Chip Manufacturing Shortcuts Harm Our Health And Environment

Microchip manufacturing commonly uses organic solvents, acid gases, harmful metals, and PFAS.
The passage of the CHIPS and Science Act two years ago was a major bipartisan success, securing billions of dollars to bring semiconductor production back to the United States. This was a boon not only for our economy and national security, but also for our fight against climate change. These tiny electronic chips convert sunlight into electricity in solar panels, regulate power flow in wind turbines, and manage battery life in electric vehicles. They are essential building blocks for the clean energy transition. Unfortunately, building these building blocks can be quite dirty.
Potentially worsening the problem, Congress recently passed the Building Chips in America Act to exempt many federally funded chips manufacturing projects from the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA reviews are a bedrock safeguard for communities, requiring an assessment of potential impacts on local air, water, and wildlife before construction begins. This could be problematic given that organic solvents, acid gases, harmful metals, PFAS, and other unsafe chemicals are common in chipmaking.
We need only look to Silicon Valley as a cautionary tale. As the original home of microchip production, Santa Clara County has more Superfund hazardous waste sites than any other American county. Years of dirty chip-making processes harmed not only workers, but also nearby residents as manufacturing waste stored in underground tanks leaked into groundwater supplies. For example, in the 1980s the state health department concluded that a cluster of birth defects and miscarriages in a San Jose neighborhood was linked to organic solvent contamination from the local chip plant.
Decades after Silicon Valley’s semiconductor heyday, the process is still far from clean. Current U.S. plants release thousands of pounds of chemical compounds into the air each year. This includes acid gases as well as ammonia, a major driver of lung-harming particulate pollution.
Last year, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality fined Intel for failing to control air emissions of acid gases at its Hillsboro chip production facility. Plants also generate enormous amounts of solid and liquid waste. The Intel plant in Chandler produced 15,000 tons of waste in the first three months of 2021, more than half of which was hazardous. The same plant is planning a significant expansion of operations with funding from the CHIPS Act.
One class of chip-making chemicals, per-and- polyfluoroalkyl substances, is particularly problematic. Well-studied PFAS are associated with cancer, thyroid and liver diseases, miscarriages, decreased fertility, obesity and other serious health harms. Nicknamed “forever chemicals,” they are extremely persistent in the environment and are nearly impossible to clean up. As a result, they are widespread in drinking water and lurking in virtually all of our bodies.
The states slated for major microchip production booms—like Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina—are hurting for manufacturing jobs, but they’re also dealing with PFAS pollution crises that would likely be worsened by fast-tracked projects. There are currently no limits on releases of PFAS from chipmaking facilities and no requirements for proper disposal of PFAS wastes. Requiring NEPA reviews would at least help ensure that chipmakers implemented responsible water management and safe waste disposal practices. At a minimum, it would be helpful to insist that these plants amend their National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits to address their PFAS releases, and that other PFAS wastes are treated as Resource Conservation and Recovery Act hazardous wastes.
Our communities don’t need toxic water and air in order to provide new jobs. Lawmakers can find ways to implement community protections and incentivize innovation away from PFAS and other harmful chemicals used in chipmaking. The U.S. can’t build a clean energy future on a dirty foundation.
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