We have identified the key countries where high-tech development is booming and have been reaching out to community, environmental, consumer and labor organizations in those countries.

For example:

Costa Rica
SVTC was contacted by Justicia Para la Naturalesa (JPN), a non-profit association of attorneys, law students and paralegals in San José, Costa Rica that works with a broad cross-section of the environmental movement in Costa Rica. The new Intel facility is touted as a wonderful economic opportunity for Costa Rica and is hoped to be the first of many high-tech installations. Costa Rica gave huge concessions to Intel while the toxic by-products, worker and community safety issues and impacts on water resources have been absent from the public discourse.

SVTC helped raise funds to bring a delegation from Costa Rica to Silicon Valley and Albuquerque. We shared information with them about waterand pollution concerns, about good neighbor agreements, community advisory panels, and the waste handling company with which Intel has contracted. While here, they met with worker health and safety experts, members from organized labor and residents from impacted neighborhoods. We continue to provide technical support to the adjacent community. SVTC learned that waste generated by this facility will be transported to the US and then taken to the Romic facility on the Gila Indian Reservation in Arizona, since there is no waste handling facility in Costa Rica.

Scotland
The semiconductor industry likes to claim that its environmental health problems have been resolved, but women working at the National Semiconductor plant in Scotland have experienced the same miscarriage, birth defect, and reproductive health problems, including cancers have been encountered in Silicon Valley. This story was reported in the Wall Street Journal on October 5, 1998. We are working with an occupational health organization in Scotland called Phase II to challenge the manufacturing processes used in the plant and to seek redress for those injured. We have posted on our website, articles we have compiled from medical journals and the newspaper about some of the health hazards in the electronics industry. We believe this is the most comprehensive listing of such articles in one place. Using our internet network, labor and community activists from over 20 countries signed an I-CRT letter to National Semiconductor CEO, Brian Halla.

Ireland
Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy has been built on high tech expansion and of the six high tech corporations operating in Ireland, five are USA owned. Ireland also houses the second largest Intel (US-owned) plant in the world and hosts other assembly plants for printed circuit boards. Research on Intel's website reveals no emission data for their plants outside the USA water consumption by the industry is unknown and the Intel permit.

Taiwan
We have received information about a cancer cluster among RCA workers at a plant in Taiwan. We have learned that of the 200 workers affected by cancer, over 50 have died. While the factory has closed several years ago, some believe that the cancers may have been caused by worker exposure to toxic gases and other harmful chemicals in the workplace and 20 from drinking water that has been contaminated by electronics firms in the area. Fires at 4 semiconductor manufacturing plants have released toxic emissions. The full enviromental impact of these fires is unknown. We are working with the Taiwanese Environmental Action Network (TEAN) to address these issues.