The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [53]
It’s onto these wafers that circuits will be etched, a process that involves another whole set of toxic metals, gases, solvents, and “etchants.” “Altogether, one individual semiconductor fabrication plant may use as many as five hundred to a thousand different chemicals,” writes Grossman, “acids, including hydrofluoric, nitric, phosphoric, and sulfuric acid, as well as ammonia, fluoride, sodium hydroxide, isopropyl alcohol, and methyl-3-methoxyproprionate, tetramethylammonium hydroxide, and hydroxyl monoethanolamine, along with acetone, chromium trioxide, methyl ethyl ketone, methyl alcohol, and xylene.”62 And that’s only a partial list.
All of this takes place in so-called clean rooms, which use vast amounts of toxic solvents to keep microscopic particles of dust from landing on the chips. The term “clean” refers to protecting the product, not the workers. In fact, workers in clean rooms are among the most contaminated of all hightech workers. The materials to which they’re routinely exposed have been proven to cause respiratory diseases, kidney and liver damage, cancers, miscarriages, and birth defects like spina bifida, blindness, and missing or deformed limbs.63 Many of these adverse health impacts likewise affect the communities around fabrication facilities, whose groundwater, soil, and air are contaminated.
And yes, the toxics threaten us even as we work on our computers. In 2004, two nonprofit organizations promoting safer materials in the electronics sector—Clean Production Action and the Computer TakeBack Campaign—collected dust from computers to test for the presence of toxic flame retardants. The scientists found these potent neurotoxins in every sample tested.64 Flame retardants, such as PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), are chemicals added to materials in an attempt to slow the time needed to reach ignition. But it isn’t even proven that these chemicals deter flames: so they may not even help. When electronics that are encased in plastic treated with PBDEs heat up (as happens when a computer’s been running for a few hours), the chemicals break off in the form of dust or as a gas that can leach out of the product into the environment (i.e., our desks).65 The particular form of PBDEs used in computers persists in our bodies for years. Beyond their neurotoxicity, further studies have linked them to problems with immunity and reproductive systems, as well as to cancer, which is why PDBEs have been banned in Europe, are being listed under the Stockholm POPs Convention, and why computer manufacturers everywhere have come under pressure to phase them out.66
The public health implications of electronics production are matched by its impacts on the environment. Take the production of just one of these finished wafers, this tiny thing weighing in at about 0.16 grams.67 According to Eric Williams of United Nations University, coauthor of the book Computers and the Environment, a wafer’s production involves about 5 gallons (20 liters) of water, about 45 grams of chemicals—or more than 250 times the weight of the finished wafer—and enough energy to run a 100-watt lightbulb for 18 hours, or 1.8 kilowatt hours.68 Additional energy is needed for the heating, cooling, and ventilation of the clean room. A factory making semiconductors can consume as much electricity in a year as ten thousand homes and up to 3 million gallons of water per day.69 Annual utility bills can be as high as $20 to $25 million.70 Finally, making a single chip results in 17 kilograms of wastewater and 7.8 grams of solid waste.71 The wastewater contains a lot of nitrates, which in turn cause an explosion of aquatic plant growth in bodies of water that upsets the balance of ecosystems. Air pollution also results from the release of ammonia, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen fluoride, and nitric acid—toxins one and all.72 And that’s all just the microchips.
Then there’s the monitor—the glass, especially