DEAD END IN SILICON VALLEY
Hembree, Diana
DEAD END IN SILICON VALLEY The high-tech future doesn't work IN THE HIGH-TECH FEVER that's sweeping the United States, California's Silicon Valley stands out as a vision of the future—a...
...The chemicals and heavy metals used at Q.E.S...
...Waiting my turn at the sink, I noticed that the trashcan near the door was really an empty Lonco chemical drum marked Flux Neu-tralizer: Danger...
...had advertised for electronics assemblers—"No Experience Necessary"—and its lobby was jammed...
...Researchers traced the illnesses to liquid solder flux, used to clean boards during soldering...
...Benchless and rotting, the table faced the parking lot and was only five feet away from a cluster of rusting chemical drums...
...After the closing bell sounded at Q.E.S., she would collect her four-year-old girl from her husband David, who then left for his job at a local tannery...
...employees—are a disquieting reminder that our company is part of a global assembly line, as are the plastic tubes stuffed with circuits from National Semiconductor...
...Big Bob," a solder machine operator, smoked near drums of flammable acids and alcohols...
...Startled, I lied that I did...
...Several women have appealed to Hilda in Gloria's behalf, urging her to transfer pregnant women to a less fume-filled area...
...At lunch, dazed with exhaustion, she stretched out in the back of her old Ford sedan and tried to catch a few minutes of sleep...
...At least three other employees called OSHA to ask for an investigation of the foul-smelling fumes, but so far no inspectors have shown up SEPTEMBER 25 Turnover is high at Q.E.S...
...The air in the bathroom was cool and fresh...
...Solder fumes can increase the risk of spontaneous abortion, according to a 1980 study from Finland...
...Doctors discovered that 22 per cent of all shop-floor workers in one electronics factory had developed occupational asthma, according to studies at Brampton Hospital in London...
...I could smell a peculiar chemical odor, but had no idea what it was...
...I'd like to pay higher wages, but to do so, I'd have to raise my prices," Fred told me in his office...
...they talk about it daily in excited whispers...
...I'd heard that when one inspector left for a week to escape a battering boyfriend, Hilda held her position open until the woman returned...
...But so far, no inspectors have shown up...
...We don't tell nobody, 'cause maybe they'll fire you for working two jobs...
...Since I've been here, I've been sick at least once a week...
...DO DISPOSE of container to reconditioners or disposal company...
...Her testimony made work at Q.E.S...
...The company's negligent attitude apparently rubbed off on some employees...
...But as the morning wore on, my neck and shoulders ached from craning over the boards, my eyes smarted, and I felt drowsy...
...Hilda asked cheerily when she spotted me...
...Fred was disturbed that some of his former customers were sending their computer boards overseas or to local black-market assemblers...
...Don't slump in your chair...
...Explaining his theory, Levin says exposure to toxic chemicals may damage the body's immune system by destroying "T-cells," which suppress reactions to chemicals...
...It's the freon," she said confidentially, nodding at a machine a few feet away...
...The lack of warning properties gives the workers a false sense of security...
...Sleepy...
...So how's our new girl...
...My co-worker noticed, and showed me the safety glasses in my tool kit, the first I'd heard of them...
...DEAD END IN SILICON VALLEY The high-tech future doesn't work IN THE HIGH-TECH FEVER that's sweeping the United States, California's Silicon Valley stands out as a vision of the future—a seemingly clean and safe successor to the declining smokestack industries of the Rust Belt...
...Still, the dozens of rusting chemical drums outside marked Danger suggested that the small assembly plant used its share of toxic substances...
...I've never been sick so much in my life," Laura, a single mother in her twenties, told me today...
...On the side of the machine, out of sight to employees, was a fading manufacturer's label...
...But it'll get better, don't you think...
...The semiconductor industry "has relied on women to fill many production jobs in the past and will continue to do so in the future," the Bay Area report said...
...Worrying about chemicals is fine if you have money and options, but compared to being evicted tomorrow if you can't pay your rent, chemical fumes and skin rashes seem pretty minor...
...In many ways, it is entirely typical of working conditions in the modern electronics industry...
...What about employees who complained of headaches and dizziness from fumes...
...As a young girl, she recalled, she was rebellious and liked to run around the hills...
...employee wanted to write about the plant, but agreed to talk with me...
...Fred had never heard these complaints...
...Looking through the door, I could see Gloria and the other women moving ghost-like under a white pall...
...Hilda finally moved Gloria to another room...
...In 1982, at Analogic Corporation in Danvers, Massachusetts, methylene chloride fumes sent sixty-one employees to the hospital...
...He received it and enclosed a copy, marked "confidential...
...High-tech companies "are particularly interested in areas with unemployed but experienced production workers from low-wage occupations (i.e...
...Hazards in the electronics industry urgently need better regulation, but since 1980, cutbacks in OSHA funding and reductions in inspections have made matters worse...
...I'm looking for another job...
...In 1980 and 1981, an underground leak of the toxic solvent TCA from Fairchild storage tanks contaminated a public well serving South San Jose homes...
...I have to admit this work isn't exactly • what I had in mind," she conceded after a few hours of clipping...
...There were some twenty to twenty-five women on the soldering line, with the fumes making them cry, sore throats, eyes burning, and real bad headaches," Hicks said...
...The back of each board looked like a huge silver pincushion...
...Supervisors traced the problem to a new kind of oil used in the machine, but some employees were not satisfied with the explanation...
...I'm putting some of them upside-down," she said...
...The atmosphere was casual: Most assemblers wore jeans and T-shirts, and rock music blared from a radio in the corner...
...Other employees told me that women and Mexican men may remain in clipping for weeks or even months...
...I saw the future, and it doesn't always work...
...We'd complain, but the manager said if we didn't like it to 'hit the door.'" The majority of electronics assembly workers in the world are women...
...Some of the disturbing problems include: • poisonings Incidents of toxic chemical poisoning have been reported throughout the industry...
...and "Good boy...
...My co-worker on the right was singing a popular Mexican song under his breath...
...He seemed startled to learn that a former Q.E.S...
...Do NOT put other materials in this container...
...None that could really hurt you...
...I was getting to know some of my coworkers, who included native Californians as well as immigrants from Mexico, the Philippines, Portugal, and Iran...
...Anyway," said Angel, "if it's in English, I couldn't read it...
...He introduced himself in halting English as Angel (pronounced Ang-hell) Ruiz...
...used...
...But in general, the supervisors were not harsh or unkind...
...She was at the electronics plant five hours later...
...It went like this: "Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly...
...Toxic Chemicals...
...But the danger was real nevertheless...
...What if company officials discovered that I worked for a local biweekly, The Santa Cruz Phoenixl By the time Hilda Hurley, the personnel manager, called me for an interview, I was certain that I'd been rejected...
...Perhaps because of working nights in an unheated cannery, Gloria, four months pregnant, had developed a rasping cough that refused to go away...
...Since he spent much of his time scouring Silicon Valley for customers, he handed over the day-to-day management of the assembly room to personnel manager Hilda Hurley...
...cancer Many high-tech workers are exposed to such carcinogenic substances as cyanide and arsenic compounds...
...It was 3:27, and a few employees waited near the door...
...Fred Freiberg provided refreshments for the company party...
...No, we don't really use any hazardous chemicals in here," the plant secretary said in response to my question at the job orientation session...
...Guards, arrest them...
...Wipe that look off your face, young lady...
...But I've been trying to save up for an eye exam...
...Hilda shouted from across the room...
...And work-related illnesses occur three-and-one-half times more frequently in the semiconductor industry than in manufacturing as a whole, according to state labor statistics...
...She was forty, and had left a $l,200-a-month job as a keypunch operator in Los Angeles to come to Santa Cruz...
...that helps a little' I arrived for work at 6:45 a.m...
...She was two-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child...
...It gave off a stench, and on several occasions the air was a miasma of smoke and acrid fumes...
...My partner, Gail, had taken three aspirin and offered me one...
...Go to the bathroom and splash cold water on your face and arms...
...with an "organic" cleaner, placed much of the blame for toxic fumes on employee carelessness...
...People with bad attitudes...
...They show how to use the chemicals and give you instructions, you know: 'Don't drink it, don't jump in it...
...Unable to find similar work here, she applied at Q.E.S...
...In electronics factories, the body first reacts against a particular chemical, such as xylene, then to a group of chemicals, then to substances such as detergents and exhaust fumes, and even to the body's own hormones...
...and found some workers already waiting in the back parking lot...
...Though OSHA recommends that workers handling freon 113 wear impervious clothing, gloves, and safety goggles, supervisors at Q.E.S...
...My job was to clip the inch-long wires to between one-sixteenth and one-thirty-second of an inch—a tricky length to gauge with the naked eye...
...Once when I brought my own Playtex gloves to use with the TCE, that stuff just ate them up in a couple of hours...
...After loading a few more pieces, I glanced at Gloria staring owl-like into space, her eyes round and dull...
...And even if employees know the stuff is bad for them, what are they going to do...
...We were poor," she said, "and sometimes at night I'd be so hungry that I'd sneak into the kitchen and eat a handful of flour from the sack...
...That's what I do...
...Several wires popped off the board, and I started as one struck my face, narrowly missing my eye...
...Having learned English as a teen-ager, she served as unofficial translator for the other Mexican women...
...I used to be so excited about everything...
...In one incident in 1983,195 women electronics workers were hospitalized after being gassed with phosgene and ozone at Mabuchi Industries in Hong Kong...
...At the soldering table, workers bantered with friends, and even after the final bell, some carried on muffled conversations...
...because she believed that high-tech is the wave of the future...
...She was only here two days, and she complained in front of customers," said one veteran employee loyal to Q.E.S...
...Freon, he said, "is basically a very harmless substance...
...At forty-four, she had to help support five children and felt fortunate to have the job at Q.E.S...
...When it did, employees left in a rush and the parking lot emptied in five minutes...
...You can then have everything from headaches and nausea to dizziness and susceptibility to disease...
...They also had us using dangerous stuff like TCE [a suspected carcinogen], getting it all over our clothes and in our eyes, sitting there twelve to fourteen hours a day with our clothes wet with it...
...Still, with the annual unemployment rate in Santa Cruz sometimes reaching 14 per cent, the company has had little trouble attracting would-be workers...
...SEPTEMBER 14 This morning, Alicia Rodriguez joined the clipping section to help with a logjam of undipped boards...
...Neither had seen it...
...I dyed my hair blond and came in through Laredo, but when they found I didn't speak English, they...
...Please be prompt") and let out at 3:30 Diana Hembree, a staff writer for the Center for Investigative Reporting and director of the Center's "Women in the '80s" Project, is working on a book about women and occupational health hazards in the electronics industry...
...I 'No, we don't really use any I hazardous chemicals in here/ the plant secretary said in response to my question...
...When employees won't follow the rules, then of course we have a problem...
...my supervisor Ray had recently heard it from his electronics teacher in Kalamazoo...
...By the end of the day, my head throbbed, my neck hurt, and my eyes felt coated with sand...
...Like most such shops, Q.E.S...
...Still, her behavior was arbitrary...
...A NIOSH survey of four integrated circuit facilities revealed that "the RF emissions were high enough to warrant concern regarding potential worker exposure...
...In the next room, workers rushed back and forth with open coffee cans of liquid freon, often narrowly avoiding collisions in their haste to refill the degreaser...
...Do NOT puncture, weld, drill, or expose container to heat or source of ignition, including direct sunlight...
...It had cooling coils designed to condense freon vapors into liquid and to keep them from leaking into the air...
...None that could really hurt you' Gloria assembled boards near a large wave-solder machine, which used molten metal solder to bond circuits to foot-long boards...
...The trouble is, these Silicon Valley companies want you to work at practically overseas prices...
...It's the freon...
...At Q.E.S., he clipped and washed circuit boards, spraying them or dipping them barehanded into a degreaser machine filled with liquid freon...
...It's incredible...
...And I never heard a supervisor mention the hazards of freon or any other workplace chemical...
...Did I hear the word union?' he screamed in mock horror and then imitated a police siren...
...I decided to wait a few more days before asking again...
...Their salesmen come in here and hold training sessions," he explained...
...In comparison with the hazards found at semiconductor and electroplating plants, the use of toxic chemicals at Q.E.S...
...But another employee who complained about fumes was summarily fired...
...My co-workers told me that the plant used freon and "flux," but they didn't know whether these were harmful...
...Many circuit board assemblers still earn the minimum wage, but the average earning for a Silicon Valley assembler is $4.50 to $6.00 an hour compared with $9.50 for the average industrial worker...
...Gloria, it turned out, was working the night shift in a local cannery...
...chemical sensitization SoillC electronics employees have become hypersensitive to dozens of ordinary substances, according to San Francisco im-munologist Alan Levin...
...After months of detailed assembly work, she could no longer read the numbers on the tiny blue-black diodes in the prep room...
...Take them away...
...Q.E.S...
...Symptoms of lead poisoning include fatigue, irritability, headaches, tremors, "wrist drop," pain in joints, and blue line on gums...
...Then, changing his tone, Fred went on to praise Q.E.S...
...She is a small, buoyant, determined woman in her fifties, whose high heels clicked furiously as she rushed to trouble spots in the plant...
...The Exact Country of Origin is Unknown...
...According to the report, the OSHA inspector had conducted a wall-to-wall inspection while I was working at Q.E.S...
...Hilda acted like a nursery school teacher, patting employees on the head with "Good girl...
...The Silicon Valley production workers— 70 per cent of them women—generally labor in low-paid, tedious, dead-end jobs...
...into work one morning in an evening gown...
...And union groups estimated that degreaser accidents in the United States cause ten to twelve deaths a year...
...I call it my candy money, because that's about all you can buy with it," joked Alicia...
...Maybe because I've been doing the same thing for years and years...
...We can move employees around, but it depends on their attitude," my floor supervisor said...
...When the body loses its suppressor cells, or brakes, it starts making antibodies against almost everything," says Levin...
...Worried, I called OSHA last week and asked that an inspector do air sampling for lead...
...I touched her shoulder, which startled her...
...Some days the assembly room rang with commands reminiscent of junior high school: "I said quiet...
...Pushing aside a small silver cross, he pointed to a fiery-red patch of skin...
...Acts as a depressant on the central nervous system: If inhaled at extremely high concentrations, it can cause unconsciousness and even death...
...isopropyl alcohol Highly flammable...
...When I was working full-time as a nurse's aide, I used to be on my feet all day, but I'd still have energy to clean house when I got home...
...I feel like a grandmother around all these teen-agers," Yvette, a new employee in clipping, whispered this morning...
...employee who had moved to Arizona...
...Hurley then looked at me sharply...
...Remembering that Hilda said I would be clipping for only a few days, I asked to transfer to the assembly room, but was told that all those positions were full...
...she called out as employees entered the plant...
...The study found that high-tech etching equipment can produce above-standard exposure to ra-diofrequency radiation (RF...
...There was a short silence, then a solderer jumped to his feet...
...From the outside, the plant looked more like a real estate office than a factory...
...And they would probably dispute the claim that their factories are clean and safe...
...Frankly, I don't see the future as bright as I used to," he said...
...Hilda herself was sympathetic to employees in trouble...
...Her findings correspond to those of British researchers, who saw abnormal rates of oral cancer among electronics workers...
...He had called OSHA about the fume problem at Q.E.S...
...was moderate...
...included freon 113, tin-lead solder, acid flux, and isopropyl alcohol...
...The government survey of 35,000 women factory workers found an unusually high rate of spontaneous abortions among electronics workers in general and solderers in particular...
...It really is so interesting," she agreed...
...When he found I spoke Spanish, we began talking about the job...
...Some research at the state Department of Health library yielded a list of the potential effects of exposure: • freon 113 (At Q.E.S., TMS Plus, or tri-chlorotrifloroethane...
...is not unique...
...As we filled out our application forms, I began to feel nervous...
...At lunch, some employees walked to a nearby sandwich shop while others met around a splintery picnic table in back of the building...
...Sleepy?' asked the older woman beside me...
...Symptoms of acute over-exposure: drowsiness, nausea, giddiness, central nervous system depression, and irregular heartbeats...
...she said...
...Some 1,800 electronics firms operate in Silicon Valley, chalking up more than $25 billion in sales last year...
...Suddenly she stopped talking...
...It's the most boring work I've ever had," he said matter-of-factly...
...Other women at Q.E.S...
...One woman had learned it from her instructor at a nearby Lockheed plant twenty years ago...
...Angel left not long after he became ill while spraywashing boards with freon...
...I asked around to find out what kind of chemicals Gloria and the rest of us were being exposed to on the job...
...Below the machine, a small amount of liquid had dribbled onto the floor...
...She said she always took at least three a shift...
...And if you charge more for the boards, you don't get the job: It's that simple...
...As he talked about other chemicals at Q.E.S., describing them as mild and harmless, a missing piece of the puzzle fell into place...
...Supervisors have propped open a door for ventilation, filling the room with moist winter air...
...cannery workers) and with untapped pools of secondary wage-earners (largely housewives...
...You know," he said, "we do hire a lot of 'low-end' people around here...
...In Silicon Valley, for example, roughly 70 per cent of the production work force is female, and 51 per cent are women of color...
...Joseph La Dou, chief of the division of occupational medicine at the University of California at San Francisco...
...At first I was so pleased to have persuaded Q.E.S...
...Airborne lead may be absorbed into the bloodstream and stored in tissues...
...is a training shop and we don't pay benefits...
...seem luxurious...
...She alternately scolded and cajoled us to work faster, and other supervisors followed suit...
...Alicia had come from Mexico three years earlier and spoke no English...
...Fred strode through the plant several times a day, conferring with supervisors and occasionally joking with long-time employees...
...In large red letters, the sign warned: Danger...
...Now I just fall into bed...
...didn't even require washers to wear gloves...
...Since all the women were less than thirty-four years old, the incidence of hypertension was unusual...
...The last time I did it," Richard said, "I felt like I was in a white cloud...
...are working there, too," whispered Gloria...
...But high technology is no bonanza for the people who make it possible...
...He said, however, that he didn't condone "the electronics shops in Scotts Valley that have people up to their elbows in the stuff, scrubbing boards in metal tubs...
...He also discounted the risk of solder fumes...
...She would feed and bathe her daughter, then drop her off at a sister's house...
...What happened to me...
...Sure, a few of the guys like to act macho, washing their hands in freon and so on," my new floor supervisor, Ray Burks, told me during lunch...
...At noon, back in clipping, I asked Angel and Richard about the sign...
...The Border Patrol has caught me a hundred times, but they've never tamed me," he sang, so softly that it was barely audible...
...Gloria Luna, Angel's twenty-four-year-old sister, worked in the assembly room next door...
...When the warning bell rang, seventy or so employees crowded into the plant's noisy, windowless rooms...
...starts its assemblers at the minimum wage...
...The Reagan Administration has called for a "voluntary compliance" program that could exempt thousands of plants from surprise inspections...
...Employees may be exposed to a wide variety of poisonous, corrosive, flammable, explosive, allergenic, and carcinogenic chemicals," warned a confidential draft of a report from the Berkeley-based Association of Bay Area Governments in 1981...
...Mass poisonings have also occurred in Mexico and Asia...
...The warning on the side read: D-A-N-G-E-R...
...Gloria spent the next eight or ten hours sorting brussels sprouts on a conveyor belt, arriving home at one or two in the morning...
...I'd like so bad to do something different, a job where you have big windows and do different things during the day...
...Good girl...
...This afternoon, while we assembled rows of circuit boards, Gloria Luna told me about her childhood in a peasant family in Mexico...
...At least fifteen employees have quit since I arrived...
...The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had implicated freon 113 in the deaths of two young electronics workers in Santa Barbara, California...
...AUGUST 26 Q.E.S...
...Edith Hicks, a former assembler at a small electronics plant in Durham, North Carolina, spoke at a public hearing about her working conditions...
...Reproductive problems Many solvents used in high-tech plants can damage the reproductive system...
...BY DIANA HEMBREEI It was a cool, cloudless day when I joined the crowd of applicants at Quality Electronic Service, a small company in Santa Cruz, California...
...Integrated circuits marked "El Salvador"—which spark political arguments among Q.E.S...
...All my other clothes are so tight," she murmured apologetically as she rushed AUGUST 19, 1981 Hazards on the Line The story of Q.E.S...
...Busy fingers, girls, busy fingers," called Hilda as she passed our section...
...Fred, it turns out, had simply learned what the chemical companies had taught him...
...was owned by an executive of Plan-tronics, a sleek, modern, high-tech plant down the road...
...My lead, or floor supervisor, a stolid young woman named Karen, repeatedly warned me that I was clipping too high or too low...
...Go to the bathroom and splash cold water on your face and arms...
...tin-lead solder When heated, releases lead oxide fumes which can be harmful if inhaled...
...A week ago, after threatening to quit, I was transferred to the assembly room...
...But now," Gloria said, "I feel old, like an old woman...
...Women electronics workers in North Carolina have a higher than normal rate of oral cancer, a recent report by Dr...
...Deborah Winn of the National Cancer Institute found...
...I just like to ask, because Q.E.S...
...My co-workers got the same lecture, delivered methodically in a smooth, impersonal tone...
...Union...
...Sometimes I don't feel like I'm twenty-four," Gloria told me at break...
...Most employees chose to work Christmas Eve rather than forgo a day's wages...
...When heated, acid flux may release fumes that can irritate the skin and respiratory tract...
...A curious label on each tube proclaims: Made in One or More of the Following Countries: Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Mauritius, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines...
...Damn, we need longer breaks," sighed a machine operator as the warning bell rang...
...hypertension Out of fifty-four women electronics workers examined by doctors at the Center for Northern Border Studies in Tijuana, Mexico, six suffered from extreme hypertension...
...I had noticed that Anglo men were usually transferred from the clipping section to a higher-status job within a week...
...p.m., with two fifteen-minute breaks and thirty minutes for lunch...
...But basically it's ignorance...
...She was sleeping with her eyes open...
...Dissolves the skin's essential oils and can cause rashes, drying, and cracking of the skin...
...My floor supervisor looked a little annoyed when I asked what chemicals Q.E.S...
...I told Hilda truthfully that I was interested in electronics, and she beamed at me...
...Such problems are not, of course, confined to California...
...No major accident in twelve years," he told me, "and if a supervisor isn't strict on safety, I fire 'em...
...Since he'd been working with the freon, he had broken out in a rash and he had painful, recurring stomachaches...
...Exposure to fumes can irritate the eyes and inhalation of large quantities can cause vomiting, narcosis, and coma...
...It worries me...
...Bad stood for Black, Boys for Brown, and so on through Red, Orange, Yellow, Gray, and White...
...In smaller letters, there was a warning never to use the machine without proper ventilation...
...A full 46 per cent of the women had a work-related wheeze, shortness of breath, and other respiratory problems...
...At least three other employees have called OSHA to ask for an investigation of the foul-smelling fumes...
...And," he added, "there are a lot of places like that, believe me...
...respiratory disease British doctors have linked soldering operations in hightech plants to employee asthma...
...But she was indignant about her salary: After fourteen months at the plant, she was making $3.50 an hour...
...Richard, a friendly, awkward twenty-year-old who was clipping beside Angel, said he didn't know if freon could actually hurt him, but washing circuit boards made him feel dizzy and disoriented...
...According to Monica Jasis of the Center, they "may be linked to stress caused by overly demanding assembly quotas, incessant monitoring, and production 'speed-ups' at work...
...Lead used in soldering may represent another reproductive hazard...
...When the lunch bell rang, I took a look at the freon degreaser, which sat about six feet from the clipping area...
...I tried to get the training slogan out of my mind, but it stuck...
...I trust you have health insurance...
...Work began at 7:00 a.m...
...SEPTEMBER 10 Last week, I lunched near the chemical drums left over from production and memorized the labels one by one...
...Gloria would come to work in an amazing variety of outfits ranging from red polyester shifts to her husband's workboots and overalls...
...Can cause brain damage, paralysis, colic, miscarriages, and sterility...
...In five minutes, I was armed with a time-card, shown the coffee room, and assigned to the clipping section...
...It may take a little getting used to," she said, "but I think you'll find this job a real challenge...
...to hire me that I clipped the tiny wires with unfeigned enthusiasm...
...They treat us like kindergartners," said one eighteen-year-old...
...Another co-worker pretended to film us...
...This story and the accompanying sidebar were funded by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism...
...asked the older woman beside me when I tried to stifle a yawn...
...For the past three weeks, the machine has blanketed the room with noxious fumes, causing dizziness among the work force and sending several women to the bathroom to vomit...
...A while ago, I received an unexpected letter from a former Q.E.S...
...She had also heard that electronics production pays a good salary if one sticks it out for a few years...
...The manager was Fred Freiberg, an energetic man in his late thirties...
...and asked to see the inspection report...
...This afternoon, I learned a popular mnemonic device used in electronics classes to teach students to remember the color bands on resistor circuits...
...Once, Hilda transferred a new employee who was bothered by freon fumes to another area, confiding to the startled assembler that she had lost her own sense of taste and smell in the industry...
...After what seemed like interminable hours clipping boards, I stole a glance at the clock: only 9:45...
...Death May Result from Carelessness...
...that helps a little...
...I mean, I'm used to a lot of independence and responsibility...
...Though harried, she gave me a quick lesson on how to clip the needle-thin wires on the backs of printed circuit boards, which were bound for computers, video games, microwave equipment, and other products...
...Women in nearby neighborhoods suffered a higher than normal number of miscarriages and birth defects, according to a recent state report...
...I took a position as an electronics assembler to get an inside look at the nation's most touted industry...
...SEPTEMBER 15 After three-and-a-half weeks of clipping, my eyes were sensitive to sunlight, and it was hard to read for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch...
...D.H...
...EPILOGUE, 1985 Some time after I left Q.E.S., I called my old boss, Fred Freiberg, to interview him...
...Everyone starts in clipping," Hilda said, adding that I would be there for only a few days...
...She gave me a quick rundown on the job: Pay started at $3.35 an hour and employees would receive no medical benefits or sick leave...
...She blinked at me and smiled...
...NOVEMBER 13 At the back of the assembly room stands a large machine in which circuit boards are coated with molten tin-and-lead solder...
...Don't leave your seat until the bell rings...
...as an unusually clean plant with an excellent safety record...
...Fred, who said he was planning on replacing the freon at Q.E.S...
...Female electronics employees, who are concentrated in the most hazardous jobs, become ill at disproportionately high rates: 19.1 per thousand workers, compared with 10.5 per thousand for male employees...
...radiation hazards Some semiconductor workers are regularly exposed to radiation hazards, according to an unpublished report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH...
...DECEMBER 25 Yesterday was my last day at Q.E.S...
...She had found no health or safety violations...
...This department is staffed entirely by women...
...This container contains chemicals...
...praise...
...These are not hazardous, he said, "because the body can't absorb lead...
...What we need is a union," said one woman unexpectedly...
...acid flux A corrosive liquid used to clean metal during soldering...
...Do NOT re-use container FOR ANY PURPOSE...
...Ping...
...Along with hundreds of other "board shops" in the area, it makes printed circuit boards— the brains and memory banks of computers—for other high-tech firms...
...Or, if you can't keep your eyes open a second longer, drop something on the floor and take your time picking it up...
...Poisonings are twice as common among semiconductor workers as they are among employees in other industries, says Dr...
...On break, she and I lined up with other women in the bathroom to splash cold water on our hands and faces...
...This company hardly uses any," she said...
...The report also noted a particularly worrisome trait of RF exposure: "The seriousness of RF radiation as a workplace hazard results in part from the fact that workers are insensible to exposure because RF energy penetrates the body without activating the heat sensors located in the skin...
Vol. 49 • October 1985 • No. 10
