News U.S. community groups want more rigorous environmental reviews of proposed semiconductor facilities

[Admin]

As the U.S. rushes to maintain semiconductor supremacy with the CHIPS Act, many are asking how these new fabs will affect the health of their workers and the community around them.

U.S. community groups want more rigorous environmental reviews of proposed semiconductor facilities : Read more

 

[Flemkopf]

When I was eighteen, I worked in an industrial plant for a summer as an unskilled helper for welders. One project I helped with was replacing several hundred feet of piping from one tank to another one, located thirty feet in the air. To this day I still don't know what was in that tank, as I got three different answers from three different people and I couldn't find the materials safety packet that should have been attached to the tank. While we were replacing the lines some of the chemical dripped on the ground and a passing engineer asked what it was. Not a happy conversation.

As a twenty year old I lived for a while in central California in industrial-scale farm country, where the water bubbled and fizzed for about five minutes after it came out of the tap. Most of the locals were seasonal workers on those farms and saw the pesticides, fertilizers, and other compounds that get used at that scale. I have never seen people drink so much bottled water as I did there.

I also passed through Los Alamos a couple times, where they have some of the most carefully monitored water in the country. WWII era "We need that research done NOW and screw the long-term consequences" led to dumping all sorts of contaminated materials in the rush to get the bomb working. They immediately set to work cleaning everything up as soon as the war was done and the water is incredibly pristine now. Took a lot of work, but radioactive water attracts lots of media attention.

I think you can guess where I'm going with this. In the constant rush to get the production line running again, it is easy to miss "minor" leaks and environmental issues, and the only way things stay clean is through transparency and external verification. Semiconductors have some of the worst chemicals out there, and the facilities have got to be monitored.