'Challenge' to improve chemical safety

17th March 2015

Jordan Mulcare

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Recently the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition met in Brussels to discuss chemical management strategies. At this meeting, NGO representatives decided to deliver a formal challenge to the electronics industry, urging the industry to take meaningful actions to prevent harm and to be accountable to workers and nearby communities by improving chemical safety.

Over 200 labour groups, environmental organisations, occupational health & safety experts, human rights organisations and other civil society groups led by the GoodElectronics Network and the International Campaign for Responsible Technology will present a ‘challenge’ to the electronics industry, which outlines concerns and demands with regard to chemical safety.

The challenge will emphasise the importance of disclosure, substitution of hazardous chemicals with safer alternatives, protection of workers, freedom of association, participation of workers in workplace monitoring, environmental protection and the need for compensation of workers, communities and the environment for harm done. The industry should assume responsibility and take meaningful action beyond their current weak standards and ineffective auditing systems.

23-year old Yumi Hwang died from leukaemia on 6^th March 2007, after having worked for several years in a Samsung chip plant in South Korea. In court, her illness was finally acknowledged as a case of occupational disease, but only after eight years of legal struggle. 35 workers in Yumi’s chip plant and one other plant in South Korea have developed leukaemia or lymphoma. Ten have died since 2007.

Today, electronics workers in Asia and Latin America continue to suffer exposure to harmful chemicals. Civil society organisations report hundreds of cases of electronics production workers who have fallen ill over the past five years in China, South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and elsewhere from exposure to benzene and other highly toxic chemicals used in manufacturing.

“It’s astonishing that the most technically savvy companies in the world, whose names are on our electronics, say they still don’t know all of the materials used in their own products or in their supply chain production factories,” said Ted Smith, ICRT: “What we need from this important industry is safe jobs and healthy families, where the next generation of children is at least as important as the next generation of chips.”