CLEAN ROOM SAFE, WORKERS WERE TOLD
By Elise Ackerman
Mercury News
Posted on Wed, Nov. 19, 2003
url: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/7298383.htm
During the years Arthur Diaz worked as an IBM manager at one of the company's San Jose plants, employees used to complain to him that the chemicals they used were making them sick.
Following IBM policy, Diaz would give them a standard response: ``I always told my employees it was safe to work in a clean room,'' Diaz said Tuesday to a Santa Clara County Superior Court jury hearing a closely watched lawsuit against the computer giant.
Two former IBM employees have accused the company of exposing them to hazardous chemicals while concealing the danger from them. James Moore, 62, who is suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Alida Hernandez, 73, who had breast cancer, claim their diseases were caused by chemicals they used while working at IBM. More than 250 similar lawsuits are pending around the country, and the electronics industry worries that a judgment in favor of Moore and Hernandez will encourage suits against other manufacturers.
Cross-examination
Lawyers for IBM have argued that the Armonk, N.Y., company goes to great lengths to protect its workers. In cross-examination Tuesday, attorney Mary Ellen Powers asked Diaz to confirm that he also sent ill workers to an IBM medical clinic and called in an industrial hygienist to examine the work environment.
Diaz testified that none of the inspections of the area where his employees made assemblies used for writing and reading computer data found any cause for concern.
Under questioning from the plaintiffs' attorney, Richard Alexander, Diaz told the jury that at the same time he was reassuring employees their work environment was safe, he also was participating in a corporate program that required him to track employees whose exposure to chemicals was particularly high.
IBM database
According to a 1982 article published in the Journal of Occupational Medicine, the IBM database recorded extensive information about individual employees, including the substances they worked with, medical data and information about long-term illnesses and mortality. In the early 1980s, the database generated quarterly reports about employees' exposure to hazardous substances to IBM's medical department, its industrial hygiene department and managers.
Before he became a manager, Diaz held a job from 1968 to 1973 in a chemical ``wash room'' that involved supplying Freon, alcohol and acetone to other workers in Building 5 of IBM's Cottle Road facility. ``They'd come to the door and I would fill up their squirt bottles,'' Diaz testified. The workers used the chemicals as a cleaning solvent, he said, spraying the solution on parts or around their work area, much like homemakers spritz Windex.
Among the workers that Diaz supplied with chemicals was Moore.
Moore and Hernandez' attorneys have argued that exposure to such chemicals have contributed to their illnesses.
Completing 3 1/2 days of testimony Tuesday, Moore said he was not told that the chemicals he worked with, which included Freon, alcohol and acetone, could exacerbate his health problems.
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Contact Elise Ackerman at eackerman@mercurynews.com or (408) 271-3774.
Copyright - 2003 San Jose Mercury News
