The rise of the computer chip (semiconductor) industry probably represents the largest industrial expansion in history. Starting in Santa Clara County’s Silicon Valley just over 25 years ago, there are now well over a thousand computer chip plants worldwide. However, this $150 billion industry brings its own toll on human health.

Semiconductor workers lose twice as many workdays through occupational illness as workers in other manufacturing sectors. The huge amounts of toxic materials the industry uses - many known or suspected carcinogens - include hydrochloric acid, arsenic, cadmium, lead, methyl chloroform, toluene, benzene, acetone, trichloroethylene and arsine gas. Director of toxicology at the University of Maryland (US), Bruce Fowler, believes that it is probably the mixture of chemicals which is causing the problem. Many of the chemicals are used singly in other industries without, apparently, damaging health.

The semiconductor industry is reluctantly responding to criticism. It funded research into the effects of glycol ethers and removed them from the workplace when it found they increased the rate of miscarriages by 40%.

There are now three major lawsuits running against semiconductor manufacturers, issued by families who believe that their spouses or parents died or contracted cancer at their workplace. Scientists predict that there will be a significant rise in the cancer rate in the computer chip industry because cancer can take 20-30 years to show up in exposed workers and the industry is relatively new.

Semiconductors come at enormous environmental cost as well. According to the May/June 1997 issue of E - The Environmental Magazine, just one eighjt inch computer wafer containing hundreds of chips requires, on average, 27lbs of chemicals and 29 cubic feet of hazardous gases to manufacture, and produces 9lbs of hazardous waste and 3,787 gallons of waste water. Silicon Valley houses 29 US Environmental Protection Agency ‘disaster sites’. More than 100 different contaminants have been measured above safety levels in some drinking water there.

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Dr Joe Ladou of the University of California in San Francisco has joined other contributors to the journal Clinics in Occupational and Environmental Medicine to protest against the suppression of a paper revealing raised death rates in workers in IBM computer chip factories. They have all withdrawn their contributions to a special issue of the journal on microelectronic industry health and safety until the contentious paper is reinstated.

IBM have recently settled 51 cases alleging health damage and face a further hundred.