Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry

by David Naguib Pellow (Editor), David Sonnenfeld (Editor)

From Silicon Valley in California to Silicon Glen in Scotland, from Silicon Island in Taiwan to Silicon Paddy in China, the social, economic, and ecological effects of the international electronics industry are widespread. The production of electronic and computer components contaminates air, land, and water around the globe. As this eye-opening book reveals, the people who suffer the consequences are largely poor, female, immigrant, and minority. Challenging the Chip is the first comprehensive examination of the impacts of electronics manufacturing on workers and local environments across the planet.

Contributors to this pioneering volume include many of the world's most articulate, passionate and progressive visionaries, scholars and advocates. Here they not only document the unsustainable and often devastating practices of the global electronics industry but also chronicle creative ways in which activists, government agencies, and others have attempted to reform the industry—through resistance, persuasion, and regulation.

376 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2006

Reviews

[Steven Magee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read for anyone working in the electrical, electronics, or wireless industries. It contains the detrimental health information that you are entitled to know but are generally not taught about. Most college and university courses do not mention the known toxicity of electricity and leave it up to you to find out about it for yourself. I discovered how toxic electricity really was at the age of 39. I was exposed to very high powered electronically generated harmonic energy. It did some very weird things to me, the strangest thing of all was that it affected my memory in the area of numbers and mathematics. It slowly recovered after avoiding the toxic exposures that caused it. It is interesting that Nicola Tesla had a similar experience as me. I recently read his biography and it details a sick man who was plagued with mental breakdowns. This is a book that I wish I had read at the age of 16 before choosing a career in electricity, electronics, and computers.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent series of essays on the labor rights and environmental struggles around the electronics and info tech industries. The anthology derives from a conference hosted by Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. The book gives a good overview of the work and perspectives of the network of environmental justice groups that have come to be organized on an international scale since the '90s. There are articles about pollution of workers at National Semi's chip planti in Scotland, cancers and groundwater contamination from RCA's consumer electronics plant in Taiwan, the electronic waste recycling done by vulnerable people including children in China and India and the hazards associated with that, and also good analyses of the changing structure of the IT and electronics industry since the '90s.

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing read that will make you think twice about all of the frivolous electronic devices we purchase (along with those the are somewhat indispensable).

It also opened my eyes to the realities not just of e-waste in landfills - but to the unacceptable conditions people producing these devices must endure.