Ever since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, alerting the public to the effects of pesticides on humans and the environment, Americans have had a love/hate relationship with chemicals.

On the one hand, the explosive development of synthetic chemicals has immeasurably improved our lives. Today, tens of thousands of chemical compounds are used in the manufacture of countless products—from computers and automobiles to medical equipment, toys, and food containers.

On the other, there have been some notable disasters. DDT was once hailed as a “miraculous pesticide,” but, as Carson capably documented, its unanticipated side effects included decimating entire bird populations.

DES (a synthetic estrogen) and thalidomide (a tranquilizer and a nausea treatment) were given to thousands of pregnant women. Their appalling legacy of infant death, gruesome birth defects, and vaginal cancer in the teenage offspring of exposed mothers is the stuff of every parent’s nightmares.

Highly toxic PCBs were on the market 36 years before their safety was publicly questioned. Today, transmitted primarily through the food chain, they are found in the fat tissue of nearly every living organism on earth. In humans, PCBs are passed in breast milk from mothers to nursing infants and have been linked to a wide range of maladies, including breast cancer, impaired neurological development, and thyroid disruption.

CFCs—once used extensively in the computer industry as cleansing agents—were thought to be completely benign until it was discovered they shredded ozone.

As this mournful litany attests, we have, in spite of our best intentions, created poisons that can do damage on a planetary scale and even reach across generations.

It is the potentially unpredictable and deadly disparity between intention and outcome that is the most troubling consideration in a pair of lawsuits filed against IBM.

The suits allege chemical contamination of employees. Ironically, both suits have their origins in so-called clean rooms—the presumably uncontaminated domains where miraculous microcircuitry is fabricated. (See “Technology Spotlight: A Chip off the Old Ingot,” MC, May 1998.)

The first suit was filed by nearly 100 former employees of IBM’s Fishkill (an unfortunate name given the circumstances), New York, manufacturing facility. These people either have cancer or have children who suffer from birth defects. The afflictions, the suit contends, are attributable to exposure to toxic chemicals and include testicular, cervical, and uterine cancer; leukemia and non-Hodgkins lymphoma; brain cancer; and colon, rectal, and bladder cancer. Birth defects reported include microcephaly (abnormal smallness of the head), blindness, and shortened limbs.

The second suit was a wrongful death action filed by the families of five former IBM San Jose employees who died of cancer and four current or former employees now stricken with the disease. In the fashion of legal proceedings, the accusations are harsh and direct. IBM, the suit alleges, “willfully and recklessly” ignored health concerns related to chemicals used in clean rooms. In the Fishkill suit, the rhetoric is even more pointed: “Motivated by a desire for unwarranted economic gain and profit, defendants willfully and recklessly ignored knowledge...of health hazards,” the suit charges. “The objective of these defendants was maximizing production, but in doing so, these defendants endangered the health, welfare, and safety of IBM workers.”

This is a tragic and tricky business. Perhaps no single word has the power to induce such primal fear and dread as cancer, so great care must be taken to avoid a rush to judgement. There are a number of difficulties here that are not easily reconciled. For one thing, the latency period between exposure and illness can span up to 20 years. Cause and effect are difficult to identify and more difficult to prove. For another, chemical experiments are not deliberately conducted on people, and animal studies are not directly conclusive. Furthermore, there have been very few studies on the consequences of multiple chemical exposures or cumulative effects. Much is simply unknown. Except the historical record, of course.

Stripped of the rhetoric and the desire to assign guilt, the issue appears to boil down to this: Does “clean” also mean safe?

IBM insists it does. “At all our facilities, we take the utmost caution and meet or exceed all federal emission regulations,” Philip Bergman, manager of media relations, IBM Microelectronics told me. In fact, IBM goes well beyond federal standards, aiming to reduce exposures to one-quarter the levels allowable by OSHA, so, if the standard for a specific chemical is 20 parts per million, IBM will limit exposure to 5 parts per million.

Special care is also taken when introducing chemicals in the manufacturing process. “IBM uses a double-walled system,” said Bergman. “A second housing is installed around the distribution tube to ensure optimum safety.” The company also employs state- of-the-art air monitoring equipment, provides employees with the finest protective gear, and has full-time health and safety personnel at each of its fabrication sites. “IBM has a long-standing commitment to a safe working environment,” Bergman assured me, “and safety is our highest priority.”

I believe him. To think otherwise would be monstrous. And yet… And yet…Where synthetic chemicals are concerned, a painful history of unintended results justifies a degree of concern. Best efforts and intentions notwithstanding, can IBM—or indeed anyone else—provide a guarantee of complete safety? It is a question best addressed by science, not litigation, and one would think it in the best interests of both the company and its employees that an answer be found cooperatively rather than confrontationally.

Cooperation was apparently sought by several employees who, according to the San Jose Mercury News, alerted the company to their concerns as early as the mid-1980s. A longtime IBM chemist, who himself suffered from cancer, noted that a number of his colleagues had contracted cancer over the years and called for a medical monitoring program. IBM officials assured him it was unnecessary. If the account is accurate, it was a wasted opportunity. Once a suit is filed, a company believes it has little choice but to defend itself, and intransigent denial seldom leads to a critical examination of the issues.

The very real possibility in this case is that both sides are right: IBM’s clean rooms may well be legal but not necessarily safe. The reasons have less to do with IBM than with the faulty methodology of federal risk assessment.

Federal health and safety regulations are typically based on “safe” levels of exposure. When determining acceptable doses, the question asked is permissive rather than protective: How much pollution can you expose people to without making too many of them sick? But there is a class of persistent synthetic chemicals known as hormone disruptors that may defy such traditional assessments. Dr. Theo Colborn, World Wildlife Fund senior fellow and coauthor of Our Stolen Future, a book that, in the tradition of Rachel Carson, explores the consequences of widespread chemical use, reports that infinitesimal quantities measured in parts per billion could have disastrous effects if introduced at the right time in the human development cycle. Essentially, there is no safe dose.

Hormones are the chemical messengers that control or mediate vital body functions. They are particularly critical in the development of a fetus, regulating the development of reproductive organs, the immune system, intelligence, and behavior. Hormone disruptors mimic natural hormones, sending unwanted or mistimed messages, and, while natural hormones break down once their message is delivered, synthetic chemicals can cause damage repeatedly.

One of the difficulties in assessing the IBM situation is that the chemical processes used in the manufacture of microelectronics are often proprietary. IBM would not disclose what chemicals it uses in its clean-room operations, although Bergman indicated that all employees are given federal right-to-know material safety data sheets that provide known information about hazardous substances used in the workplace. Such lists, however, may have limited value. Thousands of new chemicals make their way to the market each year, and most, according to Colborn, have not been adequately tested.

So, say you’re the manager of an IBM microelectronics plant. If your plant uses hormone-mimicking chemicals and Colborn is right that there is no safe dose, what then? You work for a very large company that is dependent on very tiny chips. Can you even think about stopping the process? Would that be an admission of liability? Besides, what else could you do to ensure greater safety anyway? You know your company already uses all the formidable technology and intellect at its disposal to safeguard its employees. You know your facilities are state-of-the-art and among the finest in the world. And, with latency spanning decades, how can anyone be certain where a particular disease originated?

But a lawsuit has been filed and people are sick. Perhaps you are troubled by a history of recurring clean-room cancers and other diseases some researchers have linked to the microelectronics industry. At one time, you recall, there was an abnormally high incidence of spontaneous abortions among fabrication workers, but instances appear to have declined as safety measures improved.

Perhaps you’ve heard some frightening anecdotal evidence. An IBM employee who worked in the Materials Analysis Department in the San Jose plant, for example, claimed that of the fourteen people who worked with him, six died of cancer and two

others have bone tumors. That was in the mid-’60s and ’70s, and much has changed since then; still, such testimonials are not reassuring.

Are you an agent of change or an agent of the corporation? Whose interests do you champion: management’s, employees’, or your own?

Perhaps you’ve come to realize that guilt or innocence is not the issue here. Perhaps you would genuinely like to learn the truth, but, with legal charges pending, you are pushing up against the limit of the confrontational model. Perhaps it angers you that legal maneuvering will be used to bury the truth as much as unearth it. Perhaps you are troubled that, in the end, “the truth” in these cases will be the sole purview of the winner.

Are you troubled? I am.

Also Read

IBM i Shops Pivot to Battle COVID-19

Energy, Vibe, and Atmosphere

Murphy’s Security Law