Early Warnings
The New York Times
September 12, 2003
By BOB HERBERT
Ethylene glycol ethers are a group of organic solvents that proved
to be extremely effective at coating surfaces evenly. They've been used in
paints, nail polish, de-icers and many other products. One of their most
important industrial applications was in the semiconductor industry.
These marvelous chemicals, E.G.E.'s, were the key ingredients
in a solution used in the fabrication of computer chips.
But there were some problems. Studies began emerging in
the late 1970's that showed these chemicals wreaking havoc
with the reproductive processes in rodents. They were linked
to testicular damage, miscarriages and birth defects.
Even as the warnings grew louder, workers by the thousands
were toiling in the "clean rooms" where extraordinary amounts of toxic chemicals,
including E.G.E.'s, were being put to use in the manufacture of chips,
disks and other electronic components.
In the early 1980's, both the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health and the California Department of Health Services issued alerts
regarding workers exposed to E.G.E.'s. The fear was that the reproductive
problems found in the animal studies might also be occurring in humans.
Some industries moved with dispatch to get E.G.E's out of the workplace.
But the booming semiconductor industry, which powered the spectacular
computer revolution that shaped the last third of the 20th century,
was not one of them.
Worker safety would have to wait.
The awareness of a potential problem was certainly there.
In the spring of 1982, the Semiconductor Industry Association formally alerted industry
executives to the results from the animal studies. And the following
September the Chemical Manufacturers Association issued an alert.
Years passed, additional documentation piled up, and studies of humans
began to turn up problems similar to those found in animals.
By the late 1980's, the industry could no longer hide from the issue.
A study at a Digital Equipment Corporation plant in Hudson, Mass., had shown
a marked increase in miscarriages among semiconductor workers.
Industry leaders immediately complained that the sample was too small. Larger
studies were commissioned by both the Semiconductor Industry Association and I.B.M.
The hope at the time was that the larger studies would refute the findings
of the smaller one. The opposite occurred.
The I.B.M. study was conducted by Johns Hopkins University,
and it found a big link between miscarriages and exposure to E.G.E.'s.
"Women with the highest exposure potential," the study said,
"had a threefold increased risk of spontaneous abortion compared
to female employees with no
potential for direct exposure to E.G.E."
The study said, "We also found evidence that the work on processes
with direct exposure to E.G.E. was associated with an increased risk of
subfertility in female employees and a suggestion of a similar effect
in male employees and their wives."
The study by the Semiconductor Industry Association came up
with similar findings. The reproductive havoc was not limited to rodents.
I.B.M. stopped using E.G.E.'s in all new processes in 1992 and
finally stopped using them altogether in 1995, a decade and a half after the warnings
began circulating. No one knows how many workers may have been harmed in that period.
A spokesman for I.B.M. said in an e-mail message yesterday that
"finding suitable alternative materials for processes in semiconducting
manufacturing is a complex process."
A peculiar thing about the I.B.M. study was that while it focused
on reproductive processes right up until the moment of birth, it did not study the
health outcomes of newborns - to what extent, for example,
they might have suffered from birth defects.
In the damage suits that have been brought against I.B.M.
by more than 200 of its employees are a number of cases
of hideous birth defects that the plaintiffs allege were caused
by exposure to toxic chemicals, including ethylene glycol ethers.
I.B.M. has already thrown in the towel in one case,
that of Zachary Ruffing, a teenager who was born blind
and extremely deformed to parents who
had both worked in the company's plant in
East Fishkill, N.Y., in the 1980's.
While I.B.M. and two of its chemical suppliers agreed to settle
the case, they did not acknowledge that they had done anything wrong.
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