Coming clean: workers sue computer chip makers over chemical exposures. (News & Trends).

A few years ago, Intel, Inc., the world's largest computer chip manufacturer, ran a television advertisement that featured people dancing to music in brightly colored head-to-toe coveralls. The costumes were a clever visual reference to the white "bunny suits" that must be worn by workers who assemble computer chips in the ultra-sanitized "clean rooms" of semiconductor manufacturers like Intel around the world.

The ads were catchy, but according to a series of lawsuits that have been filed by more than 200 former semiconductor workers in two states, the costuming was all wrong. Based on allegations in the complaints, appropriate attire for real clean-room workers should more closely resemble the "moon suits" worn by chemical and biohazard cleanup teams.

The lawsuits, filed against two chip manufacturers--International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and National Semiconductor--and several of their chemical suppliers, claim that the defendants failed to adequately warn the workers that the chemicals they were exposed to on the job could cause chronic, fatal illnesses and reproductive disorders, including multiple miscarriages and birth defects in children exposed to the chemicals in utero. (See, e.g., Leth v. Int'l Bus. Machs. Corp., No. CV772093 (Cal., Santa Clara County Super. Ct. filed Apr. 17, 1998).)

Many of the plaintiffs have cancer, others are the families and estates of former workers who died of cancer, and some are former workers' children who were born with severe physical and neurological disabilities. Aside from the lawsuits, the plaintiffs all have one thing in common: Either they, or the deceased workers they represent, were exposed to dozens of chemicals--many of which are known carcinogens--in clean rooms.

The "clean" in clean rooms is misleading, said Amanda Hawes, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, because the word is usually associated with health and safety. A clean room, one would assume, would be free of elements hazardous to health.

"That's what a lot of people thought," Hawes said from her office in San Jose, California. "But in this case, [the word] has nothing to do with eliminating materials that are harmful to humans. The system is designed to protect the product--the chip or the wafer or other electronic device"--that is made in clean rooms.

The rooms get their name from the sterile conditions in which they are maintained. The air is constantly filtered and recirculated to reduce the number of dust particles to no more than one per square foot. Before entering the rooms, workers must submit to "air showers" and don the several articles of nonlinting, nonstatic clothing--including goggles, booties, and gloves--that make up the bunny suit.

Once inside, a typical clean-room worker spends hours in close contact with dozens of chemicals used to coat silicon chips to make them receptive to layers of electronic circuitry. This circuitry, contained on chips smaller than a fingernail, constitutes the brains of computers and programmable electronic devices like coffee makers, answering machines, and camcorders.

The product's size explains the industry's obsession with cleanliness: A dust particle resting on a chip's microcircuits is like a truck-size boulder blocking a major intersection--not very much gets through.

But chemicals, not dirt, are the focus of the workers' claims. Thousands of chemicals in varying amounts and mixtures have been used in the decades-old microelectronics industry. Some--like acetone, hydrochloric acid, and lead--are known toxins. Others--like benzene, arsenic, and toluene--are either known or highly suspected to be human carcinogens.

"Clean rooms are a witch's brew of toxins and known carcinogens and mutagens," said William Deprospo, a Goshen, New York, attorney who filed the first lawsuits against IBM in in 1996.

"My first 11 clients were all under the age of 31, and they had all worked in the IBM plant in East Fishkill. They either had cancer or had died of it," Deprospo said.

Within a year, the number of his clients with similar claims had doubled. "I decided I needed to bring in some expertise, so I talked to Mandy Hawes because I knew she had been involved in other litigation against the semiconductor industry. Then it mushroomed into this multijurisdiction action, and I knew we needed to get one of those big New York City law firm engines working on the case," Deprospo said.

Steven Phillips, a partner with the firm that Hawes and Deprospo brought in to help, said the number of claims now stands at about 230.

"There are 185 clients in New York" who worked at IBM semiconductor plants in East Fishkill and Burlington, Vermont, he said. "Fifty-five of those allege birth defects, and the remainder have cancers, infertility, or other diseases like sarcoidosis. There are 45 cases in San Jose arising out of the IBM facility there, and about another dozen" against Santa Clara, California-based National Semiconductor.

"And more are on the way," Phillips said.

Early last year, IBM and two of its chemical suppliers--Ashland Chemical and Union Carbide--settled one of the first lawsuits filed. The plaintiffs, former workers at the East Fishkill plant, claimed their now 16-year-old son's multiple birth defects, which are so severe he cannot see or breathe through his mouth or nose, were caused by their exposure to toxic chemicals at work. The terms of the settlement are confidential, and IBM admitted no liability. (Ruffing v. Union Carbide Corp., No. 4049-97 (N.Y., Westchester County Sup. Ct. Jan. 19, 2001).) Another 11 cases are scheduled to go to trial in November.

IBM declined to comment for this story, but the plaintiffs' lawyers said it and the other defendants are fighting the remaining lawsuits, claiming there is no evidence that the chemicals the clean-room workers were exposed to could have caused their injuries.

Need for research

In fact, little is known about the health effects of long-term, low-level exposure to many of the chemicals cited in the complaints. In the mid-1990s, two industry-funded studies of women working in silicon-wafer fabrication rooms concluded that pregnant employees who were exposed to ethylene-based glycol ethers in clean rooms were one and a half times more likely to miscarry than other workers. As a result, the industry began phasing out use of those chemicals.

But since then, there have been no published studies of rates of cancer or reproductive anomalies among U.S. semiconductor workers. This is no accident, said Deprospo. "I believe [the reproductive] studies scared the hell out of the companies, and they said, `Well, we're not going to do any more testing.'"

Recent history seems to confirm his theory. A preliminary study of rates of cancer among California semiconductor workers and birth defects in their children was planned in 1998. With funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, researchers would have compared the state's records of cancer and birth defects among its residents with manufacturers' employment records. The proposed study fell through when the manufacturers, including Intel and IBM, decided not to participate.

"There's been no industry cooperation for research," said Joseph Ladou, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of California, who helped develop the proposed study.

Former National Semiconductor employees cooperated with a limited study of workers at the company's Greenock, Scotland, plant, which was completed late last year. The United Kingdom government researchers found higher than average rates of brain cancer in male employees and of lung, stomach, and breast cancers in female employees.

In a press release following announcement of the results, National Semiconductor said it was relieved that researchers had concluded that "there is no proof that working at [the plant] has caused an increased risk of employees developing cancer."

That's true, Ladou said. Because the researchers studied such a small number of workers, the results are not statistically reliable. "But even with a small population, they came up with very alarming findings with regard to cancer." That has only added to the pressure on the industry to follow up with large-scale studies that could address the semiconductor lawsuits' central question: Does working in clean rooms significantly increase a person's risk of developing chronic diseases like cancer or other serious health problems?

The home page on the Web site of the Semiconductor Industries Association (SIA), the self-described leading voice of the U.S. microchip industry, includes a link to a recent press release quoting a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report showing that "semiconductor workers have the lowest rate of workplace injuries and illnesses."

But those figures are misleading, according to plaintiff attorney Hawes, because the numbers reflect only injuries like acid burns and illnesses related to short-term chemical exposure. "A disease like cancer takes some time to emerge," she said. "[The BLS] doesn't track chronic disease and reproductive risks, so they're not going to show up in the reporting."

Citing the pending litigation, SIA spokeswoman Molly Tuttle declined to comment for this story. But in that same press release, the association attributed the industry's "excellent safety and health record" to "the nature of high-tech manufacturing, involving continuous monitoring for chemicals with low risks of exposures and commitment of the industry to participate in the exchange of safety, health, and environmental information and data through various national and international organizations."

Two years ago, the SIA announced it would create an "independent Scientific Panel of Experts to review existing data on potential cancer health risks, if any," to U.S. semiconductor workers. It named David Wegman, chairman of the Department of Work Environment at the University of Massachusetts, to head the panel.

The panel completed its review last year and submitted a draft report of its findings to the SIA in November, but the association has taken no action on it yet, Wegman said. He declined to discuss the report's contents, saying only that the SIA/s board "is considering it, and they may come back to us for clarification or further comment."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sets permissible levels of exposure to chemicals in the workplace, also focused briefly on industry hazards after a series of articles in USA Today in January 1998 reported numerous safety violations at an Idaho plant owned by the semiconductor manufacturer Zilog, Inc. (Dirty Secrets of the Chipmaking Industry, USA Today, Jan. 12, 1998, atA1.)

In response to the articles, then-Assistant U.S. Labor Secretary Charles Jeffress reportedly announced that OSHA would launch an enforcement program to target problem employers in the industry. A study of "Occupational Health Risks in the Manufacture and Assembly of Semiconductors" was placed on the agency's rule-making agenda.

"The manufacture and assembly of semiconductors requires the use of a variety of complex mixtures of chemicals," an abstract of the proposed action states. "For most of these chemicals, adequate data on toxicity are not available, although chemical structure suggests that they may present potential health risks.... Accordingly, OSHA is planning to request information on the chemical content of ... mixtures currently used in semiconductor manufacture and assembly, on employee exposures in this sector, on toxicological information available about the components or mixtures, and about feasible means of reducing vapor-phase exposures in industry `clean rooms.'"

OSHA withdrew the action from the agenda in August 2001, citing "resource constraints and other priorities."

"OSHA is asleep," said Michael Hugo, whose Boston firm has represented plaintiffs in several mass toxic tort cases. "The problem is they go after one individual company. For example, they may write up a semiconductor factory in Portland, Maine, for a local hazard--that they're not ventilating properly or providing protective garments. But that has no impact on California at all."

Call for action

It's high time for a wake-up call, Ladou said, and he and several medical experts, researchers, and consumer advocacy groups are about to sound the alarm. "We've prepared a `Call for Action' proposing that a cancer study must be done, which will be published in the spring in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health," he said. He hopes the article will prompt immediate action by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Any study should be international in scope, Ladou said, "because the industry has become global in the past couple of decades, and a lot of the unacceptable levels of carcinogens are being used in plants in less-developed countries. [Manufacturers] have been moving their environmentally outmoded plants into developing countries for the last 40 years and, by and large, using chemicals there that have become increasingly regulated and banned in developed countries."

Announcement of a study to provide reliable information about the health hazards faced by semiconductor workers would be music to Hawes's ears. "It's long overdue. The industry could not have wasted more time and dragged their feet more if they were getting a prize for doing so," she said.

"One of the hardest things about this litigation is that all the information we are uncovering and putting together makes it painfully obvious that all of this tragedy for workers in the so-called clean industry was preventable," Hawes said.