Would you believe that building the touch screens on Apple’s iPhone and other popular high-tech toys is sickening and perhaps killing Chinese workers who put them together?
The electronics-assembly company Wintek has admitted that more than 60 workers were sickened by exposure to n-hexane exposure, a highly toxic solvent used to clean the electronic touch screens. This comes from the latest in a series of stories that Kathleen E. McLaughlin has written from China for the online news operation GlobalPost.
She wrote this about the workers:
“Their troubles began in October 2008, when Wintek’s Suzhou factory introduced n-hexane to clean touch screens in the final stages of production. According to the local government, the company lacked necessary permits to handle the toxin, which dries more quickly than alcohol, shaving seconds from production time and speeding up the line.”
McLaughlin, a Montanan, and proud of it, has been covering sensitive health and environmental stories in China for years, including occupational hazards from chemical exposure.
Because of its severe toxicity, hexane has been banned in many countries. A toxicologist at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health told me that the restrictions on the chemical go back to the early 1960s when shoemakers in Italy, Japan and France suffered outbreaks of debilitating nerve disorders because they were breathing air containing high concentrations of hexane.
The physical damage from exposure appears first as a numbness in the feet and hands of those who inhale a significant amount of the toxic vapors. Severe and continued exposure can lead to paralysis to the limbs from the nerve damage.
Apple refused to comment to McLaughlin or other reporters on the allegations that the construction of the iPhone screen was connected to the illness.
Nevertheless, several of the workers reportedly told Chinese health authorities of the link.
Here are links to the last three of the worker illness stories that McLaughlin did for GlobalPost.com:
Silicon Sweatshops: And illness in Suzhou
Silicon Sweatshops: The Strange Death of Li Liang
Silicon Sweatshops: What’s a worker worth?
–Andrew Schneider
