about the human cost.

Define "we". Most people care more about the price of the phone they want to buy than the lives of some random Chinese workers. Including the Chinese.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[russotto]

If you know something you're considering buying potentially directly hurts the workers making them, do you buy it anyway?

Yes. I buy products made on assembly lines with nonzero accident rates, made from metals mined under dangerous conditions (ALL of them are), made from oil drilled and refined under dangerous conditions, processed using energy from coal mined under dangerous conditions, transported over dangerous roads, etc.

Fact is, every product -- even those made entirely in 1st world Western countries -- required some danger somewhere in its manufacturing process. You can fairly claim that Chinese manufacturing is unnecessarily dangerous, but you can't set the bar at zero.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[causality]

The single global government idea, while with merit, goes against the grain of the fact that we all consider ourselves tribes, a heritage of our nature as animals. If you don't believe we're tribes, look at the denominational list for churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship in your town/city.

The real problem with global government is that it's being forced upon us little bit by little bit, gradually, over years and years, by deception and propaganda. It is not going to be the result of reasoned debate, democratic choice, grassroots demand, or any of those things. Rather, it's the province of a wealthy elite who view national sovereignty as an obstacle to their goals. The international corporation that is able to easily influence local governments has long since rendered national borders a thing of little significance.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[slick7]

mod parent insightful

As for all AC's, F.O.!
The true reason for offshoring has nothing to do with cheap products. It does have to do with greater profit margins. Most people pay what the sellers ask for, if this is not true then why does the price of consumables remain constant yet the cost of production drops. If the cost of production drops then the price of the product should drop as well. But it does not. The use of import tariffs artificially raise the price of imports comparable with American made products. To not use tariffs would force American manufacturers to drop prices in line with imports. How un-American would that be? American manufacturing executives state that they cannot drop the price since it would not be cost effective blah, blah, blah, yet these same executives still get bonuses in the range of million of dollars. Why is dat?
For example, say an American made tennis shoe costs $35 to make, to be sold at $125. In China, the shoe is made at a cost of $10, yet still sells for $125.
China as well as India are manufacturing products the way we did back is the 20's, before unions and the EPA as well as health care. Early in union history, the American worker was protected and as a result, gained a higher quality of life. Something happened within the unions and the workers became secondary to union longevity. As long as manufacturing executives continue to make record profits, this will not change.
Eventually, one would hope, the workers in NAFTA, CAFTA and any other AFTA, will wise up and unionize. Unfortunately, manufacturing executives, worldwide, use the American model as a "how not to do it" model. These people will show their true colors in eliminating all attempts to organize the workers in the foreseeable future. They will also make the environment a non-issue.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[causality]

I am all for buying from free nations but that alone will not do much to solve the problem. Until China cares about the Chinese nothing will change. The rest is just unrelated.

Unfortunately the situation in China is the same as the situation everywhere. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. The problem the Chinese have is that they fear their government, and with very good reason. So long as their political elites are an "untouchable" group who can stomp on their own citizens with no fear for their own personal safety, that will remain the case. It's sad that it comes down to that. What you'd like to believe is that human beings with political power would help other human beings to prosper, that government can be your friend and your buddy who looks out for you. This is absolutely not the reality and never has been.

Right now Chinese people fear their government and justifiably so. Until and unless this changes, the government of China cares only for the numbers such as its GDP and does not care about the human cost necessary to achieve it. It has no incentive to sacrifice economic gain in order to safeguard things like good working conditions and basic human rights. If it did that, the numbers would not look as good to it.

The problem everywhere is that people don't understand a basic fact: government represents force and "might makes right" and seeks to maintain a monopoly on the use of force. That is the ONLY THING that makes government different from any other entity. You can dress it up in terms of polls and party affiliation and such, but ultimately government derives its existence from the point of a gun, from superior brute force or threat of force and not from superior wisdom or reason. It is therefore fundamentally untrustworthy and thuggish. More government equals more force and thus, more care that must be taken to ensure that such force is used within strict boundaries. Advocating more government to solve problems that don't require force to solve leads to more subjugation and less freedom.

The USA's Founding Fathers understood this reality. They knew that the only difference between a tyrannical government and a "good" government was size, managebility, and accountability. These three things are one as they are all related. As size of government goes up, managebility and accountability of government goes down. Eventually it has no purpose other than to perpetuate its own existence. The Chinese are finding this out the hard way, in the form of a government that will happily let them ingest poison so long as the money keeps flowing.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

There's much truth to what you say. Yet talk of populist uprisings are met with sounds of derision by the Birchers (the Glenn Beck set) as well as the religiousiters. Phrases like "workers of the world unite" are viewed dimly by most governments.

So what does one do? I'm asking this question in all earnestness.

The sheep need shepherds, but egads, what shepherds?

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[aurispector]

Or the labor costs, or taxes, or environmental regulations, etc.. China is the shithole sweatshop of the world by design of their government: everything is secondary to economic growth. Nobody should be surprised that workers in high tech sweatshops should be any safer than in the triangle factory fire. The dangers may be more subtle but no less lethal. And if China should somehow undergo some fit of worker protection, another 3rd world dictator will volunteer his country to be sweatshop to the world.

But hey, your iphone would cost more if it weren't like that, and those people are on the other side of the world so quit worrying.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[causality]

There's much truth to what you say. Yet talk of populist uprisings are met with sounds of derision by the Birchers (the Glenn Beck set) as well as the religiousiters. Phrases like "workers of the world unite" are viewed dimly by most governments.

So what does one do? I'm asking this question in all earnestness.

The sheep need shepherds, but egads, what shepherds?

Without secondary shepherds the choice is very simple: become your own shepherd or fail to prosper. It so happens that being your own shepherd is the very best way to influence others by your example, while trying to coerce them only encourages defiance. The best implementation of this known to me is the minimal government that can protect civil rights but does not ever isolate anyone from the results of their decisions. It's fertile ground for what could be called enlightened self-interest.

Properly understood, it's an attempt to benefit the whole by doing what is best for the individual. The real problem with even the well-meaning political ideologies of today is that they put the cart before the horse. They amount to a variety of spectrums and schemes that try to benefit the individual by doing what is best for the collective. What are called Liberalism and Conservatism share this flaw. Though it isn't called that, any such collective or group identity is like a corporation in that it takes on a life of its own and seeks to justify and perpetuate its existence. That life it takes on is larger-than-life and tends to overshadow any individual voice.

Improperly understood, it's every-man-for-himself manifested by ruthless competition. This caused the terrible working conditions, exploitation, child labor, etc. of the early Industrial Revolution and causes the same in sweatshops today. It's all about the bottom line because that competition is first and foremost.

All the debates about "regulations vs. free-market" are tainted by the many who incorrectly view that as two opposing sides seeking to settle this question. There is no opposition or contradiction and the reason is simple. Any regulation or lack of regulation comes from an understanding of how it really should be. The concept of how it should be is not derived from the regulations, what the letter of them states and what loopholes one can get away with. Rather, any regulations are kept as simple as possible and come from an enlightened self-interest view of how things should be.

An understanding of this would reveal that the sheep should transcend the need to remain sheep instead of trying to find the ideal shepherd. Without that understanding, the whole world is divided into two opposing factions. It's Left vs. Right, Democrat vs. Republican, Regulation vs. Free-market, etc. None of them ever have a complete and completely sustainable solution. That's how you recognize a flawed understanding.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

You're really quite emotional, aren't you?

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

I detect tenets of libertarianism and a dash of Ayn Rand in there somewhere. Using opposites or strong contrasts to typify motivation is pretty simplistic when the dynamics are millions of tribes, and the stubbornness not to think beyond one's nose.

Factionalization seems the problem, not the cure.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Sabriel]

"Seriously, the US is supposed to keep its nose out of everybody's business... but now we're supposed to set the example. So which is it? Do we starve them by not buying their products or do we exploit them by buying them?"

The third choice is that we specify in our contracts with foreign manufacturers that they are to use type X methods (safe but more expensive) than type Y methods (cheaper but poisonous to the workers) and that we are willing to pay the premium involved.

Yes, some of them could still lie and use Y while claiming X was used, but we can test and check and at least we'd still be setting the right example rather than the wrong one. And if we actually refused to turn a blind eye to violators, and actually took our business only to those who behaved ethically, then we'd be helping them help themselves and doing so without sticking our noses in.

"they still need to stand up and defend themselves."

Sure they do. But when we're telling their bully, "here's the next payment, we don't care so long as we get our shiny toys", we are siding with their bully and that makes it a lot harder for them.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

Right and the since the EPA is making it hard to manufacture electronics in the US (except military hardware since its exempt). Also since our congressional overlords have kickbacks from outside governments.And the current political regime wants to kill manufacturing in the US. And you want to punish the electronics companies that specifically and contractually limited in what they can inspect from their suppliers? Why not support US manufacture of electronics, they way it used to be. The EPA and other regulatory agencies can audit at will. With that situation you won't have to worry about totalitarian governments that have a billion people to sacrifice to the ultimate goal of world domination.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[pcfixup4ua]

Most are either ignorant of the relationship between their purchases and the damages that the production of those goods cause, or they are apathetic because they feel they are powerless to do anything about it.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[hedwards]

Mostly yes, but we did join the WTO and with that gave up most of our ability to do something about that. Previously we could've raised the tariffs to account for that sort of behavior and made better behavior a requirement for returning the tariffs to where they were. Now that's a trade barrier and almost certainly illegal.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[hedwards]

Indeed, and unfortunately, we've traded away virtually all our ability to influence it directly. What we can however do is hold companies like Apple accountable for things like this when it's being done to profit them. With the amount of money that Apple makes selling iPods, iPads and whatever else, I have a really hard time believing that they don't have the money to have one person on site at all times during the production of those products keeping tab to make sure things are being done appropriately.

Perhaps not down to the tiniest part, but at least in most of their plants.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The third choice is that we specify in our contracts with foreign manufacturers that they are to use type X methods (safe but more expensive) than type Y methods (cheaper but poisonous to the workers) and that we are willing to pay the premium involved.

Less profit flows, fewer people get paid.

Sure they do. But when we're telling their bully, "here's the next payment, we don't care so long as we get our shiny toys", we are siding with their bully and that makes it a lot harder for them.

Then they sell to other people who don't give a shit. Meanwhile, fewer people have jobs at all because of lowered demand.

They have an excessive supply of labor. That is not our problem to solve and it is not one we CAN solve without buying heaps more stuff.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[dangitman]

When the government fears the people, there is liberty.

Or not. This is just way too simplistic an argument. There are plenty of governments which have feared their people, yet acted barbarically against them.

A government in fear of the people could also lash out against the people to protect itself. In general, fear is not a good foundation for human relationships and organization, including politics. Cooperation is a much better idea. Then people are invested in the goals they are trying to achieve. Fear doesn't actually achieve anything, especially not liberty. You'll just get a bunch of paranoid people covering their asses, too afraid to do what it takes to move forward.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[AK Marc]

Then make it practical. When they don't have OSHA and such, their products will necessarily be cheaper to produce, at the expense of lives. That hurts people, and as you put it, who cares? But it also hurts local businesses. When the other business can defer costs and the local ones can't, it makes for an unfair trading scheme. The "fix" is to tax imported goods according to the standards (environmental, worker) in the country the product was made. That directly addresses one and indirectly addresses the other.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[TheLink]

From a cold-calculative POV, it's not actually that bad for the USA to buy stuff from China that's "too cheap" till Chinese workers are dying etc, and made from stuff that's bad for China to mine etc.

Furthermore it's not even bad for the USA to buy some of it using US dollars _borrowed_ from China. Especially if the USA can create those US dollars at anytime (big deal - the US has already created trillions in the past 2 years!).

The real problem is what is the USA doing with the resulting savings and advantage? Pissing it away with cheap toys and expensive wars? Or investing it for the long term?

Yes, China's bad but people should stop blaming China for the US's problems when the USA is screwing itself the most.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

Even bits has cost - RSI & egronomics issues, outgassing from plastic, ozone from laser printers, etc...

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Sabriel]

Less profit in the short term. Which sadly is all that many can be bothered to be interested in. In the long-term, it achieves three goals: sets an example, keeps our own feet on the high road, and just as importantly it avoids feeding the bully. That way lies an even worse fate.

And sure, they can sell to other less scrupulous countries. But we're a big market to just go ignore, and ignoring us means their competitors would be getting our money instead.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It doesn't address anything. It's unenforceable and it lowers demand for their goods. The practical result will be that they pay even less people to do more work.

As long as people are willing to work for that amount, it's a problem that's not going to go away no matter what extreme and impractical scenario you run it through. What they need to do is lower their supply of labor. If the workers won't risk their lives for that little amount of money, then it won't matter what laws there are, what taxes are in place, or how ethical their clients are.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Less profit in the short term.

Less profit anyway. That's why they're getting business in the first place.

But we're a big market to just go ignore, and ignoring us means their competitors would be getting our money instead.

And the workers still get shafted anyway. There's less money going around to employ them, and they'll still willing to accept work for that low of pay. That is the problem. It doesn't matter what kind of example we set, people still say "Where do I sign?"

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Sabriel]

If the competitors are adhering to the contracts, then at least their particular workers aren't getting shafted (or at least not as badly), and flow-on effects happen (hopefully).

If they all ignore us, then we invest our money elsewhere and feed some other countries' workers. Hopefully their workers will then see the benefits that could've been theirs and stand up for themselves. As you said, there's plenty of excess labour and it's not our problem to solve, but at least we can show that it is solvable, there is a better life out there, and that we're cut from a different cloth to their current masters.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[davester666]

Just like the US press making a big deal out of the WikiLeaks stuff about US military possibly ignoring Iraqi soldiers/policemen torturing and/or abusing their countrymen.

1. The Iraqi people would have to be truly stupid to switch to the Taliban's side because of this, primarily because the Taliban already have been doing this to the Iraqi people for decades.
2. The Iraqi people would have to be truly stupid to believe it's the US Military's fault that Iraqi's are torturing other Iraqi's.

If this is the US military's fault, then the UN needs to be indicted YESTERDAY for crimes against humanity for their "peacekeeping' roll in Boznia/Serbia/Herzegovena [yes, spelling is probably wrong].

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[drinkypoo]

Unfortunately the situation in China is the same as the situation everywhere. When the government fears the people, there is liberty

It's become more and more difficult over time to get together and throw a revolution. This is what worries me...

The Chinese are finding this out the hard way, in the form of a government that will happily let them ingest poison so long as the money keeps flowing.

We find excessive emissions from power plants and other places with smokestacks as rapidly as we can send people up them to inspect them in THIS country. The FDA has become a vehicle for green-lighting harmful products in THIS country. The auto companies keep selling us bigger and bigger vehicles which consume more and more resources keeping the refineries going 24x7x365 in THIS country. It's time to come down off your high horse and realize that exactly the same shit is being done to Americans, and the only difference is one of degree.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[drinkypoo]

The powers that be in China basically view the working class as economic cannon fodder.

What exactly is it that makes you think that the powers that be in the USA are any different? Did you forget about shooting veterans on the white house lawn? Did you forget about the mass graves of Panamanians on the military base in Panama, people killed in our name? Have you forgotten that only a few of us have strong labor laws (union members) while the rest of us are being pushed further towards poverty by an economy which includes ever more part-time and ever fewer full-time jobs? Did you notice that the banks received bailouts instead of the creation of public works projects which would actually have produced genuine benefit instead of simply permitting execs to take home huge bonuses, bonuses which will be converted to foreign currencies as rapidly as possible?

We can't afford to be so complacent. There will come a day (or perhaps it is already here) when our "leaders" will view us the same way. This is a situation that can not be tolerated.

You're tolerating it right now.

What about hip hop use that fuck a rap battle what about a gat battle lets
take it to the beast and see which cat tattle
Is it 'Kiss vs. Beans or P vs. Hov'
What about the real niggaz vs. the 5-0
This is M-1, DP, don't you forget
Cause you can talk talk talk but it don't mean shit
I ain't gotta pop your top to see where your brains went
This rap shit is bigger then entertainment
It's the people vs. the pigs when it all boils down
It ain't 'Pac vs. Big it;s whos getting the power
And power ain't money dog its self determination
Like taking Hot and making this the real People's Station
THAT'S WAR

Giving bailouts to the bankers is WAR
Dumping currency to produce inflation is an act of WAR
Putting you on the watch list for your political views that's WAR
Exporting our pollution to China is a strategy of WAR
You don't even fucking know that you're losing the WAR.

It's lonely out here in the left-of-left position, but at least I can't be conflated with half-asses.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

The third choice is that we specify in our contracts with foreign manufacturers that they are to use type X methods (safe but more expensive) than type Y methods (cheaper but poisonous to the workers) and that we are willing to pay the premium involved.

Nah, the *real* "third choice" is the US simply starts a limited World War with China, fought across the Middle East and Africa, after which the US and China split the take from both devastated & depopulated regions.

It has the beauty of eliminating the problem with starving Africans and also eradicates the radical Arabic and African terrorist types as well as OPEC. It stimulates the US economy by going into full-out, wartime-mode production and employing anyone able to work or fight. The US and particularly China would benefit from reductions in population that would result.

My puzzlement is why D.C. and Beijing aren't already smoking craters.

Wussies.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Nyder]

If you know something you're considering buying potentially directly hurts the workers making them, do you buy it anyway?

Yes. I buy products made on assembly lines with nonzero accident rates, made from metals mined under dangerous conditions (ALL of them are), made from oil drilled and refined under dangerous conditions, processed using energy from coal mined under dangerous conditions, transported over dangerous roads, etc.

Fact is, every product -- even those made entirely in 1st world Western countries -- required some danger somewhere in its manufacturing process. You can fairly claim that Chinese manufacturing is unnecessarily dangerous, but you can't set the bar at zero.

Accidents happen.

Unsafe working conditions aren't accidents, they are purposely bad conditions set to produce cheaper items at the cost of the health or lives of it's workers.

You can spin it how you want, but we are abusing the people of 3rd world companies by allowing our companies to manufacture items there.

We, as humans on earth, should be treating our fellow humans better.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[TheRaven64]

Where something is 'made' is often quite misleading. Lots of companies like to put 'Made in America' on their products, so they have all of the components made in China or India and then the final assembly done in the USA. A Dell PC will probably be Made in Texas, but none of the components will be. You might also be surprised at some of the intermediate states. For example, if you buy frozen shrimps in England, they are often caught off the coast of Ireland then shipped to China to have their shells removed, then shipped back (I still find it amazing that this is profitable considering how cheap the finished product is, but apparently peeling shrimps is hard for a machine to do and easy for an unskilled worker to do).

Stopping buying Chinese goods is a nice idea, but it requires there to be an alternative. If you want a new touchscreen phone, who will sell you one that has a screen not made in China? Even if such a thing exists, it probably has a lot of other components made in China.

And even if it were possible, everyone stopping buying Chinese goods is a pretty bad idea. The main reason that we haven't had a major war between developed countries since the second world war is economics; trade is more profitable than war. Even the USA and USSR never had a full-out war because the plutocrats in charge of both sides were too busy selling stuff to each other.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[AK Marc]

How is a tariff unenforceable? We have them now and they seem to be working well.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[omfgnosis]

Being an honest sociopath doesn't make you any less a sociopath.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[omfgnosis]

Seeing Dead Prez lyrics posted on Slashdot is really disorienting. In a great way.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked at a plastic factory myself, I can tell you that I was the only one wearing protective clothing. I asked the foreman about it and he told me "Nobody does that here - if you worry about your safety, you probably cannot have a factory job". The air was heavy with solvents and you regularly handled freshly cast plastic and rubber parts. This happened in Sweden - a country with tough worker-safety regulations.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[LWATCDR]

That is correct. The government must be answerable to the people. That doesn't mean fear. And the rest is just of what the grand parent says is just more political posturing.
That person feels they must educate all of simpletons because we just don't understand...

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[LWATCDR]

No on that point I agree. Within limits that is.
If we did that then companies in Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand would just contract with China and then sell to the US. Those companies wouldn't abuse their workers and follow US rules but would buy parts from places that didn't.
The chain would just shift I fear.
I think it is odd what most favored nation trading status now means today. I think only 4 nations lack that status.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[budgenator]

You know the really sad part is that n-hexane isn't particularly toxic, it is esentually pureified gasoline, paint thinner or lighter fluid. A pair of nitrile glove would protect the workers from skin absorbtion and they cost U$ 6.95 per box of 100 by weight in case lots. You've got to be exposed boatloads of it to do damage, because it's not water soluble!

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[budgenator]

When the other business can defer costs and the local ones can't, it makes for an unfair trading scheme. The "fix" is to tax imported goods according to the standards (environmental, worker) in the country the product was made. That directly addresses one and indirectly addresses the other.

Many people would love that, but free trade treaties would get in the way. The only ones who would benefit would be the lawyers argueing the cases before the international courts, as usual.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[commodore64_love]

>>>non-existent worker-safety regulations tells me that most people also don't give a damn.

I think it depends what LEVEL of caring. I care about worker safety, but don't want to stop buying the product because it would cause job loss (and the asians or indians would starve). Instead I'd like to see the US and EU impose restrictions - that no product may enter the country unless the Chinese/Indian manufacturer can prove they have safety standards for their workers (breathing protection, hearing protection, et cetera). Bring them up to our level, or at least close to it.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[commodore64_love]

>>>The single global government idea, while with merit, goes against the grain of the fact that we all consider ourselves tribes,

That's not the only reason. If a country like Germany or Russia or China fell to tyranny, it only affected that portion of the globe. The rest of the world was "free". If the world government falls to tyranny, it affects everyone. As a Roman Senator opined, when he was trying to escape the tyranny of the new dictator Octavius: "Where is there to flee? There is no part of the civilized world that is not within reach of Rome's government."

We would have the same problem if the whole world entire was ruled by one single government.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Relayman]

In the United States, job-related injuries are covered by Workers' Compensation, not by your normal health insurance. Every employer, even those with one or two employees, is required to have Workers' Comp. insurance.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

This rubrik is often cited by the fear-based advocates of Bircherism. The fear induced in this rubrik is the loss of liberty, sacrificed for ostensible capacity for tyranny.

As long as we're human, as long as we're from the animal origins that is our basis, we're actually tribes. It's the tribes that war on each other. Even with a world-ish government, all politics have been, and will remain local. No one wants to feel as though we're in a political jail; it will never happen as long as we have the genes that we do.

So toss out that argument for a minute and imagine that resource distribution, the largest cause of war, is suddenly equalized. Your greed for oil becomes the greed that it really is, not the freedom of movement and energy resource. If everyone has equal access to resources then the equalization means that imbalances are vanquished. Then we get to the core problem: this is a finite machine, this world we live in. Population has to be controlled against our very human need to reproduce. There in is the crux of things: sex and goods. Remove the jealousy, the greed, and evolve a different method of dealing with biological urges.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I'll put it this way: How woould we know the rules are really being followed? Just ponder for a bit what that would actually entail and how co-operative the Chinese gov't would be.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[commodore64_love]

Really?

So if a World Government comes under the control of an Adolf Hitler or Napoleon or Stalin or Pol Pot or Mao Tse'tung "type" of leader, I don't have to fear??? I call "bullshit" on that. Of course I would have to fear because the tyrant would be able to reach his hands to any part of the world, and kill/imprison any person or group he desires.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

Call BS where you'd like.

I don't think the world's ready to agree to another Hitler..... or even George Bush. No one's asking you to be totally fearless; that's absurd. Yet until you level the resources, you give every sociopathic politician a reason to declare war. Otherwise, the 'those heathens are immoral and worship a false god" argument gets used.

If you read my post, you'll see that I believe that all politics is local. Look at the US, Canada, the EU, the OAS, and other models to understand multi-national 'government'. Inside of them, they're all trade agreements of one kind or another.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[AK Marc]

They prove it, and if they aren't cooperative enough so that we know, then we hit them with a higher tariff. The cheating that I can't solve is if there's a return to lying about country of origin.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[mosb1000]

I don't get the whole job thing. Very few people want to work their whole lives for someone else's benefit, and that's all a job is. The problem is a lack of other opportunities for productive work.

As far as you WAR comments, what do you propose to do about it? People are too invested in the system right now to view it as a problem. In a couple years our unsustainable economic policies will finally finish collapsing on themselves. It's already to the point where a young man has no hope of earning a retirement and little hope of earning enough money to buy a house. It's only a matter of time before people finally figure out the american dream isn't worth working for.

I guess what I'm really asking is: how can we speed that up? and what will we do when it finally happens?

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[marcello_dl]

"Chi pecora si fa, il lupo la mangia"
(If you make yourself sheep the wolf eats you)

You are not sheep for any shepherd of this world.

(which conveniently works whatever your religious beliefs are, if you don't believe in God, then believe in Man)

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

No. But many are....

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[couchslug]

"If you're a member of the human race, it's your problem. If you have a conscience, it's your problem."

I don't buy into Asserted Conclusions. No problem.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[couchslug]

"Social justice" conflicts with effective economic competition.

We could eat the rich, but we'd run out of rich to eat. Meanwhile, more competitive societies with proven rewards systems and reduced "social justice" would rise economically while we stagnated.

Good thing that isn't happening....

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[postbigbang]

No, you're confusing socialism with capitalism. Social justice ought to be the end result of capitalism, but seems to elude us. I wonder why....

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

Those free trade treaties should be renegotiated to include environmental and labor standards.

Re:This is part of why offshoring is cheaper:

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... I don't think there are any Taliban to speak of in Iraq. They are for the most part in their homeland in Southwest Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan. Perhaps you're thinking the the Sunni who ruled Iraq for decades.

What's there point exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

does this mean there will be a price hike?

Re:What's there point exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

does this mean there will be a price hike?

Only if these lines are owned by outside companies. If they are owned by CHinese nationals, or by the Chinese gov, then no. There will be no extra protection and no extra pay.

It's scary to think you're so obtuse

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's scary to think that people are being damaged to pursue high production rates."

Gee whiz, can it be this is the first you've ever heard of a sweat shop?

How is this news? Why the fuck do you think things are made in China? Do you think the Chinese have a skilled work force, or higher technical skills, or something of the sort?

Human life is cheap there. It always will be.

Re:It's scary to think you're so obtuse

[Maxo-Texas]

Many companies in the US regularly work their salaried employees at rates which hard the health and result in accidental deaths of their employees.

Human life won't always be cheap there. Things are evening out between the nations. We'll stagnate or even drift down in the west until things are equal. Since we don't have true freedom in the west any more, our competitive advantages have been lost.
The corporations are mostly in control but even there at any point the laws could turn against them. As we lose the rule of law, the safety that rule of law brought is lost.

They're Chinese

[drumcat]

They have extras...

Re:They're Chinese

[Anonymous Coward]

They're going to need them if they ever want to do a remake of Ben Hur

Re:They're Chinese

[drumcat]

Oh what a shitstorm I started here in 5 words.

For everyone that called it racist, the joke is on you. China are a nation of power who do not respect personal liberty. They live in an existence different than the western world; one of conforming or being branded a political heretic.

I'm not joking about the idea that they have extra countrymen in China - that's fact. They have about 1,400,000,000 people, and as someone pointed out, their brightest 25% equal the USA's populace.

There was a time in the Industrial Revolution of the Western World that people were expendable too. What we now see as unthinkable, go look at those nostalgic skyscraper shots with guys walking beams with no gear. Don't act like no one fell. We are just rich enough to care now... or more accurately, we are rich enough to sue massively when this happens, so we care for everyone differently.

When someone dies in China, they move the next guy up.

A reason to boycott all corporations of U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

The employees should be the one's that own these corporations, given the nature they
are the ones that thought to invest their time to work as a team in a regulated atmosphere,
yet corporations from the United States are being used to exploit the life and security of
foreign workers; this done to Americans as though punnishment for requiring such tentative
preparations to bring a product safely to market, because you all damn-well know that a
low-wage job in a slave-labor country will not bring any US Dollars back to America but to
buy land to expand those slave-labor countries.

Americans really need to wise-up to not Incorporate, to retain their own liberty and freedom
from the emballming that the corporations provide at the expense of happiness in your life.

If that was Americans that were being harmed, the U.S. Media would send it's Conspiracy Theorists
around to sling mud at the journalists and theorists to prevent them from documenting the culprits
of these heinous acts. That's probably why the last bastion of Liberty and Freedom to corporate-rule
has always been to run away from America to find refuge in 3rd-world countries and dictatorships,
because they know they truly can't protect the investments and shield the decisions of thieves in the
CEO positions of that company: when their original/host-country has been famined because of their absence
since exporting all the viable industrial capacity and infrastructure, they come back into their country
being accepted by open-arms by the Americans living in poverty under despots of cruel privileged drug-dealing
murderous lying COPS and corrupt Judiciary Departments and sadistic Legislatures.

Someone mod down this jerk

[epte]

How incredibly insensitve, to say that an entire race is expendable. Shame on you.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[Anonymous Coward]

How incredibly insensitve, to say that an entire nationality is expendable. Shame on you.

Fixed it for you

Extras implies that some are expendable not the entire race.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[bhcompy]

I think he/she is merely pointing out what the Chinese govt thinks

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[epte]

Ah yes. Thank you. :-)

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[eln]

It's insensitive, but it's essentially how the Chinese economy works. Chinese companies can afford to pay substandard wages and ignore safety concerns because they have a basically limitless supply of labor as a continuous stream of Chinese peasants make their way from the farmland into the cities in search of a better life. If one worker drops or quits, there are fifty more waiting to take his or her place. It's analogous to the US during the Industrial Revolution, except on a much much larger scale.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[AnonymousClown]

We're all expendable in the grand scheme of things.

There's over 7 billion people on Earth. I've been contemplating this:

If you had a company with a concentration camp business model and assuming word never got out, I think you could literally work people to death an never run out of workers - ever. And I would expand that further. If every manufacturing company did that, I think the population of the World would stabilize.

It's just a game I play to try to fathom how many people there are on this Earth - all wanting to live like Americans - consuming like Americans - wanting jobs like Americans ...and in the meantime, businesses have learned to produce with less and less workers ... the wealth of the US is spewing out of her .... see where this is going?

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[khallow]

How incredibly insensitve, to say that an entire race is expendable. Shame on you.

I missed the "-1, insensitive jerk" mod somehow. Turns out it's hiding under the "-1, disagree" mod.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[epte]

Ok, I can see that. I was taking the post at face value, and didn't see the possibility of irony/sarcasm. The poster could have been a bit more clear, but that's more minor.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes humor is offensive to make a point.
I believe he is using humor to remind everyone that over population in China is a really big problem.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[Nadaka]

The truth is that it is not really any different. The Han race managed to genocide most of the other native Chinese people off the planet.

The Han race is the communist party is China. It is an incredibly racist regime that suppresses any other ethnic minorities into oblivion.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[mark-t]

I think it was supposed to be an attempt at humor, actually... albeit perhaps not that well presented. There are several TV shows on the air right now that do this sort of thing all the time. The basic tactic of this form of humor involves pushing the boundaries of tastelessness so far that it becomes absurd to believe that the notion was meant to be taken seriously, and as a result it is perceived of as funny.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to tell us that Han shot first?!

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[epte]

The problem is that there are enough actual proponents of this mindset out there that it isn't necessarily taken as over-the-top.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[masmullin]

Unless your in the business of digging ditches, your worker efficiency will be incredibly low with such a high turnover rate. If you have ANY competition they will destroy you easily.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[Sir_Sri]

And the companies that do the manufacturing are owned, or strongly tied to the government, meaning they have implicit, if not explicit permission to do these things.

Besides, when you do business in france, you follow french labour laws, in the US you follow US ones, in communist china you follow theirs. That communist china's laws (and practices, since in many cases their laws are up to date but not their desire to enforce the laws) are dangerously inadequate, and france's are generally too far the other way is a matter for them to sort out. We (as the rich west) can except pressure on how we do business and so on, but ultimately we are in no position to dictate to anyone else what the safety rules they have should be, or what their retirement should be.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[blair1q]

And if he'd said "They're Earthers. They have extras." would it be the same?

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[slick7]

How incredibly insensitve, to say that an entire race is expendable. Shame on you.

Apparently, YOU are not of the ruling elite, which means you ARE cannon fodder, or soon will be.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[slick7]

I think he/she is merely pointing out what the Chinese govt thinks

And when they run out, there's the rest of the world race.
There, fixed that for ya.

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[slick7]

It's insensitive, but it's essentially how the Chinese economy works. Chinese companies can afford to pay substandard wages and ignore safety concerns because they have a basically limitless supply of labor as a continuous stream of Chinese peasants make their way from the farmland into the cities in search of a better life. If one worker drops or quits, there are fifty more waiting to take his or her place. It's analogous to the US during the Industrial Revolution, except on a much much larger scale.

With greater repercussions as well, when the workers finally, "Get It".

Re:Someone mod down this jerk

[omfgnosis]

Maybe instead of the straw man about how we shouldn't be dictating other countries' policies, we should think about our own moral obligations. I may not have a moral obligation to change China's policies—in fact, I have a moral obligation not to—but I certainly have a moral obligation not to enjoy the fruits of their ill-gotten labor, and not to enrich and empower them for the privilege.

Discretion in one's own behaviors is far from revolutionary, and it's also far from hegemonic. It's frankly a pretty basic foundation of minimal human decency.

We all have to walk a rather fine line in this regard, particularly as most of us (commenting on Slashdot) depend on violating this basic decency in some form or another for our own livelihood—as a matter of operating in an economic environment that's largely out of our immediate control—but it's not a matter to take lightly or dismiss with conveniently naïve rationalization. And it's not a matter that we can take greater responsibility for without a much more honest and sobering look in the mirror.

WHAT?!

[CasualFriday]

China is cutting corners? This is capitalist propoganda. Try harder, you bourgeois swine.

Re:WHAT?!

[MightyMartian]

It's common knowledge, and it's been happening since the start of the communist era, in every communist country.

Except California.

Re:WHAT?!

[Qzukk]

Until someone discovers that smug causes cancer.

Re:WHAT?!

[fishbowl]

If that's not a typo I wish I had mod points.

Apple.... and those others.

[gandhi_2]

You know...when ever there's a news story about a portable music device they automatically refer to the Apple iPod, which is irritating as hell.

The same thing happens with tablets now.

It's nice that they still drag Apple into a conversation like this...but it's still bullshit.

Quit saying Apple, ipod, ipad, etc unless it is a story actually about just them.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[MightyMartian]

Quit saying Apple, ipod, ipad, etc unless it is a story actually about just them.

Yeah! It should be about how Steve Jobs hates Chinese people, and forces them to commit suicide and pollute their bodies with horrifying chemicals.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[angus77]

...when ever there's a news story about a portable music device they automatically refer to the Apple iPod

Apple's marketing division has worked hard to make their brand synonymous with portable music devices, smartphones and tablets.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[MightyMartian]

Apple's marketing division has worked hard to make their brand synonymous with portable music devices, smartphones and tablets.

And killing Chinese workers!

God bless America

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[Nocuous]

You know...when ever there's a news story about a portable music device they automatically refer to the Apple iPod, which is irritating as hell.

The same thing happens with tablets now.

It's nice that they still drag Apple into a conversation like this...but it's still bullshit.

Quit saying Apple, ipod, ipad, etc unless it is a story actually about just them.

Whenever I mention something about Apple being subject to the laws of business like any other company, people often come out of the woodwork to say something like, "Oh no you dint! Apple is the largest purchaser of in the WORLD, and they can do it faster, cheaper, prettier... etc. etc."

So, since Apple be the largest X of Y in the WORLD, and first in market share and mind share, I find it entirely appropriate to drag Apple's name into the negative aspects of consumer electronics, including suicides among poorly treated workers, and outright poisoning of them. After all, with the Zune's laughable market share, how many workers could be dying assembling them?

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[dangitman]

So, since Apple be the largest X of Y in the WORLD, and first in market share and mind share, I find it entirely appropriate to drag Apple's name into the negative aspects of consumer electronics, including suicides among poorly treated workers, and outright poisoning of them.

You're only perpetuating the problem. After all, "there's no such thing as bad publicity." Stories like this aren't going to tarnish Apple's reputation, they are only going to put Apple products at the forefront of people's minds, and perhaps generate a sale or two.

If you're trying to damage Apple, this isn't a good approach to take.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[omfgnosis]

Yeah. That's the real tragedy about workers being poisoned to enrich the pushers who prey on our society's high tech addictions. The damage to, or inflation of, the value of Apple Inc.'s brand.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[omfgnosis]

"No such thing as bad publicity" tends to have a pretty abrupt threshold. People are generally content to be complicit in horrific exploitation until they are forced to look in the mirror. Excepting sociopaths, atrocities are impossible to commit if they're being honestly acknowledged. More than that, Apple is extremely conscious about its brand's reputation; bad publicity from a small but vocal minority often prompts Apple to at least pay lip service to changing its ways. As an example, when environmental groups ran campaigns to disproportionately shame Apple, their first response was damage control in the form of publicly asserting that they're no worse than their lowest-common-denominator competitors, but their long-term response was to not only make major changes in their corporate environmental policies but to trumpet them as yet another value in the Apple brand. In other words, while Apple benefited from this campaign in the long term, so did the campaigns which targeted them. Not only did Apple make major changes to both its policies and its public image, they also raised the level of pressure on their competitors to follow suit. Strategically, the moral campaign exerted greater leverage over the brand-conscious Apple than the reverse.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[dangitman]

As an example, when environmental groups ran campaigns to disproportionately shame Apple, their first response was damage control in the form of publicly asserting that they're no worse than their lowest-common-denominator competitors, but their long-term response was to not only make major changes in their corporate environmental policies but to trumpet them as yet another value in the Apple brand.

This is revisionist history. Apple was already way ahead of other companies on environmental impact, and the Greenpeace targeting of them was complete bullshit. There was no "major change" in their environmental policies. Greenpeace's metrics were based on unsubstantiated PR statements, not actual environmental impact.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[omfgnosis]

Nonsense. They were based on profiles of usage of harmful industrial chemicals and irresponsible disposal policies, and Greenpeace took into direct corporate policy statements on timelines for reversal of these policies. Apple's manufacturing was rife with these chemicals, their disposal policy utterly irresponsible, and their timeline nonexistent. Apple very quickly turned this around.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[dangitman]

Nonsense. They were based on profiles of usage of harmful industrial chemicals and irresponsible disposal policies, and Greenpeace took into direct corporate policy statements on timelines for reversal of these policies.

Not nonsense. Apple is well-known as not being very public about its operations. Basing an environmental assessment on statements on their website is absurd.

Furthermore anybody can make bullshit PR statements on their website about what they are going to do, but it's action that matters. Apple was already well ahead of the industry at the time in shipping products with minimal packaging, and products that were more energy-efficient than the competition, and used less materials. Yet Greenpeace, of course, does not take that into account.

Apple very quickly turned this around.

How do you know this wasn't already planned before Greenpeace got involved? Crediting Greenpeace with these changes is not based on facts.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[omfgnosis]

Apple is well-known as not being very public about its operations.

More nonsense. Apple is well-known as not being very public about its future products, but being exceptionally public about whatever it thinks will improve its brand image. Apple is a media darling for chrissake, not the CIA.

Basing an environmental assessment on statements on their website is absurd.

Agreed. Good thing I didn't say anything about that. Are you reading from a script?

Furthermore anybody can make bullshit PR statements on their website about what they are going to do, but it's action that matters.

Again, agreed. But again, not related to what I said.

Apple was already well ahead of the industry at the time in shipping products with minimal packaging, and products that were more energy-efficient than the competition, and used less materials. Yet Greenpeace, of course, does not take that into account.

Yes, Apple had some better policies than its competition. It also had some worse policies than its competition. Greenpeace did account for these differences, and at the time the presence of certain harmful chemicals and the absence of a good recycling program—in contrast with either existing practices of explicit corporate timelines from competitors—did not reflect positively on Apple. Obviously, Apple's policies changed. And obviously, Greenpeace's assessment reflects that.

You should actually read their literature to understand how they rate corporations' environmental records. Some of it has to do with recognizing that current efforts are commendable but not adequate, and that transparency about future programs improves trust in a corporation's record. I don't really understand how this is debatable. A corporation with harmful business practices either plans (for whatever reason) to eliminate those practices, or it does not; the former will gladly disclose that, particularly if brand perception is part of their business strategy, but the latter obviously will not.

Furthermore, if you bother to read Greenpeace's literature on the subject, you'll discover that *exactly the same criteria* is used in rating every electronics producer they analyze. Greenpeace is not interested in making polluters look *good*, so you'd have to have a pretty wild imagination to believe that they fixed their own reports just to make Apple look bad by promoting its competitors. Hell, the most recent report *actually gives Apple bonus points*.

How do you know this wasn't already planned before Greenpeace got involved? Crediting Greenpeace with these changes is not based on facts.

I don't read tea leaves, and I doubt you do either. First of all, I don't credit Greenpeace with these changes, but I do think that they contributed. Apple, ultimately, made the changes as a clear response to public pressure to do so—this much is obvious because public pressure was the only business case for the changes. Greenpeace contributed to that public pressure.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[dangitman]

More nonsense. Apple is well-known as not being very public about its future products, but being exceptionally public about whatever it thinks will improve its brand image.

Perhaps they didn't think it would? After all, at the time, environmentalism did not have a positive public image in America. It was seen almost as a gateway to Communism.

Also, Apple's website tends to focus on its products, with a lot less of the corporate boosterism and irrelevant blather than its competitors. Surely, environmental policy is an internal matter, not something that should be exploited for PR purposes? I certainly don't trust companies that trumpet their environmental "credentials" too loudly. It's usually not a genuine concern.

Basing an environmental assessment on statements on their website is absurd.

Agreed. Good thing I didn't say anything about that. Are you reading from a script?

I'm not reading from a script. That's basically what Greenpeace did at the time. They declared Apple worse than the rest of the industry, simply based on statements on their website. Perhaps their methodology has improved since then, but it was definitely suspect at the time, and almost made me stop donating to Greenpeace because of such sensationalistic and suspect tactics.

Greenpeace is not interested in making polluters look *good*, so you'd have to have a pretty wild imagination to believe that they fixed their own reports just to make Apple look bad by promoting its competitors.

And yet, that's exactly what they did. They gave competitors a better score, not based on actual practice, but based on hot-air promises on their websites.

Apple, ultimately, made the changes as a clear response to public pressure to do so—this much is obvious because public pressure was the only business case for the changes. Greenpeace contributed to that public pressure.

I very much doubt that public pressure had anything to do with it. The industry as a whole was going through significant changes in process, with things like ROHS in Europe. It was just circumstantial that Greenpeace mounted their campaign against Apple around the same time that these changes were beginning, but had not yet been completed. So it looks like Greenpeace and public pressure had a lot more influence than it really did. I think government policies such as ROHS, and industry-wide practices had a lot more impact. Greenpeace was basically irrelevant in all of this, nothing more than a sideshow.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[omfgnosis]

Perhaps they didn't think it would? After all, at the time, environmentalism did not have a positive public image in America. It was seen almost as a gateway to Communism.

And still is. In certain circles. Which aren't Apple's target market and you know it.

Also, Apple's website tends to focus on its products, with a lot less of the corporate boosterism and irrelevant blather than its competitors. Surely, environmental policy is an internal matter, not something that should be exploited for PR purposes? I certainly don't trust companies that trumpet their environmental "credentials" too loudly. It's usually not a genuine concern.

http://www.apple.com/environment/

I'm not reading from a script. That's basically what Greenpeace did at the time. They declared Apple worse than the rest of the industry, simply based on statements on their website. Perhaps their methodology has improved since then, but it was definitely suspect at the time, and almost made me stop donating to Greenpeace because of such sensationalistic and suspect tactics.

That's not what happened, that's what gushing Apple fanatics declared had happened because they were experiencing cognitive dissonance. Read Greenpeace's actual literature.

And yet, that's exactly what they did. They gave competitors a better score, not based on actual practice, but based on hot-air promises on their websites.

Okay, let's try an exercise and assume your version is true. Apple had better environmental policies than its competitors. Greenpeace, an environmentalist organization, dishonestly promoted Apple's competitors with worse policies. To make Apple look bad. ...

Why? How on Earth is it in Greenpeace's interest to promote worse polluters? Can you not see how this is an incredible claim?

I very much doubt that public pressure had anything to do with it.

I don't doubt that you do. And frankly, with the position that you've entrenched yourself into, it's probably impossible that you would see it any other way. Of course, RoHS (which, incidentally, is discussed in Greenpeace's literature) is quite plainly *also* a product of public pressure.

But I gotta ask. Given that you think this public pressure was unfair to Apple, how can you also think it's a "sideshow"? And given that you think it's so ineffective, why bother donating to Greenpeace?

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[dangitman]

Why? How on Earth is it in Greenpeace's interest to promote worse polluters? Can you not see how this is an incredible claim?

Greenpeace isn't particularly interested in the environment. It's more about a social agenda. See, for example, the opposition to any nuclear power, even if it reduces pollution.

And given that you think it's so ineffective, why bother donating to Greenpeace?

It's mostly out of habit and laziness. It is a serious question, and I think I will cancel my monthly donations. I haven't until now, because I dread the telephone conversation involved - it's like trying to cancel cable TV. It's a lot easier just to let them continue taking my money than to confront them about it.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[omfgnosis]

Greenpeace isn't particularly interested in the environment. It's more about a social agenda. See, for example, the opposition to any nuclear power, even if it reduces pollution.

What are you smoking? The extraction and use of radioactive fuel dramatically increases pollution. It nearly completely eliminates greenhouse gas emissions, but there's a clear environmental motive behind opposing solutions to global warming whose side effects will poison the planet.

This is like saying that Greenpeace isn't particularly interested in the environment because they don't support blotting out the sun to reduce global warming.

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[omfgnosis]

Also, what exactly is the social agenda of opposing nuclear power?

Re:Apple.... and those others.

[rdnetto]

It is about them:

MCDONELL: These young women use to finish off laptop computers by gluing on, measuring and then polishing Apple logos. For this they used a chemical used N-Hexane. One of the women has kept some of the logos they used to show that their work was connected to Apple products.

Unacceptable

[Anonymous Coward]

A chemical called n-hexane has been poisoning the nervous systems of Chinese workers who assemble touchscreen devices for Apple and other companies

I can forgive them poisoning a few people but making Apple devices is unforgivable.

And the damages from waste?

[mugnyte]

    And is anyone asking companies to pay for the costs/injuries from reclaiming materials from the waste stream?

Re:And the damages from waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a very large number of Americans (and other westerners) ARE asking that China do JUST THAT.
In addition, that China puts pollution controls on their power plants.
And that China will allow their Yuan to Float.
And that China will quit dumping on export markets.
And that China will quit subsidizing.
And that China will simply live up to the MANY treaties/agreements that they have and ignore.

The problem is that the CHinese gov. does not honor their word and Western Businesses are taking advantage of that.

Re:And the damages from waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

And is anyone asking companies to pay for the costs/injuries from reclaiming materials from the waste stream?

Actually, a very large number of Americans (and other westerners) ARE asking that China do JUST THAT.

And in America, waste cleans YOU.

In addition, that China puts pollution controls on their power plants.
  And that China will allow their Yuan to Float.
  And that China will quit dumping on export markets.
  And that China will quit subsidizing.
  And that China will simply live up to the MANY treaties/agreements that they have and ignore.

AFAIK China is the world's largest producer of pollution filters, and of green energy devices.
China is the last country on earth to still have the US$ as lead currency, and strangely the US has a problem with that.
China stopped dumping rare earth metals on export markets. Happy now?
Various African nations are asking the USA to stop subsidizing.
China honors the treaties and agreements it has. Unlike the US, it never needed to get out of the Kyoto protocol.

The problem is that the CHinese gov. does not honor their word and Western Businesses are taking advantage of that.

Meanwhile, Milton Friedmann something something greed is good and pure.

It's a WalMart world after all

[mmcxii]

In the pursuit of cheaper and cheaper goods you're going to have this kind of thing. Sadly, China lowered the price-point so much that it's hard to find many products made in an environment with a reasonable amount of safety and a livable wage for the workers.

That's what happens when you have a population feeling that they need 54 inch TVs, enough food to kill themselves with, clothes they wear twice before they pitch them in the trash or out grow them, every Pixar film in their home library and two of the biggest three video game consoles for each child.

People have made a choice between quantity and quality and China is taking the brunt of this along with the spoils.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[MightyMartian]

That's what happens when you have a population feeling that they need 54 inch TVs, enough food to kill themselves with, clothes they wear twice before they pitch them in the trash or out grow them, every Pixar film in their home library and two of the biggest three video game consoles for each child.

And what the fuck are you typing this post out on? An Apple 2?

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[mmcxii]

Try a 7 year old ThinkPad. I have older machines too but none newer. Is that good enough for you?

My bigger point, which you gladly skirted, is that China gets away with this because of the volume of product that they produce. If people would reign their consumption habit in a bit we may not have this issues.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[KhabaLox]

enough food to kill themselves with,

Actually, I think most of the food we Americans kill ourselves with comes from North and South America.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[mmcxii]

Again, skirting my posts original intent. Sorry, I'm done feeding this troll.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[Garble Snarky]

Well however many it was, it was less than the number that died fabricating and assembling 7 equivalent devices that some other person bought yearly.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[GiveBenADollar]

Ahh, so it's my fault that the Chinese people are working in factories with crappy working conditions instead of on farms with crappy working conditions. Lets just stop paying to have things made overseas, that will make the lives of the workers overseas so much better.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[geekoid]

wrong. Even if we cut it in half. They would still be made in China, Chinese companies would still have horrid working conditions. The only change would be that there is even MORE demand for those jobs, and less of an incentive to treat the workers like human beings.

The only fix is to get China to have some decent labor laws. The best way to do that is add a large tarif for any goods coming into the US from a country that doesn't meet our basic federal laws.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[geekoid]

Again, you missed his point. His point is we should consume less. Not that we shouldn't buy anything from China at all.

I disagree with his premise, but at least I understand it. You are just being intentional obtuse.

Nothing he posted way a hypocrisy in any way.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[mmcxii]

What was that about hypocrisy? Do did you use an Apple II?

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[StikyPad]

Bah, 54" is for people with normal dicks. Mine's extremely small, and 54" wouldn't even begin to compensate.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[DeadCatX2]

I'm pretty sure that a guy using a 7-year-old laptop is not the kind of hyper-consumer who tries to e.g. eat enough food to kill himself. But don't let me get in the way of your hyperbole...I know you're just dying to hate some stranger on the Internet.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[Anonymous Coward]

n-hexane, that n is actually a Greek character, is an important component in petroleum (gas - petrol).
The balance between n-hexane and iso-octane determines the octane rating of your fuel.
There must be awfully high concentrations of the stuff if it's having toxic effects.
An investigative journalist from the ABC, eh? Not like them to be alarmist, much.

AC because it's Saturday morning and I can't be bothered logging in.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[Sir_Sri]

Or, put another way, China is benefiting enormously from the economic opportunities the market for 54 inch TV's and DVD's has created, and the fact that their labour laws and practices haven't caught up is both a matter of time and necessity. You can't seriously have expected a country that 30 years ago had virtually no trade to suddenly know what of our laws to copy or not. Your supposition of 'need' doesn't make sense. If people needed those goods they would pay higher prices, the fact is they don't need it, they want it, but only so much, and that's why there is huge competition on price.

If you make money, you are entitled to spend it on whatever you want, that was the point of making it in the first place. The more money you stuff away and never spend in life the more gets bottled up in banks and ultimately the less benefit you ever see for having worked that hard. For all of the things wrong in china, they have benefitted enormously from people deciding to buy the things they make. There will be growing pains, but subsistence farmers don't exactly get to post on /.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong. Even if we cut it in half. They would still be made in China, Chinese companies would still have horrid working conditions. The only change would be that there is even MORE demand for those jobs, and less of an incentive to treat the workers like human beings.

The only fix is to get China to have some decent labor laws. The best way to do that is add a large tarif for any goods coming into the US from a country that doesn't meet our basic federal laws.

Like the DMCA and Patriot Act? LOL!

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[burnin1965]

You don't actually believe that given higher prices and less consumption that corporations will stop manufacturing their products under the most environmentally unfriendly and humanly detrimental conditions in order to maximize a profit, do you?

The driving factor for many of the ills today is one thing and one thing only, an insatiable greed of a tiny portion of the population who are not satisfied with a comfortable life, an elite life, not even an opulent life, nope, the objective is nothing less than total and complete serfdom of every last human being around them with every last penny of possible profit transferred to their pockets. We are talking about greed on a level and magnitude that would drive Clark Griswold to the obvious conclusion about the mental state of these humans.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[Anonymous Coward]

n-hexane, that n is actually a Greek character...

No, that n is just an n. It stands for normal. It means it is a straight chain, not branched like isohexane or neohexane would be.

      H H H H H H
      | | | | | |
H--C--C--C--C--C--C--H is n-hexane.
      | | | | | |
      H H H H H H

AC because I don't want to undo my mods.
Also can't use monospace font without logging in and can't use enough spaces to align it without triggering the junk character filter, so my diagram is messed up.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you so upset? Can't you "speak" rationally? I'm sure the original poster is receptive to a reasoned reply, and less so to vitriol.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[M. Baranczak]

There are people who wouldn't mind paying a few bucks extra for products that aren't made in third-world poison-spewing hell-holes; but most of the time, that's not even an option. Thank you, Free Trade.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[omfgnosis]

It's only your fault that you're funneling riches into the pockets of those who keep the conditions crappy. If we stop rewarding the people doing that, they will be unable to keep doing it. And Chinese workers will have much more room to improve their own conditions. There is no incentive for improving conditions to be had by trading our own morality for electronic gizmos.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[mmcxii]

What we have today is far from free trade. Don't think for a second that what the NeoCons did was a tick up for free trade.

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[mmcxii]

I don't agree with your cause and effect model. In a way I don't disagree with it either. I think the lower and middle class are greedy in their own ways too. This helped lead to a great amount of opportunity for the power elite to hoodwink them. These elements feed off each other. Being a member of the middle class I feel that focusing on what I'm most familiar with and most able to effect is the best course. People who make a living wage should know better than to put themselves so far in debt that they have no option to get out of it. Sure, sometimes something may come out of left field and beat a few of us down but this normally isn't the case. Learning to live within our means will help put the power elite in their spot once they realize that hollow promises are nearly worthless.

And it's not that high prices will cause corporations to produce a more environmentally friendly product, you've missed the point. If we, as the end consumer, make it our business to try as best possible to buy goods from manufacturers who are conscious of the workers well being we can swing the market to better practices. Of course, to do this it will cost the producers more money so the product will cost more. But if we do this in the spirit of better practices and better worker treatment won't it be worth it in the end?

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa! Could we please avoid using phrases like 'cut in half' in a thread that very recently was about penises?

Re:It's a WalMart world after all

[cdrguru]

The only fix is to get China to have some decent labor laws. The best way to do that is add a large tarif for any goods coming into the US from a country that doesn't meet our basic federal laws.

The US is legally prevented from doing anything to China with tariffs. The WTO prevents it. Clinton signed this for some reason with no thought whatsoever what the consequences might be. We are living with those consequences today.

Bush tried adding tariffs on European steel and we saw how that worked. It isn't going to happen with China, ever.

Oh, and we signed a MFN deal with them which precludes tariffs as well.

Actually, OP was most sensitive in /. History.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at all the Surface Area those Chinese nervous-systems cover
over the entire world: they are most sensitive, even more than
India,but maybe not as sensitive as Sobeit Russuh where sensitivity
Feels you.

Ah, communist China!

[geekmansworld]

The workers' paradise!

No such thing as free trade....

[18_Rabbit]

When one of the parties has much higher environmental and safety regulations. Of course, this why the wingnuts will tell you we need to dismantle our regulatory systems. Yay! Race to the bottom!

Re:No such thing as free trade....

[Mashiki]

No there's plenty of free trade. You know all that stuff that goes intercontinental in the US state by state? Free trade. The stuff that goes in Canada province, by province? Yeah free trade. The reality is most agreements at a federal level are some type of fair trade(that includes nafta).

Free trade drives markets, especially when you're not being penalized. In turn as it furthers more open markets, people get a better standard of living. You're being obtuse, or perhaps ignorant in thinking that free trade = regulatory removal.

Re:No such thing as free trade....

[quacking duck]

I agree with what you're saying, but the GP isn't wrong either.

Intra-country free trade is entirely dependent on rules and laws, established by national government. State/province and even local laws may differ (e.g. minimum wages, labour laws), but major disagreements will be settled by the supreme court and punitive actions (fines or even jail time) are enforced to ensure minimum standards and obligations are met.

This doesn't work at the international level. In theory, treaties like NAFTA and organizations like the WTO are analogous to government and supreme court respectively, in practice countries will happily ignore their stipulations and judgements when it suits them. In the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the USA for instance, almost all international trade bodies including the WTO sided with Canada and ordered the US to pay back all collected tariffs. The US refused.

What teeth do the trade bodies have? They can fine the country, possibly impose sanctions against it (fat lot of good that'll do against the US), but they can't arrest and jail national leaders for failing to abide by treaties or verdicts.

Re:Give me a break.

[jdgeorge]

Okay, props for correct use of the term "twat waffle".

Worker safety in China

[Korveck]

China has always been poor in enforcing some basic safety requirements. Every year thousands of Chinese miners die in all sorts of mine-related accidents. Factories can dump toxic chemicals into rivers and get away with it. Harmful materials are regularly used as cheap substitutes in manufacturing. Better yet, most reports on these horrible practices are quickly suppressed. Welcome to the harmonous and prosperous society of Middle Kingdom.

Re:Worker safety in China

[MightyMartian]

China has always been poor in enforcing some basic safety requirements.

British Petroleum has been poor in enforcing some basic safety requirements. China doesn't give a shit about basic safety requirements. Providing major ports like Shanghai are heading to North America and Europe a bazillion pairs of Nike Asskickers, iTubePhone and lead-based children's wear, China and the Chinese manufacturers could care less about safety. In China, whether you died to make the Kuomintang great, or died to make Mao's insane steel output quotas great, or died so that Marxist purists could funny hats on anybody who had anything approaching independent thought, or died so that the world could fill to the brim with Chinese goods, one thing has always been clear, and that is that the average Chinese citizens has been completely expendable.

Re:Worker safety in China

[2phar]

Chinese manufacturers could care less about safety.

How much less?

Someone mod down this idiot

[KhabaLox]

How incredibly stupid of you, to say that a set of ethnic groups is a race. Shame on you.

Capitalism

[Doc Ruby]

The market will fix this. Nobody will buy iPhones when they hear about this. And all iPhone consumers in the market will hear about it.

Right?

Re:Capitalism

[ozbird]

"You gotta tell 'em—iPHONE IS PEOPLE!"

"Whatever. Does it come in white?"

Re:Capitalism

[benjamindees]

Sorry, but this is the market fixing itself.

Earning profit requires risk. People who moved from the countryside into factories are taking the risk that it will pay off. If you asked them, most would probably say it was worthwhile, and that it is paying off. But odds are good that a large portion will not profit by it. Now that the consequences of this type of work are known, we will see how many continue to choose to work in dangerous factories. I imagine it will still be enough to keep them running.

Re:Capitalism

[Abcd1234]

The market will fix this.

Huh? I know you're trying to be clever and sarcastic, here, and normally I'm the first to attack free market purists, but I don't see anyone claiming that this kind of thing will be solved by the invisible hand.

This is, put simply, a classic example of a negative externality. The only solution is government regulation or taxation.

Re:Capitalism

[edxwelch]

No, but Apple could easily fix the problem. "If you continue to use toxic substances to manufacture iPhones, we are going to switch suppliers".

Re:Capitalism

[Doc Ruby]

These people are all now poisoned in their nervous systems. How is the market fixing that?

You libertarians all think you're talking about Sim City. You're not. These people are poisoned. It's too late. That's what capitalism does when unchecked by protecting people's rights: it makes a clean getaway.

Re:Capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You're both right. This is a classic negative externality. People who know about economics recognize the importance of regulation (and taxation!) in correcting such "flaws" in the market. But people in politics who shout about "the free market" either don't understand externalities or (far more likely) have a vested interest in protecting the beneficiaries of those externalities. So you've got Rand Paul out there shouting about how it's just totally wrong for the government to ever regulate mountaintop mining.

Re:Capitalism

[edelbrp]

It sounds simple that American companies could 'fix' the problem of China's poor working conditions, but in reality that job belongs to China its self. Besides, say you assemble devices in the US instead of China. What about the parts in them? OK, manufacture and make the parts in the US. What about the materials to make the parts? Oh, well, we can try to be completely self-reliant on rare-earth metals and the like, but it just isn't a realistic concept. It's a global economy and China needs to take care of its own people, it's not up to American companies to do that.

Re:Capitalism

[benjamindees]

You're right, this isn't Sim City. There are no arcologies. There are real resource and energy constraints on growth. If people can't find work or maintain a sufficient standard of living, there are wars and civil unrest that result.

Progress requires some amount of risk.

These workers weren't intentionally poisoned by anyone. They are simply willing to take on more risk than we are. There are more of them, and they have less capital per person.

Remember, the only reason most of them even have jobs, aside from subsistence farming, is that Western companies were willing to take on the risk of exporting lots of capital and setting up shop in a foreign country and hoping that they wouldn't have those investments nationalized.

But, by all means, go ahead, raise environmental standards for Chinese workers. Make it less attractive for foreign companies to invest in China.

We'll just build stuff here, using robots instead, and they can go back to dying in floods or starving or whatever.

Re:Capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone buying an iPhone wants to buy good conditions for the workers who made it, then yes, the market will fix it. If they just want a cheap iPhone, the market will fix that, too.

Re:Capitalism

[edxwelch]

Well, it easy to pass the buck, but in the past Apple have indeed pressured their suppliers to improve working conditions of their workers.

Re:Capitalism

[LynnwoodRooster]

The market will fix this. Nobody will buy iPhones when they hear about this. And all iPhone consumers in the market will hear about it.

Right?

Except those that hold their phone wrong...

Re:Capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The only solution is government regulation or taxation.

The real solution is prosperity. When people are scratching to get by they don't worry too much about long term issues. When daily needs are easily met attention shifts to larger issues, including health and education.

Re:Capitalism

[GWBasic]

And all iPhone consumers in the market will hear about it

But will they care? The problem with our system is that, as consumers, we have to not care or assume that all products are equal in their externalities.

It's like, the only real way to exert change is to embargo any products that aren't manufactured in plants that don't match US safety standards, or a subset thereof.

Re:Capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

"You gotta tell 'em—iPHONE IS PEOPLE!" "Whatever. Does it come in white?"

I think it's called "iLent Green."

Re:Capitalism

[mahadiga]

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." --Oscar Wilde

Re:Capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is all the people/businesses pushing for "free trade" with the caveat that it shoves the problems of worker rights, pollution, etc, off on another country. Who are we to say that workers there shouldn't be forced to work 14 hours a day, any more than France saying we should all work 35 hour weeks?

Unfortunately, this creates an economic incentive to abuse workers and pollute, since apparently Americans (including me) would rather have cheap products than try to export a higher standard of living -- which in some ways results in a lower standard of living for us, at least in the immediate picture. The country with the worst regulation and lowest costs gets our business, and there's a good chance that it has limited political freedoms as well.

chemistry of n-hexane

[smellsofbikes]

In case anyone is interested, n-hexane is a straight-chain hydrocarbon, six (predictably) carbons long. It's similar to gasoline, which is a mixture of straight-chain and branched-chain hydrocarbons, that average about eight carbons (hence 'octane number': the reference for gasoline volatility is a specific eight-carbon molecule.) Hexane is often used as a solvent and cleaning agent, replacing the much better but much more toxic benzene, also a six-carbon molecule, and a number of other solvents that do a great job solvating but also do a great job poisoning people in both short and long term exposures.

It's pretty common in production facilities, particularly manufacturing lines, to start out with good chemical control: a fireproof safe from which people have to check out material, and over time, as the manufacturing process evolves, people keep finding they need to wash stuff up at one step and pretty soon a jug of solvent just gets left there and people start splashing it around. Gloves get in the way, or get caught in machinery, so people stop using those, too. Then, in the US, OSHA makes more and more drastic rules about allowing solvents of any sort, to try to prevent this happening, and manufacturers have to find another solvent, which then gets used in the same way with the same results.

Point being, it's not particularly OSHA that's the problem: they're trying to stop people poisoning themselves. The issue is manufacturing processes with unanticipated problems, and production workers who find ways to overcome the problems without realizing that they're endangering themselves. In China there's less concern over workers endangering themselves than in the US, although the difference is primarily in degree, but the same general problem is seen in most manufacturing environments.

Re:chemistry of n-hexane

[cyberidian]

I am not advocating people being poisoned, but I do think it is unfair to judge China, a developing industrial nation, by US safety standards today. The US has had many decades to develop its manufacturing base before these types of concerns even existed. If you think about it, one of the reasons why these types of devices are built in China and not the US is because the US has so many regulations that it is too expensive to manufacture almost anything in the US. While I do think US companies should be pressured to some degree to require their source companies to follow decent safety and labor practices, if we insist that China match the US level of safety, manufacturing will become too expensive there too. Then manufacturing will simply move somewhere else where people are poorer and the Chinese people will be without jobs. Long-term the world should work towards having standard safety regulations world-wide, but there are too many poor people in the world for that to happen anytime soon. In the meanwhile, careful thought needs to put into what type of safety regulations should be expected of China and other developing nations. While China is mostly a dictatorship, the government is not immune to pressure from the US or its own citizens. I do believe that the best way to help China ultimately become a democracy is by increasing its middle class, which mainly happens by having good manufacturing jobs widely available. While it is easy for upper class Americans to complain about the horrors of industrial poisoning, the workers in China probably only appreciate the outcry if the solution also involves them keeping their jobs. It is also worth considering that the companies involved may be trying to protect their workers from these solvents, but individual workers may not be following safety practices and becoming poisoned.

Re:chemistry of n-hexane

[Anonymous Coward]

Too true. I have seen plenty of factory workers who shirk their safety gear when nobody is looking because they don't see the harm and wearing it is uncomfortable or causes them problems.

Re:chemistry of n-hexane

[dgatwood]

Further, N-hexane use is already banned in China for use as a solvent when cleaning LCD panels. Also, Wintek (the screen supplier for Apple, Nokia, and several other companies) claims that they have not used it since August of 2009. (Source: Engadget) In other words, this story seems to be more than a year behind. Sure, the effects can still be seen in much the same way that the effects of Chernobyl can still be seen, but that doesn't mean people are still actively being harmed as this story seems to imply.

Re:chemistry of n-hexane

[Rich0]

The issue is manufacturing processes with unanticipated problems, and production workers who find ways to overcome the problems without realizing that they're endangering themselves.

No, the issue is that companies put profits above safety.

If workers remove their gloves, they should be fired. If an inspector finds a worker not wearing gloves, the company should be fined big-time. The employer is in charge of the workplace, and so they are responsible for what happens, period.

If you set your policy any other way, then this is what happens: Official rules go up on the walls - all workers shall wear gloves. Oh, but every week the two slowest workers are fired. Workers find out that gloves slow them down, so they stop wearing them. The company looks the other way, since they don't actually care if workers give themselves cancer, but they do care about making more widgets. If inspectors come in, the company points to the rules and say that they're providing gloves.

In such a working environment, workers who are safety-conscious get out-competed. The solution is to level the playing field with regard to safety. If employees are caught not wearing gloves by an inspector, then it is automatically a finding against the company and they get fined so much money that any savings from cutting corners is minuscule in comparison. The company realizes this, and so they do spot checks and any employees caught not wearing gloves get treated worse than those caught sleeping on the job. Now, safety becomes encouraged by management, and workers don't have to compromise their health to keep their job.

Re:chemistry of n-hexane

[omfgnosis]

"... but that doesn't mean people are still actively being harmed" by this particular chemical. Surely the treatment of workers in China has much further to go than the (largely unenforced) banning of a single chemical solvent.

Re:chemistry of n-hexane

[Froomb]

Either ABC news in Australia has been trolled by the workers' lawyers, or they were deliberately looking for a sensational story to highlight problems in China and presented it disingenuously as if it were current news.

It's odd they need to bring up an incident that dates from 2009 and that no mention was made of Wintek, rather than imply it was an Apple-controlled factory.

Apparently the situation for workers in China is now so good that critics have to recycle old news to gain attention?

the year in china

[Ryanrule]

Is 1900. Lets see how they handle it

Re:the year in china

[istartedi]

Mod parent up. Arguably, we're re-living 1900 here in some ways too; but it's much more apparent in China.

Under the Chinese system, how can there be an Upton Sinclair though? They'll just squash him.

I don't think things like this can go on forever though. I've said it a number of times: "If the Chinese aren't careful, they're going to have a communist revolution on their hands".

Followed by, "how long before China sets a river on fire?".

I remember just after Tienanmen, when it was readily apparent that the Chinese were going to do what Gorbachev wanted--bring market economics to the old system without destroying it. As detestable as dictatorship is, it seemed like an interesting experiment as long as I didn't have to live under it. They had the chance to retain some of the things that made China interesting and liveable (such as their use of the bicycle for daily commuting) while bringing market economics to bear on other problems.

Alas, the Chinese learned *nothing* from the West in this regard, and one of the first articles I remember reading about the new China was lamenting how it was becomeing impossible to cycle to work without hacking up a lung due to diesel exhaust.

modern china is slavery

[circletimessquare]

the citizens have no right to elect their own government, and so they are basically slaves to a few grumpy technocrats in beijing

and the shame is, americans are happy to support this human rights quagmire, because they get cheap plastic crap in the bargain. all the while, they let their own manufacturing sector rot and their economy go to hell, because slave labor is obviously cheaper

who cares about human rights, who cares about my own country's economy, as long as i get my fucking shiny smartphone

blame corporations all you want

i blame the fat, lazy, ignorant american consumer

Re:modern china is slavery

[ozbird]

Too late - China p0wns you. The shiny trinkets are there to keep the proles happy.

Re:modern china is slavery

[circletimessquare]

its true

we waste our young folk's lives and trillions of our dollars to ensure the stability of the oil supply... for the growth of china

the usa has become nothing but the thug enforcer for china

Re:modern china is slavery

[geekoid]

yes, only american buy goods from China~

Re:modern china is slavery

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so commonly known that the stuff China exports to the US and Europe tends to be higher quality than the stuff they export to other parts of Asia and to Africa.
Even products that look the same and have the same brand names tend to be much crappier. Weird that it's even possible.

Re:Give me a break.

[KhabaLox]

I've yet to meet anyone with a Zune or a creative player who is as large a twat waffle as Apple fanboys.

I've yet to meet anyone with a Zune or a creative player, period. Which I think disproves the GPs point more immediately.

It's a limited time offer

[serutan]

The only comfort I take in the Global Economy is that eventually every part of the world will be industrialized and we'll run out of cheap labor hellholes to have our gadgets made in. I still remember in the 60s when Made in Japan was synonymous with cheap plastic crap. The process that has taken place in Japan since WWII is repeating at a faster pace in places like China and Mexico. Now those countries have a growing consumer class that is looking for cheap labor in other places. After the cycle happens across South America and Africa, the party will be over and so will the culture of endless business growth based on cheap labor.

Re:It's a limited time offer

[rubycodez]

wrong, the U.S.A. is being transformed into a cheap labor hellhole right before your eyes.

Re:It's a limited time offer

[twistofsin]

The political situations in South America and Africa need to change drastically and become a lot more stable before big business will consider investing heavily in either area. It's just to risky right now to invest millions or even billions when the possibility of it being destroyed in a violent conflict or confiscated by the government are high.

Re:It's a limited time offer

[Anonymous Coward]

The death of cheap labour would be a huge win for human rights and standards of living. Of course, the rich would be less rich but they'll still be rich.

Re:It's a limited time offer

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, even better, the whole paradigm shifts when we have sufficiently advanced robotics that the cost of capital in the developed world can compete with the cost of labor in the developing world. Might even happen while there's still a developing world...

Re:It's a limited time offer

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely. If it ever came to that point, rest assured one of the big powers would just bomb a smaller country into rubble, destroy their economy and then loan them the funds to rebuild.

This would give the big power control over how the country develops, stunting their high level industry, and generally resulting in a supply of cheap labour once again.

Yes, one day that country will eventually break free and attain equal standard of living once again, but this will take decades to do (all the while you can make use of the cheaper labour) and eventually a big power can just do this concept again, perhaps with a different small country. Rinse and repeat. This will only happen to small countries. I don't think the big powers would ever try to subjugate each other like this (because that would be a WWIII inducing event).

Much as I wish I could be as optimistic as you, I've witnessed the above happen personally to my country, and can understand how it would be insanely useful to always have a supply of cheap human resource to sustain your standard of living and economy.

I also witnessed how quickly a country can go from having high-tech industry and good standard of living to being nothing more than a source for unskilled labour and prostitutes (who now served those who bombed them). I'm quite frankly disgusted, but being powerless to do anything about it, I have simply resigned myself to the situation, became a massive cynic and have generally lost faith in the human race.

Odd choice of words

[Eudial]

"It's scary to think that people are being damaged to pursue high production rates."

Damaged? What a peculiar choice of words. People get harmed or injured; machines and tools get damaged and malfunction.

Re:Odd choice of words

[Anonymous Coward]

I've met a lot of people who are tools (and ones that I wouldn't mind being "damaged")

Oh wait... that's a different definition of tool...

CAPTCHA: uncouth (fitting description of the content here)

Re:Odd choice of words

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they should have used 'human resources' rather than 'people'.

Re:Odd choice of words

[Anonymous Coward]

They are just speaking tools. In other words: slaves.

Re:Odd choice of words

[sjames]

Given that in assembly lines, human beings are expected to act like robots with really good visual systems (mostly because humans are cheaper than robots), perhaps damaged is the right word for it.

How Many Chinamen Does it Take to Make an iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

..Answer: Allto Many Poisoned Ones.

Sleep sweet, Steve baby. Altho, as a man who has suffered from serious illness yourself, perhaps you may want to think twice before deliberately inflicting the same upon others? then again, maybe not - either way, karma will rule, eventually.

And you know it.

Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say this, but companies that outsource production to other countries like China, aren't directly responsible for their well-being. This touchscreen issue is just a drop in the bucket of chinese labor abuses that are commonplace among thousands of companies. They aren't Apple's production workers. It's not Apple's factory, they don't own it, or run it.

He didn't say it should be that way

[YesIAmAScript]

Just that it is that way. And I agree, I've been there.

When you have a lot of labor to throw at a problem, the relative value of that labor becomes less. If you can get more workers for cheap, you'll use more of them and less expensive equipment and you'll use less expensive safety equipment too.

And I've seen this in China myself. Even if the process is supposed to be safe, the line managers are rewarded for running the lines fast and at low cost, so shortcuts that don't seem to hurt anyone lead to bonuses at the end of the quarter.

And yes, some of these shortcuts do hurt people long term, but its not obvious. That's why we have safety rules in the US. It's why China has them too, but never enforces them.

Let me give you just one example. In China I saw a guy welding stuff using an arc welder and no mask. He had a piece of cardboard to shield his eyes and he'd move it aside and squint when he needed to see what was going on. Yes, he was destroying his eyes. And complaining about what people post on slashdot isn't fixing the problem.

OK OK Geez

[epte]

I did already say how I recognize the OP might have been meant differently than I took it. I'm ok with being (possibly) wrong. Save your breath.

Hey China - here's a message from god

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

Dear China,

You have a unique and valuable natural resource. You have been selling it at a deep discount so you could get a firm grasp on the balls of every modern nation on earth. Let's call that mission accomplished. You can now start raising the price, and using the increased profits to clean up your country before you kill off the very resource that has created all this wealth. Sure, some bottom-feeders will go elsewhere, but those who stick with you will pay more, and allow you to actually improve your country.

Don't do it all at once - just practice boiling a frog by slowly warming the water. A small increase every quarter will do. However, don't let me catch you pocketing the profits. If you don't start buying scrubbers for your smokestacks, and water treatment plants, I might have to come down and smite your ass.

With Love

God, Buddha, or whatever higher power is in style this week

Re:Hey China - here's a message from god

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem - the Chinese government doesn't consider its 1.2B citizens a unique and valuable natural resource, but an exploitable commodity resource.

Oh, and they probably won't listen because they don't believe in you, anyway...

Re:Hey China - here's a message from god

[LynnwoodRooster]

You know, that's already happening here in China. Not only are worker's wages going up (about 10% this year, about 12% last year, probably another 10% this coming year), but environmental regulations are starting to be tightened AND enforced, and the country is starting to move up. It IS getting better, and in another 2-3 generations it'll be quite nice (about what the US took - remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire from all the pollution? The last time was in 1969 - barely 40 years ago.

.
First, people concern themselves with just getting food and water and shelter. Once they have that, they start worrying about the quality of those things. China's making huge strides towards those basics, and much of the population is now starting to look for quality, to the point that organic foods are becoming available in better supermarkets.

It's heading in the right direction... Hopefully they'll tighten things up without going to the extreme we see in the US and the EU, in terms of every little safety requirement and regulation.

Re:Hey China - here's a message from god

[IorDMUX]

remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire from all the pollution?

Yes, as a Clevelander. After the nation finally got done pointing their fingers and laughing at us, we turned to celebrate this unique Cleveland heritage by loving songs about it [Purchasing the rights to use it as the introduction to Major League], naming annual events after it, and even celebrating it in a local brew.

Burn on, big river.

Designed by Apple in California....

[18_Rabbit]

...poisoned by Foxconn in China!

Re:Designed by Apple in California....

[blair1q]

...Profit!

Poisoned?

[kurt555gs]

So what? Isn't this why American companies make their products there? So you can poison your workers and not have to pay squat?

Re:Poisoned?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, it's so the CEO can cut costs and instead of lowering prices just pocket the difference minus a few measly percent.

Re:Poisoned?

[omfgnosis]

I'm about to fall asleep and I read that as "a few measly peasants".

OSHA's a problem

[bill_mcgonigle]

Point being, it's not particularly OSHA that's the problem: they're trying to stop people poisoning themselves. The issue is manufacturing processes with unanticipated problems, and production workers who find ways to overcome the problems without realizing that they're endangering themselves.

You know this and I know this, so isn't it safe to say that OSHA knows this? And that they're spending effort not really solving any problems?

I know, how many bureaucrats does it take to say, "pfft, there's nothing we can really do that will help here."

Re:OSHA's a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, OSHA was one of the central factors in drastically improving workplace safety for many years. Then a bunch of anti-government no-regulation-is-ever-good crazies slashed their budget to the point where my state has TWO inspectors. And we wonder why it doesn't work any more.

It's scary to think you're so misinformed.

[masmullin]

Why the fuck do you think things are made in China?

Actually, it has a lot to do with convergence, and quality/adaptability of the workforce. You can get cheaper labour elsewhere.

What do I mean about convergence? Well, because all the other tech shit is made in Shenzen, you make your tech shit in Shenzen to reduce shipping cost and time. It's easier to go from prototype to assembly in a city that has all it's factories ready to easily adapt to various different hardware requirements.

The average Chinese high-tech factory worker is a female wanting to save up some money to start a family, she is highly motivated to do a good job. She is very adaptable to the ever changing needs of high tech manufacturing (you can get robots to do the same shit she does... but you have to program the robots a lot due to the constant changing of high-tech).

It's not simply cheap to manufacture high-tech in Shenzen simply because the workers sell themselves cheap, it's cheap in Shenzen because the city is incredibly good at using all of it's varied economies of scale (not just human).

Re:Give me a break.

[Yakasha]

I've yet to meet anyone with a Zune or a creative player who is as large a twat waffle as Apple fanboys.

I've yet to meet anyone with a Zune or a creative player, period. Which I think disproves the GPs point more immediately.

Motorola Droids have touch screens.

McDonald's ordering computers have touch screens.

Why not say "Chinese manufacturers of Motorola's Droid..."
or "Chinese manufacturers of McDonald's Touch screens"?

GP is 100% valid. It was the *exact* same deal with the "horrible suicide rates at 'Apple's manufacturing plant".

Does anybody know that the suicide rate there is less than the national average in China? Does anybody know that Apple accounts for about 3% of the business at the plant? No. But Slashdot, CNN, and every other news site, just like this story, reports it as "Apple and others".

Why they do it? Buzz words attract attention. I *really* doubt it is any kind of conspiracy to hurt Apple. Its just the news sites trying to get people to see the headline and go "ooo I know what that is."

Re:Give me a break.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Creative player.

Well it's is many American foods

[John Sokol]

Hexane is derived from petroleum. It is a colorless, volatile liquid with a mild, gasoline-like odor.

It's used in Electrical contact cleaner, and Computer monitor screen cleaners.

Hexane is the dominate extraction solvent for oil seeds throughout the world, including soybean and other high volume oils used for human and animal consumption. 95% of the world's corn oil is produced from corn germ obtained by wet-milling.
The corn germ is dried, then shipped to hexane extraction facilities to obtain the oil.

Basically corn oil and high fructose corn syrup are contaminated with the stuff in small amounts.

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5118098_corn-oil-processing.html

Re:Well it's is many American foods

[the eric conspiracy]

Be careful with hexane nomenclature. n-hexane is one of the isomers of hexane (there are 5), and by far the most toxic. Claims that hexane is a neurotoxin are misleading - the only hexane isomer that is a neurotoxin is n-hexane as the other hexanes don't produce the nerve damaging metabolite of n-hexane.

Re:Well it's is many American foods

[John Sokol]

Eric,

    Does it really matter?

Do you really want to eat that crap.

I am sorry but there are several things that I don't want anywhere near my food.

1.) Deification and other bodily fluids.
2.) Heavy metals.
3.) Petroleum products.

You can't tell me well it's just a little bit of feces.

Yea it's just a little bit of neurotoxin.

What do they say "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".

That may be fine for animal feed, but it's getting to the point the point where no matter how much effort you can't protect yourself and your family from these things.

We are starting to see so many health problems in our western culture. Little by little so many getting traced back to diet.

Are you familiar with the engineering term "Accumulation of Tolerances"
It's about predicting reliability. Say were building a car, and each part can be 1 mm off.
After you connect 10 parts together in a chain, you can have on occasion be 10 mm off.

Well it's like that with tolerating toxins.
Yea we can handle so much mercury and so much hexane and so much BPA, PFOE, Flouride, Aluminum, Cadmium etc. etc. etc ...

Even Sodium.

With each product it pushing that limit.
But in the real world we eat 20 products per day.

End result, Cancer, Autism, dementia, heart attack, diabetes, stroke, Asthma, allergies, lower IQ's, and a plethora of other problems.

How can anyone sort out what's causing what.

It's like badly written source code. You can't tell where the problem is. The only way out id to start correcting ugly code a piece at a time and without fail, the errors start going away.

Re:Well it's is many American foods

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything is toxic. If you decide to avoid item a because you feel it is too toxic, you really have to set the bar so anything more toxic than item a is avoided.

If item a is non-toxic, you basically starve to death. Even plain old water is a known poison in the right quantity.

It's important to realize that the dose makes the poison. Isohexane has an LD50 of over 0.2% of your body weight. Which seems like a low number, but for an average person, that could easily be 120 grams, such a huge amount that I think you'd notice the foul taste before you got through even 10 grams of the stuff. This is close to the LD50 of table salt, BTW.

Compare that to water, which I mentioned is toxic in the right proportion. The LD50 of water is 90 grams, or 4.5% of your body weight. So, drinking 23 times the lethal dose of Isohexane would kill you with the least toxic substance known to mankind.

There's bigger fish to fry here.

Re:Well it's is many American foods

[Anonymous Coward]

> Does it really matter?

Yes. There's a vast difference between chlorine or sodium and NaCl (table salt), just as there is between the different types of hexane. I wouldn't eat either element alone, but I certainly do use salt. Most of us might get too much, but we need some in our diet.

There are BILLIONS of chemicals out there. Some of them are even carcinogens. There is NOTHING you can do to avoid them all. Some of them are even natural. So a proper risk analysis is needed. You can't simply avoid things because they have scary names or they look similar to bad chemicals.

If you never ate a chemical you didn't recognize, you wouldn't be able to eat anything. Even fruit is made out of chemcials. Sure, they're "natural" chemicals, but snake venom is just as "natural."

The answer is to learn more science and to study things carefully rather than simply reacting out of fear.

Re:Well it's is many American foods

[John Sokol]

> I don't care if it isn't dangerous,

Maybe I wasn't as clear as I could have been.

First, I know more about Chemistry then you think.

Eric was saying it's just as not as dangerous as the other isomer.

It's still dangerous in higher doses none the less.

It's more like I am noticing that when here in the USA in general I don't feel as well as when I am in China, India, or even Mexico. I have also noticed that is true for many people and the general populations as a whole.

Each short cut they take with our food on it's own we can tolerate. But now it's with everything. High fructose Corn syrup, high salt, food coloring, oily diet full of MSG and all sorts of processed crap. Add to that trace amounts of toxin, and heavy metals.

It starts add up. Each takes it's small toll.

When I am in India there is nothing but fresh. We search for weeks for a can opener with no luck, they just don't have canned food there.

Even refrigerators aren't in common use. Meat is hard to find.

Just don't drink the water.

If I wasn't so damb board when in India and the jobs pay so little I'd move there, I am sure I'd be far healthier. Problem is after a month the cravings for American fast food are far worse then kicking cigarettes. I mean I have tolerated 16 hours in a hot sweaty train just to get a Mc Donalds "Maharaja Mac" Chick version of a Big Mac, or some KFC. http://www.mcdonaldsindia.com/

Re:Well it's is many American foods

[John Sokol]

Gees man. Listen to your self.

> There is NOTHING you can do to avoid them all. Some of them are even natural.

Why can't we just deal with the Natural ones.

Is it so bad that I don't want pesticides, or any other things that started in an oil well in my food?

Really I don't think this is asking too much.

I so much reading and research in the past 20 on some of this that I don't trust any testing ADM, Monsanto and other mega corporations do.

There is such a long history of people getting screwed up by bad drugs, chemicals, cosmetics that were "tested to be safe", is just overwhelming. So much that you can't really explain it to people.

  Cigarettes where proven as having heath benefits at one point in time. The fight to just put warning labels on was monumental!

My point is it something that is so obviously harmful required near super human efforts to get the word out then we don't have any chance to slow down the less dangerous stuff.

The power of billions of dollars just overrides all good sense and judgment. Our political system is completely unequipped to respond.

So my point is, yea a few worked fell sick in China. Mean while we are all eating this stuff.

Just wait till the full effect of GM crops starts to effect us.

We really are the lab rats.

Re:Well it's is many American foods

[John Sokol]

We have over 1000's of years found and adapted plants that are good for us. Our diet's have evolved over very long time spans be optimized.

Now we come along since the Industrial revolution and using a little knowledge of Chemistry and Biology think we can do better then what we had been doing.

We let's look at the criteria.

If it's cheaper, tastier and didn't kill the lab rats and first people we fed it too right away, then, great were good.

Well what about 10 or 20 years out?

Now have 1000's of laboratories and companies putting these short term tested chemicals in to our diets. What's is the net effect of that?

What are the Odds that some of these will really have some terrible long term consequences?

One case. trans fats in margarine which was sold to us for 30 years as a cheaper healthier alternative to butter.
Now we know causes heart disease and it so much worse them butter it's being outlawed in several states.

We were all sold bullshit.

 

Re:Well it's is many American foods

[the eric conspiracy]

You realize that since the start of the industrial revolution the average lifespan has increased dramatically, right?

Surely that is an indication that we are learning something, and mostly what we are doing is making a positive difference.

Of course the process isn't perfect - no human activity is. But to claim that we are worse off is plain stupid and ignorant; the facts don't support that in any way shape or form. The ideas that natural is intrinsically good and synthetic intrinsically bad are a from an unfortunately old and common meme, the same one that was disproven when Woodward performed his total synthesis of streptomycin, or much earlier when Wohler synthesized urea.

Most of the diseases that you are concerned about weren't even diagnosable 150 years ago, and certainly weren't public health concerns then. They had much bigger problems.

What is undeniable is that the average human today enjoys a longer, much more disease free and healthier life today than 150 years ago.

The lifestyle that you describe in India doesn't give it's people better health or longer lifespan over say the inhabitants of the US or other modern nations, the numbers are clear.

The idea that we don't know anything about biochemistry is preposterous. Hell, we are building our own lifeforms now. From scratch.

http://io9.com/5543843/scientists-create-artificial-life-+-synthetic-dna-that-can-self+replicate

"This is the first synthetic cell that's been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer," said Venter. "This becomes a very powerful tool for trying to design what we want biology to do. We have a wide range of applications [in mind]."

Not this again... they are hexane junkies.

[moxsam]

Inhalation of high concentrations produces first a state of mild euphoria, followed by somnolence with headaches and nausea.

Re:Give me a break.

[masmullin]

I've met someone with a Zune... it looked pretty fucking sweet compared to an iPod.

Market this

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy the new android phone, now featuring a new "doesn't poison people" touch screen design!
Except probably every touch screen device is made by these guys.

Don't forget

[Is0m0rph]

These same factories pump out tons of Chinese branded touch screen cell phones and personal media players. They aren't just making them for US companies like Apple.

anectdotal or scientific?

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect to Stephen McDonell from Oz Broadcast, I'd be surprised if he can even understand say the wikipedia entry on n-hexane.

Too many unsubstantiated assertions (where are the pictures!....but some analytic reports wouldn't hurt...).

People do get sick for all kinds of reasons, unless Mr. McDonell abandoned his medical practice for journalism, his diagnostic credibility may be somewhat suspect.

There could be substance to his investigations, but unless there is support more credible than "woman #2", I much liked McDonell better when he stuck to simply dabbling in quantum field theory.

Here AS Well

[b4upoo]

American workers often lose their health and their lives as companies that have big money have influenced our law makers. Getting sued for wrongful death of a worker is far better money wise than creating a safe work place. Workman's Compensation is so pitiful with the stingy sums payed out for injured workers and they often are not allowed access to the courts as Workman's Comp laws block that right.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Please read the linked article, to the end. Well, if you don't have time for that, at least please read the last couple of paragraphs. It's very very important.

Hazardous materials (nano-particles)?

[blankoboy]

This is something I have wondered about for quite some time. Apple's touch displays are coated with a polymer that contains nano-particles which are meant to prevent skin oils from sticking to the glass thus making them "finger print resistant". They call it an "oleophobic" coating. As many owners of these devices will be aware, the coating wears away after many months of use from constant touching, tapping and swiping. What I want to know is, when this film wears away where are these nano particles going? With the pressure of fingers being rubbed against these surfaces I would imagine that it goes directly into the skin. If so, I would then imagine that this would be a potential health hazard for the end users as well. I have yet to see any scientific analysis of this but perhaps I am talking crazy. Either way, I would like to hear some opinions from folks with more knowledge in this area.

Re:Hazardous materials (nano-particles)?

[killmofasta]

oleophobic means phobic in chemical terms means to repel. i.e. oil is hydro-phobic.
Since it is oleophobic, it cannot be absorbed by the skin,
and since its a plastic, it flakes off in very small particles.
My guess is that some of it lands in your lungs,
but on a scale about 1/10000 less that say a harmful fungus, so its very innocus.
( btw, I wear a 3M breathing mask sometimes at work, and have done my homework. )
Try looking for a MHDS ( Materials Handling Data Sheet ), but I doubt you will find one.

You also know where the rubber on your car tires goes? into dust, and it does get into your lungs. ( but again, at being  rubber, its not very dangerous ).

Now onto the real juice:
n-hexane is a nerve toxin, in light doses will give you a head-rush, and in heaver doses will give you short term memory loss, and in very heavy doses?

http://www.generalmonitors.com/downloads/msds/Matheson_N-Hexane.htm

Impotence! Nice...

Re:Hazardous materials (nano-particles)?

[killmofasta]

Sorry, I didnt mean to be so 'trite'

http://www.cytonix.com/fluoracryl.html

Click on MHDS.

Looks like its a hazard to apply,
and causes cancer in 1kppm, and you probably exposed to <1ppb, ( or about 10 billion times less concentrations )

Re:Give me a break.

[omfgnosis]

Apple also bears a disproportionate amount of responsibility by virtue of reaping a disproportionate amount of benefit. With great power and influence comes great responsibility. And being that Apple consistently and consciously cultivates this power and influence as a matter of executing its extremely successful business strategy, its willingness and eagerness to shirk that responsibility while promoting itself as some kind of a kinder, gentler corporation is all the more insidious.

Rubber Cement

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same solvent found in everyday rubber cement.

Buy Asian Stocks

[ElliotWilcox]

Isn't that why we manufacture electronics in China and shoes in India? It's so business can continue to exploit the worker , keep costs down and stock prices high. Put more money in Asian money market funds! Go exploiters, love the returns without the liability. Rich people thank you

Re:Give me a break.

[Yakasha]

Apple also bears a disproportionate amount of responsibility by virtue of reaping a disproportionate amount of benefit. With great power and influence comes great responsibility. And being that Apple consistently and consciously cultivates this power and influence as a matter of executing its extremely successful business strategy, its willingness and eagerness to shirk that responsibility while promoting itself as some kind of a kinder, gentler corporation is all the more insidious.

Promotes itself as kinder, gentler corporation? Apple markets themselves as a company that makes products you want by virtue of you being different and unique. "Think Different" and "It just works" are Apple marketing slogans. "Do no Evil" belongs to somebody else.

Re:Give me a break.

[omfgnosis]

Different verses of the same song.

Dose makes the toxin. Misuse makes the hazard:

[Hartree]

Indeed. Hexane can be used quite safely. It's effective and not nearly as bad as some things used previously.

I use it regularly as a cleaning solvent, but it's in a fume hood. I have gloves. And I don't use it all day long.

One of the big problems with it is high flammability. You're basicly working with a component of gasoline and it's just as flammable. So, you keep the amounts you're using fairly small.

In a poor production environment, it isn't used with adequate ventilation to keep the exposure down. Larger amounts are used in open pans (fire hazard). Gloves aren't used, etc, etc, lather, rinse your hands in it as it's great for getting the grime off, repeat.

And, they are exposed to it continously during their work day. This results in a higher dose and chronic effects. All of these add up to it being a problem.

But, most of us deal with chemicals that are just as dangerous or worse. Gasoline is a prime example.

The problem isn't the hexane, it's the way it's being used. (It's not just China. I've sure seen problems with solvent exposure in plants here in the US.)

Just WTF is in those screens???

[hesaigo999ca]

What are they putting in those screens, and will it spill if ever the screen crashes and breaks in my home...
thereby poisoning me or my kids?