Environments such as the Texas Instruments microchip plant outside Austin, Texas, are some of the cleanest places on the planet. To even enter into the space, you have to don a full clean suit, your body covered head-to-toe with sterile materials that don’t shed. There’s something strangely inverted about the process. Normally when you find yourself dressing in such extreme protective outfits, you’re guarding yourself against some kind of hostile environment: severe cold, pathogens, the vacuum of space. But in the clean room, the suit is designed to protect the space from you. You are the
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