Samsung launches investigation of chip lines following cancer allegations
By Darren Murph 
posted April 15th 2010 8:31PM
posted April 15th 2010 8:31PM
Here's an odd one. Samsung, which has been known to be on better-than-average terms with the South Korean government in the past, is launching independent investigations in response to reports that "toxic materials used in chip making may have caused cancer in some of its employees." In one of the more bizarre stories of the year, Samsung has recently come under fire from social and civic groups to actually look into the incidents, which were reported over a decade ago but were found to not be Sammy's fault by the aforesaid government. This week, the company admitted that 22 of its employees (who worked at a chip facility outside of Seoul) had been diagnosed with leukemia or lymphoma, and 10 of them had perished. Cho Soo-in, president of Samsung's memory division, told the media that the firm is "deeply sorry about the loss of loved ones," and that it "actively cooperated on epidemiologic investigations, which concluded there were no leaks of radiation." We've got a feeling we know exactly what will be concluded here, but we'll certainly keep an ear to the ground for anything atypical.
No leaks will be found there either... It's pretty sad how this happens more often than not, all so we can haz mor chipz - Freddie Prinze Jr.
Yeah, this has been an issue for a while and people's anger boiled over recently when a young cute girl died from leukemia. She apparently has been working hard because it was like an 'honor' to work for Samsung or anyt other big corps in Korea.
Hopefully they get things sorted out like a 'big corp' and compensate accordingly
im sure this happens alot. but fuck it it's only south korea who cares.
@leemahi Koreans...
aww dear... oblivion looks like a good place for that comment. *push*
@leemahi
I think maybe you got North and South Korea mixed up, but even so, hard working citizens don't deserve this.
I'm pretty sure the grieving families care...
@leemahi But, what about Starcraft?
@NeoJew
No they don't deserve it and yet we want those cheap gadgets.
It's good to see this stuff and the conditions of employment stuff recently as well.
Our hunger kills...
I'd put money down that this manufacturing plant used boat-loads of benzene. My graduate project is investigating the mechanisms behind benzene's toxic potential in inducing leukemia. This exact thing happened in the US with Goodyear's Plyofilm industry.
Article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3433199?cookieSet=1
@markolic
Yea 'stupidest' too by the looks of things.
On a more serious note, this is pretty sad. Going to work and slowly killing yourself without realising...
:(
Radiation: The terrible secret of Waveface.
@Apple Google Microsoft
Ya this isn't right.
Condolences to the families.
Spineless cowards never admit their wrongs. Saving face is more important than integrity.
Just going to add this to the list of other stuff that causes cancer
_____
1. Samsung chips
2. Everything else
_____
short list.
@NathanHeil:
Different carcinogens cause mutations at different rates and different people respond to these mutations in different ways.
One person may yak on a mobile phone all day, every day and not develop a brain tumor but another person may use a mobile device only sparingly and get a tumor after a year.
Seems like some context is needed here. 22 diagnosed and 10 died over a span of 12 years (from 1998 to present according to the article). Out of how many employees was that, and how does that rate compare to the general population's rate of diagnosis/death? Without the context, it is hard to draw a correlation, much less causation.
@dixon2k
Context is not needed too much here. It would be important if the article was referring to a population of people. Here, we're just talking about a group of people who worked in the same area at the same plant for a duration of 12 years. Leukemia/Lymphoma is one of the causes of death due to cancer, but it's definitely not the highest rate of disease; let alone for it to occur in 22 individuals from the same place by random chance.
@dixon2k That's what the epidemiological studies are for.
@Aegee14 and @cooblhoo I was questioning the way the article sensationalizes the issue, Judging from the other comments, people react to these headlines negatively, immediately accusing Samsung as the cause, without know context. E.g., if we know that the population that live in the general vicinity has the same or higher rate of diagnosis of Leukemia, that wouldn't be much news. Not that the population are comparable, but for an order of magnitude context, in the US, the death rate from Leukemia is between 7 to 15 per 100,000 per year depending on the state (cancer.gov).
so, my samsung monitor is made of death...
@markolic Why don't you "firsttest" yourself over to Samsung's chip manufacturing facility?
My condolences to the families of the departed. I sure hope this doesn't get worse.
@cherryboom
Yeah, they use toxic chemicals, but in modern chip fabs, production workers hardly every come into contact with any chemicals at all. See those orange containers in the picture above? That's called a FOUP, and it's what the wafers are carried in. And production workers aren't even generally allowed to open them. The wafers are always contained, and the tools keep the chemicals all contained. There aren't any open baths, there aren't any chemical bottles laying around, there's barely any opportunity to come into contact with chemicals in a modern production fab.
Everything is contained away from operators, not only for safety reasons, but also for cost reasons: people are by far the dirtiest things in a cleanroom, so keeping dirty people away from all the processing by locking the wafers and chemicals away in a tool increases yields.
@pbd While almost everything you said is correct for Operators, that is not true for the majority of the people in the fab who are Techs. There are in fact many open baths and exposure to chemicals. There is also little to no standard safety precautions there. They bypass or remove all of the safety devices. I work for a company that provides Samsung with there equipment and I am regularly there and at other customer sites in asia. The industry does in fact use some of the nastiest chemicals of any industry. For radiation however, there is usually a much lower risk, if there was a significant amount of RF or microwave radiation the generators would see too much of a reflected power and shutdown. Since this would cause on product issues the customers would never allow it to happen.
"were found to not be Sammy's fault by the aforesaid government."
Doesn't mean anything, given that Samsung owns the govenrment. Their recently CONVICTED chairman is now - somehow- back at work.
So long dental plan!