Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!labrea!decwrl!pyramid!hplabs!hplabsc!taylor From: riddle@woton.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle ) Newsgroups: comp.society Subject: Environmentally safe computers? Message-ID: <2242@hplabsc.HP.COM> Date: Mon, 20-Jul-87 14:14:12 EDT Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2242 Posted: Mon Jul 20 14:14:12 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 22-Jul-87 00:43:48 EDT Sender: taylor@hplabsc.HP.COM Distribution: world Organization: Shriners Burns Institute, Galveston Lines: 39 Approved: taylor@hplabs I've been hearing more and more criticism of the purported benefits of the "computer revolution" lately from those who point out that the electronics industry, despite a lot of claims to the contrary, is a very dirty one. As one book I have read recently complains: Communities dominated by the computer industry are plagued with severe groundwater contamination from cyanides, arsenic, toxic heavy metals and a wide range of carcinogenic chemical solvents, all essential ingredients in the manufacture of silicon computer chips... The electronics industry claims a rate of occupational illness two to three times the average for manufacturing industries, with frequent complaints of severe acid burns, chemical-induced disorders of the nervous system, kidneys and liver, menstrual irregularities and frequent miscarriages. The most routine and the most hazardous operations are often moved to countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia, where local water supplies are routinely destroyed and young women workers find their eyesight and reproductive health to be permanently damaged after just two or three years of assembling computer chips. [Source: "The Green Alternative: Creating an Ecological Future" by Brian Tokar, 1987. The author cites as his sources a March, 1985 issue of "Science for the People," an article in the November, 1984 issue of "Sierra," and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 277 W. Hedding St., San Jose, CA 95110.] My question is this: are these problems inherent in the manufacture of computers, or are there trade-offs involved? Assuming that there were a desire to do so, would it be possible to manufacture computer components by environmentally safe processes, given certain increases in cost and decreases in performance? And for those of you with a taste for a good deus ex machina :-) , are there any breakthroughs looming on the horizon which might create a shift to clean computer technology? --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Shriners Burns Institute. --- riddle@woton.UUCP {ihnp4,harvard,seismo}!ut-sally!im4u!woton!riddle