Review finds IBM tracked deaths
article on-line
By Julie Sevrens Lyons
Mercury News
September 23, 2003
Attorneys in a major Silicon Valley cancer cluster lawsuit against IBM have uncovered a ``corporate mortality file'' in which IBM tracked the deaths of more than 30,000 workers -- and the lawyers claim the company knew its electronics workers were dying of cancer more often than normal.
As the case approaches its first hearing in court Friday, the IBM death records have been reviewed by a medical expert hired by former IBM workers, who contend that chemicals used in making disk drives and other microelectronics at a plant in San Jose are responsible for high cancer deaths. The IBM file tracks employee deaths by cause and workplace location from 1969 to 2000, according to the review.
IBM maintains there is no scientific evidence tying cancer among its employees to the workplace. But the medical expert's review, obtained by the Mercury News on Monday, says that IBM employees died of certain cancers at higher rates and younger ages than the general population, and that the higher cancer death rates are especially striking for workers in manufacturing jobs at certain unspecified locations.
The review -- which included employees at IBM facilities in New York and other locations -- also found that IBM was aware of the higher cancer rates decades ago.
``By 1975, IBM must have known their manufacturing employees had significantly increased death rates due to cancer and must have known that through the next two decades,'' the review says. It was conducted by Richard Clapp, a Boston University epidemiologist who analyzed the corporate mortality file, a massive database held on seven computer disks.
The mortality file was recently given to attorneys for the plaintiffs by mistake after IBM failed to mark it as confidential, plaintiffs' attorney Richard Alexander said.
According to Clapp's review, data from the corporate mortality file suggests that IBM workers were much more likely to die from cancers of the breast, blood and lymph than the general population.
``IBM employees have suffered much more than their expected share of cancer,'' the review states.
IBM spokesman Bill Hughes did not return messages left by the Mercury News on Monday. He told Reuters news service that ``These are tragic cases, but there is no scientific evidence that there are increased rates of diseases of any kind among IBM employees.'' He also said the mortality file was simply used to provide benefits for families of deceased employees and is not a reliable document for studying disease.
The file is likely to be a critical piece of evidence in the first of a series of lawsuits filed against IBM by former workers and company scientists. Four former Silicon Valley employees and their survivors are part of the first suit. In all, more than 250 former IBM workers around the country or their families have sued the company for not protecting them against chemical exposure known to cause cancer, Alexander said.
Closely watched
The case is being closely -- and nervously -- watched by the semiconductor industry.
The lawsuits have been filed by workers or their families from IBM manufacturing plants in San Jose, New York and Minnesota. Attorneys believe that is just a small portion of the workers who could have potentially been harmed by the materials they worked with every day for years.
A hearing on the case is scheduled for Friday, when IBM will ask a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge to dismiss the case before it goes to trial. If that effort fails, a trial is expected to go forward next month.
If a strong case can be made against Big Blue, experts believe, other semiconductor firms could be next in line for contentious litigation waged by their workers.
``IBM was much more sophisticated than many of the start-ups at that time,'' said Joe LaDou, director of the International Center for Occupational Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.
If IBM was more advanced than other companies, it is a fair assumption, LaDou said, that workers at other semiconductor firms sustained even greater exposure levels to potential carcinogens.
An IBM spokesman on the West Coast said no one from the company was available to comment late Monday.
Dozens of chemicals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, benzene and hydrochloric acid have been used in electronics manufacturing. Chip making, one of the most highly scrutinized processes, involves exposing silicon layers of every chip to the highly toxic substances. But there has been little evidence to conclusively link the chemicals to cancer in humans. And long-term research to answer the cancer question is virtually non-existent, as the semiconductor industry has been loath to participate in comprehensive studies of the health complaints of its workers.
One effort, by the California Department of Health Services and the Environmental Protection Agency, was stymied several years ago after the semiconductor industry refused to cooperate with the program to track cancers, birth defects and other health problems in employees.
`Clean rooms'
Industry critics have argued that many chip workers have been misled by the title of the very areas in which they work. So-called ``clean rooms'' where chips are made have been designed to protect computer chips from contaminants. The rooms, with their famed ``bunny suits,'' however, do not protect workers from the chemicals.
Chemical fumes can repeatedly recirculate through the recycled air, exposing workers -- often women and ethnic minorities -- to potentially airborne carcinogens.
Arsenic has been found to cause liver, kidney, lung, bladder and skin cancers, according to the National Institutes of Health. Benzene has been linked to leukemia, and cadmium to lung damage, bone defects and cancer.
Just how all these chemicals, when mixed, interact with a worker's health remains unclear. But attorney Alexander argues that IBM, with its decades of data on deaths, should have done more to protect its staff.
``This is a tragedy,'' he said. ``These people were literally worked to death.''
Copyright 2003 - San Jose Mercury News
