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

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

[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: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

[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.