Here in Silicon Valley there's often surprise at my reluctance to eat fruit grown from back yard trees. It's sort of assumed that fruit right off the tree is somehow organic and healthy.
"Have you checked to see if this area is sitting on EPA Superfund designated land, or down stream?" The response is usually a blank look.
So I ask them why is this area called Silicon Valley? Then I ask if they realize how incredibly toxic the solvents used in chip manufacturing are? And then I ask how much 1950s and 60s companies cared about environmental concerns? Most people connect the dots pretty quickly. "Holy shit." Is the usual response.
It really wouldn't surprise me if Fairchild, Intel and the rest just took barrels of used chemicals out back and dumped them into holes in the ground back when.
Google got hit by this a few years ago when they built an office building on top of toxic waste and now have to have 24/7 basement ventilation to make sure workers there don't get sick.
There are whole neighborhoods built on that same polluted land. I'll get my orange from Safeway, thanks.
In the biography of Gordon Moore, he mentioned that when he was inventing Intel's process chemistry they just routinely poured all their solvents down the same drain. The strong acids ate away the concrete (which wasn't noticed until long after), so nearly everything they poured down, went into the ground and hit the water table, then spread out. Moore's excuse was that they didn't really teach chemistry safety when he was in school.
Unpolluted quality soil is a valuable commodity. Anyone growing food in an area with a history of electronics and semiconductor fabrication would be wise to haul in a few truckloads of soil from an organic farmer and grow all their plants in raised beds.
It's possible to build semiconductor devices without polluting the soil and water table, but it means every factory needs to build at least a small chemical waste processing plant onsite, or (better) design new closed-loop manufacturing processes that minimize or eliminate waste.
> Here in Silicon Valley there's often surprise at my reluctance ...
It's definitely not just the Valley. I live in rural western Ohio. It was really eye-opening to see how much contamination there is even here, in a relatively sparsely-populated area. Once I knew the extent my feelings about local real estate changed dramatically. Everybody should research toxic sites in their area.
No doubt the manufacturing center in Dayton, OH, helped drive local contamination. I'm in a suburb 30 miles away in another county, however. We've got fun Superfund sites like the old county incinerator (PCB), two contaminated aquifers (tetrachloroethene and trichloroethylene) under the largest town in the County (from three sources, too!), and lead from a battery "recycler".
I simply can't understand the mentality earlier generations had re: environmental contamination. I hear it in my father (71) re: anthropogenic climate change ("I can't believe the activities of humans could change such a large system...") and I imagine similar sentiments were in the minds of people dumping PCB or lead into the ground. It's chilling to me.
I do woodworking in some shop space I rent in northern Minneapolis. The building complex used to be a General Mills research laboratory from about the 20s through the 50s. Reportedly, Cheerios were invented there. At the time it was a relatively rural area, so how do you dispose of your research chemicals? Dump 'em in a pit out back!
Now, it's a fairly densely populated urban neighborhood. It was declared a superfund site in the 80s, and they're still monitoring the site and working on nearby properties for remediation, decades later. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/hazar...
> I simply can't understand the mentality earlier generations had re: environmental contamination. I hear it in my father (71) re: anthropogenic climate change ("I can't believe the activities of humans could change such a large system...") and I imagine similar sentiments were in the minds of people dumping PCB or lead into the ground. It's chilling to me.
It is bonkers, but you still see it all the time. "Oh, my choice to drive a 10 MPG SUV to work every day doesn't matter. I'm only one person."
yes, this applies anywhere the land has changed hands. who knows what a farmer or rancher used the land for before they sold it to a housing developer? or did a previous homeowner use pesticides or herbicides that have since been banned?
This is, unfortunately, still ongoing even in Silicon Valley. Apple had a skunkworks office building caught venting their byproducts to atmosphere with completely inadequate filtrating.
My recollection is the only source for this was a questionable rant on Elon's mass misinformation website. Was this ever actually investigated by professionals?
"Have you checked to see if this area is sitting on EPA Superfund designated land, or down stream?" The response is usually a blank look.
So I ask them why is this area called Silicon Valley? Then I ask if they realize how incredibly toxic the solvents used in chip manufacturing are? And then I ask how much 1950s and 60s companies cared about environmental concerns? Most people connect the dots pretty quickly. "Holy shit." Is the usual response.
It really wouldn't surprise me if Fairchild, Intel and the rest just took barrels of used chemicals out back and dumped them into holes in the ground back when.
Google got hit by this a few years ago when they built an office building on top of toxic waste and now have to have 24/7 basement ventilation to make sure workers there don't get sick.
There are whole neighborhoods built on that same polluted land. I'll get my orange from Safeway, thanks.