Political Affairs Volume 80 No. 7 July 2001 High Tech's Low Road Racism, sexism and toxic waste are the high-tech revolution's other products * deadly to workers and the environment. By PA Science Department -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next time you switch on your computer at work, think about this: over 700 compounds were used to manufacture your PC, including thousands of gallons of water, hazardous gases, toxic chemicals and tremendous amounts of electrical energy. High levels of toxic gases and groundwater pollutants like chromium compounds and methyl bromide, a notorious ozone-depleter, were released into the environment. About two-thirds of the workers were women of color in low-paying, temporary, dead-end jobs. A year later, your PC may be one of over 10 million computers disposed off because of obsolete technology. Choking the environment The Silicon Valley Toxics Project's book Sacred Waters: Life-Blood of Mother Earth, documents the resources used and the waste produced in high-tech manufacturing. The production of each silicon wafer, from which chips are made, results in an average use of 2,275 gallons of water, 3,200 cubic feet of bulk gases, 22 cubic feet of hazardous gases, 20 pounds of chemicals and 285 kilowatt hours of electrical power. In the process, 30 pounds of miscellaneous wastes and 2,840 pounds of wastewater are produced. Despite the current economic downturn, there are plans to build approximately 100 new chip fabrication plants worldwide within the next decade, each costing about one billion dollars. Considering that electronics giant Intel's Rio Rancho, New Mexico, plant alone produces 5,000 wafers every week, one can easily imagine the devastating environmental consequences. Silicon Valley, California, has most of the worst hazardous waste, or Superfund, sites * 29 * in the country. Twenty are directly linked to the electronics industry. Sixty-five percent of the wastewater discharging companies in 1994 were electronics firms. As California tightened up its environmental laws, companies like Intel expanded to states like New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, and to other countries. This capital flight was accompanied by a "toxic flight" as industries polluted the areas in which they relocated. Today, twenty-five percent of the groundwater around Phoenix is contaminated by hi-tech manufacturing, which is also responsible for creating three Superfund sites in Arizona. The EPA reports that in Austin, Texas, the hi-tech industry dumps about one ton of toxics daily into the environment. In Albuquerque, hi-tech uses nearly ninety percent of industrially available water. Intel alone uses about 2 billion gallons per year. Cleanup costs run into billions of dollars. The depletion of the water table not only threatens traditional irrigation practices, but also is clearly unsustainable in the long-term. Paying a heavy price The dialectic of industrial development versus the environment is alive and well in the hi-tech industry. Corporations like Intel, Philips and Toshiba hold out the promise of jobs and the fear of relocation to extract huge tax breaks and environmental exemptions from local communities. They demand and receive subsidies for use of public facilities like water, sewage, electricity, land and roads. In return, these communities find little job growth as employers import large numbers of immigrant or out-of-state workers. Infrastructure development usually benefits only the corporate bottom line, as local governments are unable to fund basic services like education, health care and civic facilities. Based on faulty and fraudulent studies, these communities are assured that toxic effluents and gases released during production are harmless, even as corporations seek exemptions from environmental laws. Since 1993, Intel has built two large semiconductor fabrication plants in New Mexico with seventy percent of its profits coming from its Rio Rancho facility alone. The Dark Side of High Tech Development, a CorpWatch.org report, documents that "Intel developed an 'Ideal Incentive Matrix' itemizing over 100 subsidies and concessions it demanded as a condition for locating a new plant in [that] community." To woo Intel, New Mexico gave it the largest tax break in U.S. history, an $8 billion industrial revenue bond. Author Robert Bullard details in his excellent book on environmental racism, Dumping in Dixie, that "Polluting industries exploit the pro-growth, pro-jobs sentiment exhibited among the poor, working-class and minority communities." U.S. government studies have found strong relationships between the location of hazardous waste sites and the race-class makeup of surrounding communities. Nationally, three of the five largest sites are located in majority Black and Latino/a areas. Solvents used in semiconductor processing have caused serious health problems for pregnant women or women of childbearing age, with significantly increased rates of miscarriage. Women workers at these plants complain of nausea and dizziness from inhaling chemicals, eye problems due to the constant use of microscopes to handle tiny components, etc. Illnesses occur at three times the average than for other manufacturing industries. In one of the worst known cases, hundreds of women working at GTE's circuit board plant near Albuquerque during the seventies and eighties either died or developed cancer and central nervous system damage. The majority of over 150 groundwater-contaminated sites in Santa Clara County lie in low-income, predominantly Latino/a neighborhoods with increased child poverty. Recently, the California State Health department found 300 percent excess in birth defects in localities where the water supply was contaminated by waste chemicals from the electronics industry. In Arizona, one hazardous waste facility is located on the Gila River Indian Reservation. Four of the major wastewater facilities in Austin are located in poor Latino/a neighborhoods. What makes all of this a particularly disturbing scenario is that the electronics industry continues to grow at an explosive pace, remaining a strident supporter of NAFTA, GATT and FTAA, a 100 percent non-union industry employing mostly immigrant women and women of color, heavily polluting and drawing heavily upon one of the most precious human commodities, water, in some of the most arid regions of south and southwest United States. The rapid growth of the electronics industry has ensured the persistence of environmental racism and sexism well into the twenty-first century, while affecting, in profoundly disruptive ways, the livelihood of millions of women who are drawn into the electronics workforce only to be trapped in dirty, low-end jobs.
