Yes it’s extremely toxic there’s a reason why manufacturing moved from the US (and probably EU/UK but I’m not certain). It’s horribly toxic and you can read this about Samsung[1].
Asia has what some would call almost slave labor and a complete lack of care for workers. Many countries don’t care about pollution either.
US and European countries will gladly clean up manufacturing at home while shifting to countries who could care less about employees or environmental impacts.
It's worth mentioning though that in general as our technology has gotten more exotic, so too the chemicals needed to manufacture it have gotten more toxic.
I worked at a semiconductor factory in the US for five years. I'm glad it wasn't in Photolithography -- that end of the fab reeked of acetone. My end had arsenic, but it was pretty well contained unless you went into the bead blast room. We also had elemental phosphorous, which has a tendency to explode if you look at it funny. Wets has hydrofluoric acid. CVD uses tons of silane, which is not only toxic but explosive. You really can't do without these chemicals if you want to have semiconductors. At best, you can stay away from the really carcinogenic resist chemistries. But just try to make an NMOS transistor without arsenic for the source and drain!
Edit: This is not to say that it's OK to destroy people's health to make semiconductors. Toxic chemicals are unavoidable in semiconductor manufacturing, and we need to handle them properly even if it causes a rise in prices.
I don't think anyone would say that a lot of industrial processes aren't extremely toxic and dangerous. The question was asked due to the downplaying of the dangers of nuclear waste. Just because something like dimethylmercury is possibly more toxic than radioactive waste, doesn't mean radioactive waste is safe, or that you want to be near it.
Thanks for saying this. I worked for a few years at a semiconductor fab r&d facility. (As a tenant) Seemingly everything associated with this stuff is toxic and polluting. The old timer war stories include stuff like accidental releases that stripped paint from all of the cars in the adjacent lot.
Nasty stuff — the wisdom promoting garage stuff like this is questionable. :)
The resulting product is fine, yes (assuming proper filtering at the end to remove contaminants). The nasty things happen along the production process, similar to why an awful lot of the US Superfund sites are in the "Silicon Valley" - the production process leached chemicals in the landscape: https://cleanair.camfil.us/2017/11/21/toxic-danger-silicon-v...
True, but our definition of toxic has changed. Humans have been living with wood smoke for millennia, it may not be great for you but it isn't very new in terms of evolutionary presence. Smoke from burning industrial chemicals is a newer thing, and certainly some of these industrial toxins can kill or injure you far more quickly than wood smoke. So a warehouse full of laptops burning (and probably painted with lead) is something I'd want to take extra precautions to avoid vs wildfire smoke.
Citation needed? The inorganic materials used in semiconductor fabrication, especially in the early days, tend to be fairly benign and are used only in small quantities relative to other industry.
The HF monster everyone is talking about in this thread is dangerous only as a concentrated acid. It's highly soluble -- reduce it with a rainstorm or two and let it recombine to a neutral pH and you rapidly get to (literally!) toothpaste-level toxicity.
There's a VERY serious discussion to be had about the safety for a backyard chip fabricator. But the idea that this is some kind of long term pollutant (relative to much more serious issues like the cleaning solutions in your very own closet!) is pretty spun.
Edit: yeah, as the responses point out, the "superfund" sites in question are things like VOC contamination you see with any urban industry, nothing particular to semiconductor fabrication that would justify the upthread quote about contamination "for many generations to come".
Do you have a study that actually compares to H&M? This seem to focus only on Shein and doesn't answer the question.
I don't see why the same factories, using the same work force and the same base material would lead to different toxicity. A little Google foo also confirms that H&M doesn't have a positive image for their Green washing and fake eco labels either.
It's the same level of quality.
Including toxic waste, child work, forced labor and all.
Makers are often exposed to many toxic compounds, from toxins in salvaged electronics to PCB etching compounds to lead solder and solder fumes. Unfortunately, they rarely have much if any safety training or awareness of the dangers they are exposing themselves to.
Reminds me of Minamata, Japanese company was dumping mercury into the nearby lakes and hushing everything up. Movie is great BTW, thank fk I don't live near a chemical plant.
Apple started to clean up only after getting tipped off of an EPA raid. They also didn't test or analyse chemicals. And conveniently stopped having weekly inspections.
Truly a case of ignorance is bliss. Huh, toxic what now? No no it's NOT toxic, we marked it as non hazardous so it's OK.
Do you have any links to this discussion? I’m trying to verify the toxic claim and am having a hard time finding it on Twitter right now because of all the noise.
Asia has what some would call almost slave labor and a complete lack of care for workers. Many countries don’t care about pollution either.
US and European countries will gladly clean up manufacturing at home while shifting to countries who could care less about employees or environmental impacts.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46060376
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