they said it was as clean as a hospital but what they weren't telling people was that it was really a chemical handling industry and that the magic of making these microcircuits relied on the use of hundreds if not thousands of very toxic chemicals and that's why they have clean rooms that's why they have bunny suits to try to protect the chips it was never designed to protect the workers it was always designed to protect the product itself or my god those of a lot of different chemicals they built the disk drives we had to strip them out and then would literally have to dip a mint in severe gases and with a sponge and just with arm with severe i dunno what it was is i just knew it stunk really bad and you couldn't get it on your skin because it would burn you like nobody's business what would happen was people started getting sick was very strange kinds of illnesses things that didn't seem to make a lot of sense and didn't seem to hang together but increasingly as this happened

more and more there was a small group of people that began to think that maybe this was related to the chemical exposure on the job. one put music on yeah right i want to turn on the music for mom that's some good music on today. right there. but there's not enough there's a thing i charged it up. in the thing yeah. nine hundred seventy five i was eighteen years old and i started working in the electronics field i went to a specter of physics and they just hired me just like that. i was making the end of the laser and i would have to mix up this chemical in i used to call it green go. and get the consistency and then put into

a spray gun and i would have to heat that up after a glued on together that was just all day that i did at that event didn't know the material she was using turns out to be probably in the vicinity of fifty percent little excise she didn't know she was exposed to lead in tell her that i got pregnant with mark in one nine hundred seventy nine and that was full term my months and we're just really happy about it. that he doesn't even know to cross the street and know a car is coming to stop going to the restroom you know i have to go with him in there so i have to a system where everything is number one or you know and if i knew what i know now i woulda ran out of spec or physics at the time it was unnecessary it just. breaks my heart that i could avoid it.

so we're filing this lawsuit against your employer and it's a lawsuit for his son who was born with severe developmental disabilities and is a suit concealment of systemic chemical poisoning and case of a vet and for the direct injuries to mark. marks condition isn't like a cold take antibiotics and you're going to be fine and five days this is life. your love just overrides all that and you do what you gotta do to stay i still do that. i'm sorry getting. and. i discovered i.b.m. had corporate mortality. which they kept for thirty years and it kept track of the causes of death of their lloyd's the most dramatic findings were about cancer for

the company as a whole this was thirty three thousand deaths that were in this corporate mortality file so included people who had worked all over the u.s. but then when you look at specific plants like the i.b.m. plant in san jose there was some extraordinary excess costs of deaths one was brain cancer the other was not hodgkinson foma another was melanoma of the skin and in the women breast cancer was three and four fold higher than expected. that was the heart of this san jose loss of. innocent mclaren courtroom today the first trial out of more than two hundred similar lawsuits filed against i.b.m. former i.b.m. workers jim bore and a lighter hernandez say they developed cancer from exposure to toxic chemicals at i.b.m. san jose facility in the late seventy's or early ninety's i mean literally tried to prevent the results of the tally analysis from ever seeing the light of day in fact

they went to the judge and said this can't be used in this case a lot of hernandez's not dead she's going to be in the court room and not only was it not relevant the judge said it it might prejudice the jury if they saw what these excess costs deaths were and so he denied the use of it in the court many of the brands will respond questions by saying no one has ever proved to me that a single person has died from exposure to these chemicals either within inside their factories or outside of the factories and of discussion. but that's not the way that we approach environmental or occupational health in the world we are not flying blind here at all especially on the chemicals at issue here in the electronics industry actually and most of the common chemical used in all industrial manufacturing we've been at this work for forty years.

if you look at the pub listening generated by i.b.m. you would think that we lost everything and that's simply not going. after the trial i.b.m. matters were resolved for hundreds of people whose claims did not go to trial. what can you tell us about the settlements. i'm not going to be able to talk about any of the resolutions of the cases and. can you give any details at all did you have to agree not to reveal the details as part of the settlements all i can say is that the matters were resolved that's what i'm allowed to say.

here in silicon valley chip companies in the other electronics production companies used hundreds if not thousands of toxic chemicals and the most of the chemicals once they're used in making the components needed to be disposed of as waste the companies ended up storing them in underground storage tanks all over the valley. but what the brilliant people who were designing these systems didn't quite think through all the way was that the solvent swirl really good at dissolving things and so when you put them into a tank eventually they're going to eat their way through the tank. solvent that the electronics industry used in production in silicon valley in the seventy's and eighty's are now on in the groundwater and if you think about putting a drop of ink in a bathtub. that spreads really quickly and it's really hard to get that dropping

back that's what we're dealing with except we're dealing with multiples of gallons of the stuff that is in the groundwater. in the late one nine hundred eighty one there were over one hundred families in one little neighborhood who had serious problems and the state health department discovered that the families that were drinking the most heavily contaminated water had significantly higher rates of miscarriages and birth defects then did people in other neighborhoods in the chemical industry will often say if i had not a dime for every time i heard this but even water can kill you the most non toxic thing of course it can but only if you stick your face down in the bathtub or fall into you know fall into a large body of water. so that has the traditional approach to toxicology is that the more stuff you're exposed to the more harm it causes you but what we're seeing in particularly around cancer and around hormone disrupting chemicals is that it's

when you're exposed to it the time of exposure so if you're in third trimester and you get even a perp or billion or part for truly an exposure it can actually cause significant damage. we formed this silicon valley tuxes coalition and we did a summer organizing project getting people to sign petitions asking the e.p.a. step in with their authority into the superfund program yesterday. yes. yes. and i went to a meeting in washington and presented these thousands of petitions saying we need e.p.a. to come in it's time for e.p.a. to exercise your authority and to everybody's great surprise they agreed to do that . so hewlett packard became a superfund site until became a superfund site national semiconductor advanced micro devices i.b.m. you name it they were there and they were all superfund sites.

the cost of cleanup for i.b.m. as well as all the other companies has been tremendous it's an enormously slow and tedious process. if you look right over here also this is a major residential neighborhood just directly across the street from this industrial site. most of the people living here today are unaware of this huge toxic plume. and those same chemicals that are still right under where we're standing are now beginning to seep back up out of the groundwater through the soil and are actually coming into the offices of these software engineers a google. and this is the one that e.p.a. said might take three hundred years to clean up. this is so complicated the

devastation is so enormous that we're really talking centuries of cleanup not just years or decades. the problem is that it just keeps reoccur. please when companies started moving away from silicon valley to china i think that they put only to have to have the government off their backs and. their chinese government made an offer to multinational corporations that they couldn't refuse. you need a land and you need money and you need government approval and you need lots of people to put it all together well they have all of that in china. it's. just.

one of the primary purposes of outsourcing is to enable companies like apple to make what are essentially an reasonable demands on manufacturers that they wouldn't and couldn't make if they actually had to employ the workers directly apple doesn't have to worry about what it means to workers when they insist on a tripling of the pace of i phone production. and sons of those who. come in the new. ball. anyway focused on this is. how you

can see as you go by the one you don't we see you know some of the. now i am a single example guys here in. this one dance you can grow the stuff. you see that played into. something else was new them will. come to the. gallery. as you do want. to live ill

enough. to. see that tess is on the way and you have to fill it out you know we. knew they would sit and have. to do for jennifer how much paul. don't let me go. so we might have a good teacher good you're going to tell you put in the towel no. snow. on the sun and sun to constantly. sorry about this world in school is. good to know that you. know it's easy to do so because that is so. basic.

so good about themselves. as some of the. bigger. picture you would think i'm going to be able to. do more in the order changing sort of emotional. you can see more real feet on. doubting in general. didn't move the bottles to the injured on the cawston. and only turned over to the one of the two ladies.

in a.t.m. shouting sure. he laid out a new solution. which he took in the. chicken. i am. jewelry in sierra leone civil war nigerian forces were deployed to protect

civilians instead some turned on the population in plain sight of a journalist camera a piece is claimed to be. well disagree in the peacekeeping force to launch the product complete a chain his own using his harrowing images international lawyers seek justice for those slaughtered by their guardians peace killers on out just zero. fresh perspectives new possibilities. debates and discussions it's all in one piece on a story that doesn't get nearly the news pervert that it deserves says so much to talk about is there any way of measuring that is our number at all that we can put on. al-jazeera as award winning programs takes you on a journey around the globe. only on al-jazeera. al-jazeera recounts the shocking story of the

assassination of counts folk abene dot. the first u.n. envoy trying to bring peace to the middle east how is negotiations with himmler helped save thousands of jews from nazi concentration camps and how these mediation skills put him at the vanguard in the quest for peace in the middle east. killing the count on al-jazeera. and all of the problem in the headlines on al-jazeera the u.n. special envoy to syria has been holding talks with representatives from turkey iran and russia. trying to persuade moscow and not to supporting the expected syrian

government offensive to retake a rebel held province meanwhile the u.n. secretary general says the attack could spark a humanitarian disaster one and a half million people across three eastern u.s. states have been ordered to leave their homes as part of preparations for the worst storm and thirty years how can florence is expected to make landfall in north or south carolina in the next two days brazil's jailed former president. has been replaced as the workers' party candidate for next month's presidential election the former mayor of. represent the party on the ballot the sea and human has more from could achieve in prison. the emotional announcement was made in front of the detention center where serving out his twelve year prison sentence for corruption it came in the form of a letter that i had given to a member of his political party the workers' party addressed to the people of brazil in it he repeated that he was in a sense that he was

a victim of travesty of justice and that he would continue to fight for his freedom but that right now there was no other option than to name his until now running mate. as the presidential candidate of the workers' party he called on the brazilian people to support him in his name he said that from now on all brazilians are. clearly had. the kind of standing for the former president who still has immense popular support but now cannot run he has been barred from doing so because he he is in prison another interesting point is that i had said that the people of brazil will of course be very very sad there were many people cry. in fact that he himself was very very upset but that he will do everything he can to fill the shoes of the bigger than life. the rain celebrations offer the reopening of a joint border crossing on the road which links the capitals of ethiopia and eritrea that had been close for twenty years since of war between the two countries

the conflict that in one thousand nine hundred eight all of a dispute in the same border area well those are the headlines on al jazeera death by design continues next. to my grandpa who dies and companies in the system is youngest about to do it has died and fifteen others were injured after an explosion at a factory in chengdu china eight hundred two some. occurred at around seven pm in a polish shop and appears to have been triggered by an explosion of combustible dust duct. no one would be surprised that aluminum dust if it's in a high enough concentration and there is an ignition source it will produce explosion and fire this is a hazard which is extremely well known. so the fact that apple suppliers

have an explosion in chengdu in the plant means that they have very poor housekeeping very poor production processes that's terrible. what's completely unacceptable is that five months later at another plant within the apple supply chain they had another explosion and fire. its outrageously inexcusable that they had a second one five months later. they set up these supply chains exactly the way they want them they monitor these private chains with exacting scrutiny so they know exactly what's going into their products at every point along the way.

here. we have a town hall i fix the guns it will show you how. to i have an i phone five here and i'm at show you a little bit about what's inside what makes a tech and some of the design choices that apple made putting it together to the first thing out bill has on the bottom is to proprietary penta loeb screws this is a security screw the apple designed to keep people out of the phone once you get the phone open we can start to see the guts. this isn't really a phone it's pretty much a full blown computer that can make your phone last for eight hours or you need a really big battery. batteries and phones last about four hundred charges every cell phone i have ever had to pop the back off you can pull the battery out swap

a new battery and every year or two you have to replace the battery apple has decided with the i pod and now the i phone that they don't like that model so what they are doing is building the batteries in the phone and using proprietary screws on there and attempt to limit the lifespan of the phone to about eighteen months which is around the time when they have a new phone and they want you to buy a new one anyway. i think says a company that wants to see everything get fixed so we show people how to fix things and provide the parts tools and guides to enable them to do so helping everyone fix everything so that's the challenge it's a big challenge because there's millions of devices out there. luke and i are reluctant capitalists we get excited selling screwdrivers even though that seems like a boring product because we're selling people a capability with able to do something that they wouldn't have otherwise we want to make it simple and easy for people to repair their own stuff. the amount of raw

materials that go on the products that we use are staggering it's over five hundred pounds around materials go into making a down south. so here's an example of a circuit board in this you waste bin this is out of apple laptop from a few years ago even if you make this circuit board in the most environmentally friendly way it's still going to use a ton of water a ton of money probably literally a ton of water lots and lots of materials. when we know for you know. nothing is different. electronics industry is close in ways that through this the american manufacturers are. they're selling a thing and they're saying well you have it but you don't really own it. there's no way we're ever going to really be. ford would never say. we're not going to make

tires available to keep your car running after thirty thousand miles you have an entire ecosystem an entire industry that's built on secrecy and. that's trying to pry open the show people what's inside. and we've kind of been conditioned by manufacturers and brands to leave yourself on the outside don't worry about the details we make this product we give it to you and you just use this product when it stops working you go buy a new one. when we originally started my fix it was just a way to provide people with some solution to fix broken devices. and over time we've realized both the manufacturing and environmental problems are all huge concern.

over the last few years i've been to china on a regular basis a lot of that related to our tool manufacturing. we're looking at getting circuit boards manufactured. this is the big rechargeable battery and this is the main circuit board in here so considering it's just a flashlight you can see it's a surprisingly complex circuit board and i've got these basic schematic for the sort of board once we decided i'm going to leave them with me and has been. finding this supplier that is environmentally friendly has good quality and has reasonable pricing all three of those at once is probably going to be a challenge. for next.

visiting factories we've found that it's surprisingly effective to show up on short notice. in general any factory of it's not willing to let you see the factory is an immediate red flag at least for someone that we don't want to do business with. this is the big line. the factory said this is where they're edging it bringing all these nasty acids and other chemicals in. you've got a little bit of acid believe here you can see acid on the outside in the machine. i walked over to where there were some storage tanks and it was basically asset all

over the floor and the moment i looked over that they told me get back away from here and this isn't giving me a good feeling. as far as making sure everything's done correctly environmentally it doesn't seem like that's a priority for them. and they got them out river and. the fact that it was so dear to you is the price you have to pay for the last thirty years of development you. don't want to buy from them. what do the somebody. that you hope. that incentives. not to just buy you for down.

one. hundred. percent so we'll be sure. she brings mice and at the time to buy them just. as a what the idea what that. meant somewhere down so that it. doesn't you know about fox you know buy new things which. so when you push you. do it's a typical high problem. for them. but to get don't you think you. do see. that it is constantly changing.

them all the. time. and we see. this is definitely the most professional of the factories visited. the fact that we're being taken through this water treatment facility is a really promising sign. you start out with incredibly yucky water and it goes through a progressive series of filters and other processes and eventually you end up with hopefully acceptably clean water. the coolest thing when the water is coming through the treatment facility some of the water comes out and dumps into this and

they have been here in the factory owner said well they know the water treatment is working ok as long as the fish are still alive a little unfortunate for the fish because if something breaks maybe the fish die but it's clear to me that this would definitely be the factory to buy from up the one we visited. from the institute of public and environmental affairs ma june. i've ladies and gentlemen i'm truly honored and humbled to be the first chinese citizen to receive the scole award was i set up this institute of public in your bar many affairs i p.

and our first project is to to butte a national water pollution database though this records comes from the government sources the public can access the information by click on the locations on the map because people want to know you know who should be held responsible for such a bat water pollution situation and so far we got some more than one hundred and ten thousand records of violations in our database. april two thousand and ten we letters to twenty nine by t. friends who check with them whether those polluting factory.