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By Ike Suarez, correspondent
HIGH-tech industries’ current stance of “going green” is a
myth and labor unions, as well as social activists the world over
must now unite to take action to combat the environmental harm they
do and the threats to workers’ health that they pose, according to
Ted Lewis, a visiting environmentalist and founding member of the
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.
Lewis, an environmental and labor lawyer, spoke
on Tuesday at a forum on electronic waste, organized by the EcoWaste
Coalition, an alliance of Philippine NGOs that focus on
environmental issues, at the Merced Bakeshop in Quezon City. He told
The Manila Times immediately after his talk that he is here to firm
up contacts with environmental activists and to find out more about
electronic waste conditions in the country.
The EcoWaste coalition includes in its
advocacies the institutionalization by computer, consumer
electronics and telecommunications companies here of take back
programs for discarded electronic materials.
“The production of electronic and computer
components contaminate air, land and water around the globe.
Unfortunately, the people who suffer the consequences are largely
poor, female, immigrant and the minority,” Smith said.
Smith pointed out that plenty of toxic materials
go into the making of computers, among them solvents for chips, lead
and cadium in circuit boards, lead in barium in monitors, brominated
flame retardants on printed circuit boards, polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
casings and switches and flat screens. “Over 1000 chemicals are
actually used in computer production,” he said.
He stated that the social, economic and
ecological effects of the international electronics industry are
widespread and this extended from Silicon Valley in California to
Silicon Glen in Scotland to Silicon Island in Taiwan and Silicon
Paddy in China.
Smith noted that there is documentation to show
that semiconductor workers in the US experience illness rates three
times greater than manufacturing workers in other industries. “In
three epidemological studies, women who worked in fabrication rooms
were found to have rates of miscarriage of 40 percent or more above
non-manufacturing workers,” he stated.
Smith further noted that so-called clean rooms
in high-tech manufacturing companies—dust free areas where
semiconductors are fabricated and electronics components are
assembled—give workers there no respiratory protection from
noxious vapors and fumes. Among these would be glycol ethers, TCE,
methlyne chloride, xylene, perc, expoxies, arsenic, cadmium,
chromium, and nickel compounds.
Smith pointed out that there had already been
documented cases of groundwater poisoning in Silicon Valley. He
further alleged that there had been cases of e-waste dumping
disguised as efforts to bridge the digital divide in the Third
World.
He stated that obsolete computers are being
shipped to the Third World repu-tedly to enable the people there to
finally connect to the digital world. But, instead of being reused,
they are dumped in garbage sites harming the environment.
Smith said that the damage caused by high-tech
firms is global. Thus, the movement to compel high-tech firms to
become more environmentally ethical in their practices should also
be global.
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