[HN Gopher] US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication
___________________________________________________________________
US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication
Author : shakna
Score : 200 points
Date : 2024-06-24 02:20 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dropbox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dropbox.com)
| DanAtC wrote:
| Context: https://mastodon.social/@ashleygjovik/112668309100333232
| cbsmith wrote:
| Even better context:
| https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html
| dang wrote:
| Thanks. I've included that one too in the comment pinned at
| the top.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| Much better unbiased journalistic context:
| https://www.siliconvalley.com/2018/03/19/apple-secretly-
| deve...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks. I've included that link in the comment pinned at the
| top.
| martinky24 wrote:
| Is there any backing to this that doesn't originate from a very
| disgruntled former employee?
| fortran77 wrote:
| There is a link to what appears to be an EPA report in the
| mastadon thread.
| smlavine wrote:
| Here's the EPA report:
| https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/312oqvretg7yyhfx0ohx4/AGZduVX...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Agreed, also, if anyone has ever dealt with regualtors before
| things like:
|
| > at least _19_ potential violations
|
| Is about 00.00% noteworthy to me until it is defined as to what
| those are, and I guarantee that none of them will be "poisoned
| employees living quarters".
|
| Same with the repeating "illegal" over and over. Not having the
| right sticker on something might be illegal (EDIT: good guess?
| More like I know this game, the EPA isn't what you think they
| are), transporting at night without filling the right form
| might be illegal, not following a process because you chose an
| objectively better system that isn't on the books might be
| illegal.
|
| I have some idea how Apple handles their materials, the same
| way every other major company does, which good or bad, is
| almost definitely more legal than the majority of small
| companies. But this is a scale discussion.
|
| I can hear the ax grinding in every post. What is clear is that
| she is in it for a payday.
|
| EDIT: read some of the report. Apple marked a bucket as waste,
| the EPA could not determine if it was state, federal, or even
| waste at all. HOW LONG WILL THESE BASTARDS KEEP GETTING AWAY
| WITH THIS!!?
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| > EDIT: read some of the report. Apple marked a bucket as
| waste, the EPA could not determine if it was state, federal,
| or even waste at all. HOW LONG WILL THESE BASTARDS KEEP
| GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!!?
|
| THIS BEHAVIOR GOT A WOMAN ALMOST KILLED
| peppertree wrote:
| I live near Santa Clara area so I scanned the EPA report. It
| mentioned improperly covered activated charcoal and possible
| improper storage of chemicals, but no mention of releasing
| solvent vapor in open air. Apple absolutely should be held at
| higher standard especially operating near residential and school
| areas, but in this case it looks like a disgruntled ex employee
| trying to settle a score. I don't think this belongs on HN.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| From the thread
|
| TLDR; EPA discovered that Apple was: - illegally treating
| hazardous waste
|
| - illegally transporting hazardous waste to disposal facilities
|
| - illegally dumping hazardous waste into the ambient air outside
| the facility (into the apartment windows)
|
| - leaving stockpiles of extremely dangerous chemicals unattended
| on weekends
| vlovich123 wrote:
| And they were accidentally tipped off about the inspection when
| it should have been a complete surprise. I feel like stuff like
| this should be capable of piercing the corporate veil so that
| people involved could be criminally prosecuted. As-is, Apple is
| incentivized to just keep this kind of behavior in their ranks
| because it's just the cost of doing business as they usually
| get away with this kind of stuff.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I worked at a Colgate manufacturing plant and we were given
| about a week heads up when the FDA would come do an
| inspection, we would know the exact day about 3 days before,
| and we would have about a 4hr heads up when they'll arrive.
|
| The way the plant operates normally and when they're there is
| night and day. We will shut down lines and clean for whole
| shifts leading up to it and when they're there we'll double
| the staff to have a whole shifts worth of people just
| constantly cleaning while the others work.
|
| We'll also slow down the lines to make sure things run
| smoothly and do more quality checks.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| According to the mastodon post this situation is a bit
| different because it was a (whistleblower?) complaint and
| thus it was supposed to be a surprise vs typically
| announced inspections.
| walterbell wrote:
| How many inspectors use Apple devices?
| hanniabu wrote:
| Point still stand though, the heads up makes the
| inspections mostly pointless
| doe_eyes wrote:
| I read the report, and while the practices are inexcusably
| shoddy, I am struggling to see anything to substantiate the
| poster's core claim that Apple was handling "extremely
| dangerous" chemicals at the site and that they could've harmed
| a person living a good distance away.
|
| For example, violation #6 appears to be about a tank holding
| diluted solvents such as isopropyl alcohol, acetone, and NMP.
| And the violation is that they labeled it as "CA-133" waste
| while it should be also labeled as "D001" waste because it's
| flammable. That's shitty, but I don't see how that could've
| poisoned someone from afar. You don't want to huff these
| solvents, but they are common and have modest toxicity.
|
| Or, take violation #2: a bucket labeled "adhesive liquids and
| tape", which should've been closed but wasn't. Violation #3 is
| that a bucket labeled "silicone" has been on the site for more
| than 90 days. And on, and on.
|
| Don't get me wrong, if you're operating in a location like
| that, you should do everything by the book, so I hope Apple
| gets in enough trouble to notice - but I see a pretty sharp
| disconnect between the Mastodon thread and the report.
| insaneirish wrote:
| Bingo.
| Aloisius wrote:
| > - illegally dumping hazardous waste into the ambient air
| outside the facility (into the apartment windows)
|
| The EPA report appears to imply the opposite. Apple's potential
| violation was not for their air exhaust system, but rather for
| using an activated carbon filter because they had not declared
| it in their permit application.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| this is all editorialized, none of that is in the report
| langsoul-com wrote:
| Reminds me of Minamata, Japanese company was dumping mercury into
| the nearby lakes and hushing everything up. Movie is great BTW,
| thank fk I don't live near a chemical plant.
|
| Apple started to clean up only after getting tipped off of an EPA
| raid. They also didn't test or analyse chemicals. And
| conveniently stopped having weekly inspections. Truly a case of
| ignorance is bliss. Huh, toxic what now? No no it's NOT toxic, we
| marked it as non hazardous so it's OK.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Truly a case of ignorance is bliss.
|
| Or "we fired the guys who complained until we stopped receiving
| complaints."
| s3p wrote:
| This is what's so strange to me. They weren't testing for the
| presence of hazmats and seemed to not care. This lab clearly
| isn't a prod lab, likely just research, and maybe that's why
| they were so comfortable leaving everything where it was.
|
| The one thing I found most disgusting, though, was the open
| tank in the basement. They said the tank would explode if they
| left it closed, so VOCs must have been venting out. But they
| left it open in... the basement... without any REAL
| ventilation. This belongs on r/OSHA.
| isodev wrote:
| Here goes Apple Intelligence / some random feature not coming to
| the US because Apple has too much compliance to do. /s
| Reason077 wrote:
| This is pretty awful. And if _Apple_ , with all their supposed
| green credentials, are the ones dumping toxic industrial
| chemicals into the environment in the middle of Santa Clara, you
| can only imagine what the rest of the industry is like.
| hanniabu wrote:
| So much for their environmental marketing bullshit
| turlpub wrote:
| > with all their supposed green credentials
|
| And their oft lionised 60B$ cash reserves.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I've called the county environmental service on a plastic
| recycling plant 0.5 mile's away from my house because any time
| the wind is blowing our way there's a really thick burning
| plastic smell that makes you want to gag. It makes it impossible
| to enjoy outside or open our windows.
|
| They try treating the smell as a nuisance complaint rather than a
| health hazard (tbh probably on purpose). Then they'll send
| someone to your property to see if they smell it.
|
| They need smell it for 15 continuous minutes and consider it
| intolerable for anything to be done about it. But the wind
| constantly shifts a little back and forth so it's impossible to
| get 15 continuous minutes and what they consider intolerable is
| so subjective. Even when it's strong the person tries telling me
| its barely noticeable and has the audacity to tell me it smells
| like popcorn (wtf?!?).
|
| The town doesn't care at all because it doesn't want to give
| residents preference over business.
|
| Now people are just starting to move away because they can't
| tolerate it anymore. It feels helpless when you're likely
| breathing in toxic VOCs and the people that are supposed to be
| the ones that help and protect you seem to be working for the
| companies.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Get with your neighbors and pay a company to sample that air. A
| report with actual numbers might help considerably.
| hanniabu wrote:
| We were having trouble finding anybody that would want to
| help and the costs were astronomical. Like we were getting
| quotes in the $250k range for the tests and the study.
|
| And even if we did that we'd have to prove that the poor air
| quality was coming from the plant, which you can't do unless
| you setup monitoring in their property, which they'd never
| allow.
|
| The company has a history of violations, but were somehow
| allowed to expand during COVID. That's when we started
| smelling it even though they were around for decades. They
| had air scrubbers before, but I haven't seen any new ones on
| their roof since the expansion, so all that new stuff from
| the new building must be just venting out.
|
| I feel horrible for the people that have to work inside.
| They're all foreigners that don't speak English. It doesn't
| seem like any of them are given breathing protection either.
| They're all getting taken advantage of.
| walterbell wrote:
| If there's a terrible smell, it should be detected by a
| $100 off-the-shelf TVOC air quality meter, the type that
| can detect perfumes. Have you tried one?
|
| If you know which specific gases may be present in the
| plant exhaust, there may be an existing low-cost (~$50)
| sensor [1] which can be assembled in a custom DIY air
| quality monitoring circuit like AirGradient (who post on
| HN). There are consumer particle counters (0.5 micron) for
| about $300, which have a serial port for continuous data
| logging.
|
| _> setup monitoring in their property, which they 'd never
| allow_
|
| Once there's a low-cost (sub $500) continuous air quality
| data recording device, then 4 of those devices in different
| directions from the plant, along with local wind data,
| could show a pattern over an extended period of time. In
| theory, wind-borne flying objects like kites and drones
| could also collect data on air quality indexed by GPS
| location.
|
| [1] MQ series of gas sensors: https://www.open-
| electronics.org/presenting-mq-sensors-low-c...
| cogman10 wrote:
| Have you contacted the EPA? This sounds like a violation of the
| clean air act. Your county enforcement might have limited
| powers vs what the EPA can do.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I've contacted the EPA and they said contact the county. It
| seems they want to see a county report before they get
| involved.
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| Regulation in this country has become a sad affair, once
| again.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| This is in Santa Clara, probably quite close to many HN regulars
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/WjLPzwrGvqoivBFT9
|
| I personally wonder if this is why I have been occasionally
| smelling weird chemical odors from time to time. I live about 7
| miles away, so probably not, but maybe.
| insaneirish wrote:
| Let's go with "definitely not", given the amount of other
| things that could be within a 7 mile radius of your location.
|
| The blog paints this as some secret lair of nefarious
| experiments. It actually refers to the facility as a "Secret
| Silicon Fab" which is quite the logical leap. I would suspect
| they're etching PCBs, perhaps? One thing is for sure, it's not
| a silicon fab.
|
| I'm sorry, but if you're going to come with grandiose claims,
| your foundation should be solid and not hypothetical.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" One thing is for sure, it's not a silicon fab."_
|
| Why do you say that? Yes, the EPA report seems to be redacted
| to obscure what they're actually doing there. But there are
| multiple reports, some from Apple employees, that refer to it
| as a being some sort of small scale, "skunkworks" silicon
| fab.
| insaneirish wrote:
| > Why do you say that?
|
| Mainly because Apple's custom silicon could not even be
| prototyped in a small scale facility. It'd likely be in
| Taiwan.
|
| > But there are multiple reports, some from Apple
| employees, that refer to it as a being some sort of small
| scale, "skunkworks" silicon fab.
|
| I apologize if I missed them. Please highlight. Curious of
| the credentials of the folks reporting such a thing, as
| well.
| talldayo wrote:
| > It'd likely be in Taiwan.
|
| For sampling new nodes and producing the bulk of their
| chips, sure. But anything that's not tied to ASML doesn't
| inherently _need_ to take place in Taiwan. TSMC is in a
| hugely advantaged position with IP and scalability, but I
| think it 's feasible that Apple could test new
| lithography techniques or large-scale dies in any sort of
| environment they choose. Nobody is necessarily implying
| that they're prototyping low-yield iPhone hardware there.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| It seems obvious to me that not every prototype needs to
| be done in TSMC's factories, and there are things that
| you can validate with cheaper processes.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Apple uses lots of other chips in the products besides
| the M-class mega processors being built at TSMC. Think of
| peripherals and MFI authentication chips.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I wonder why this post was flagged.
| s3p wrote:
| Me too. Plus, since this is the 'first' article about it on HN,
| all the others are being closed as duplicates. I feel like this
| deserves more attention.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| HN is almost my ideal link aggregator, my only nitpick is
| that flagging is too easy, there's no transparency or
| accountability. It's not the 90's anymore, we can't solely
| rely on honor these days.
| dang wrote:
| Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but
| there are nearly always clues to that in the comments. Now that
| the threads have all been merged, I think it's fairly clear
| what the arguments are.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| yep, thanks dang!
| null_investor wrote:
| Apple is dominated by ruthless managers and is an evil
| corporation. I'm not surprised.
|
| Imagine if you happen to be a neighbor and a disaster happens in
| the fab. That's just nuts.
| nehal3m wrote:
| All publicly traded companies with a fiduciary responsibility
| to their shareholders will always externalize any cost they
| can. The problem is bigger than Apple.
| jackjeff wrote:
| I don't know. As a shareholder it sounds like the dumbest
| move ever. In what universe would it make sense to have a fab
| so close to an appartment building and vent toxic gas. It's a
| PR disaster waiting to happen. Whatever savings you make by
| avoiding regulation you pay back in fines and reputation
| damages.
|
| What is it they saved here? Could they not fab this in a less
| populated area and just follow a few more regulations. We're
| not talking about a company with razor thin margins. They
| spent outrageous amounts of money building the spaceship HQ.
|
| I genuinely want to understand if this is stupidity or if
| there's really a profit incentive that makes "fiduciary"
| sense.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| What reputational damage? I follow tech news very closely
| and it's the first I've heard of it. A listed corporation's
| first instinct (unless it has a conscientious board) is
| always to try their luck and see what they get away with.
| You don't make profits by doing anything other than the
| absolute legal minimum, and that's only if someone enforces
| those rules. Listed companies have proven they cannot be
| trusted to self regulate, never ever
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I wish there was a ruling that publicly traded companies'
| fiduciary responsibility includes public health.
| dinobones wrote:
| Apple, you have infinite money. Just pay this lady the
| $50,000,000 she wants so she can move to a nice clean place over
| in Atherton.
|
| And pay your fines to the government and move your fabs to remote
| areas so this doesn't happen again.
|
| There, problem solved. I've saved everyone millions of dollars in
| litigation fees, time, and now our judiciary system can tackle
| other problems.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| I cannot tell if you are joking or not. But it is obvious she
| is litigating in public until she gets the payoff she wants:
|
| https://mastodon.social/@ashleygjovik
|
| Of course a big corp cannot give in easily to behaviour like
| that as it would just open the flood gates.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| A big corp can't give in because then they would have to
| install proper exhaust filtration and monitoring which would
| probably cost 10s of millions of dollars and require a lot of
| additional staff that would have to know what Apple is doing
| in those facilities.
|
| They prefer doing keeping their skunkworks small, and the
| easiest way to do that is to just install a charcoal filter
| and call it a day.
| npteljes wrote:
| That is not how humans work unfortunately. If any word gets out
| that a settlement like that can happen, then suddenly there is
| going to be a lot of people sick with such symptoms. It's the
| same reason why the "not negotiating with terrorists" policy is
| in place.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_negotiation_with_te...
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| Americans discovering the real reason why things are made in
| China
| cjk2 wrote:
| One of the many reasons. The biggest reason the last place I
| worked at that did manufacturing was that there were import
| tariffs on components but not assemblies so they just built the
| assemblies in China.
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| Wow: Import tariffs on components and not on assemblies
| sounds like corruption to me. No policy maker can be this
| incompetent
| cjk2 wrote:
| It's not corruption. It's naive legislation written by
| idiots and complex HS code manipulation.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Biden's revisions
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-
| releases...
| cjk2 wrote:
| I'm not in the US. There are other countries with this
| problem :)
| sgt wrote:
| How would complaining about this be received in China? I guess
| you have very few rights.
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| It won't come this far. First of all the website itself won't
| be allowed to be hosted. Moreover, the person would most
| likely be dead or in one of the reeducation camps for a long
| time. Most of the chinese large tech companies are funded by
| Chinese govt so complaining against them is like complaining
| against the govt or the party.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Hey it's just a discarded rocket first stage with hypergolic
| propellant, no need to worry if it falls on a population
| center.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| Or third world countries in general. As sexy as made in home
| country sounds, modern day manufacturing is truly deadly.
|
| Look at the chemical exposure Samsung treats their workers to.
| It happened in south Korea, but that's an other country, so it
| didn't matter. But it also happened in Canada, now it's news.
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| yups. Not to mention the amount of environmental damage such
| things do. For instance, all the rare earth metals have huge
| open air mines with of all kinds of acid & arsenic poisoning
| which is used during leeching & refining process
| hinkley wrote:
| But is it better if my lifestyle kills foreigners instead of
| fellow citizens?
| cjk2 wrote:
| While I don't doubt the facts and EPA analysis around the case
| and the measurements, how many other local residents reported
| this and are fighting it?
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| This is also what I wonder. So far the EPA has found a few
| faults, but with only one self reported case of humans affected
| among thousands of potential victims this whole story could
| still tip towards either "this is bad but all too common" and
| "this is a gigantic scandal of obscene proportions." The latter
| one makes for a better news story and twitter threads, but that
| also doesn't make every suspicion in there true by default.
| user_7832 wrote:
| It could be a combination of a few things. Maybe some people
| aren't as sensitive as this lady. Maybe some moved out. And
| possibly many just haven't spoken up or even are aware of
| such a factory releasing gasses.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| Indeed. But those are a few too many "coulds" for me to
| jump to any conclusions.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Yea I was really surprised reading this that I know a few
| people who lived in that apartment complex. The complex holds
| 1800 households, and the whole city has ~50k, so that single
| complex accounts for 3-4% of Santa Clara's total households.
| And only one woman has reported any issues, as far as we know.
|
| That said, Santa Clara is basically a giant industrial
| superfund site already from the semiconductor industry, so I'm
| sure there are plenty of people being poisoned by the pollution
| in the area.
| cjk2 wrote:
| Yeah this is not within the realms of even an 0.1% confidence
| interval. Indistinguishable from chance. Hypothesis should be
| investigated and then discarded!
|
| That doesn't make a good headline though.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Let's imagine you suddenly feel bad at 3 am, how would you know
| you should file a complaint against a specific lab run by a
| specific company? How would you even know it exists?
|
| You would go to the doctor and get some random incorrect
| advise. If you go online and check air quality you would not
| find anything obviously alarming. Maybe you decide you have
| asthma and move out of the city.
|
| I personally had a condition with an obvious cause that took me
| 4 years to pinpoint and doctors were bloody useless.
|
| If, hypothetically, I was being poisoned by some random
| industrial activity a mile away, I would never know
| ro_bit wrote:
| Why was the previous discussion flagged?
| user_7832 wrote:
| Charitably speaking, lots of Apple fans probably didn't like
| it.
|
| Only Dan or a moderator would be able to see details about the
| accounts that flagged it.
| pmontra wrote:
| I asked that question myself for other submissions several
| times. It happens that I start to write a comment, post it and
| find that the submission was flagged and disappeared from the
| HN home page while I was writing. Sometimes they feel like
| absolutely innocuous submissions. I wish there is an unflag
| link, not the one to undo one owns flag requests (which happen
| due to fat fingers and tiny links.)
| greyface- wrote:
| > I wish there is an unflag link, not the one to undo one
| owns flag requests
|
| The "vouch" link works like this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| probably because it's a pdf on dropbox, which can't really be
| trusted to be legit
| a012 wrote:
| I may be out of the loop, but I don't understand the
| negativity towards Dropbox links, what makes it different
| than other submission of PDF files?
| moritonal wrote:
| I guess for whatever reason this one was flagged? Seems enough
| people consider it not-relevant.
| dang wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40778992
| user_7832 wrote:
| > (...) Apple engineer "accidently" turning on lethal fluorine
| gas. Similarly, another incident, the TEOS leak, was root caused
| to an Apple engineer accidently installing the gas for a tool
| "backwards." Further, less than two weeks following the April 30
| 2021 phosphine leak, Apple's manifests included sixty pounds of
| "vacuum filters contaminated with glass dust," implying there may
| have also been a phosphine explosion.
|
| What the absolute @#$% is this??? Would I be wrong in assuming
| this should've made national news but was probably kept low
| thanks to Apple's deep pockets/connections?
| Afforess wrote:
| I like how Apple got the city HazMat to tip them off to the EPA
| inspectors, personally. Is that a new "best practice?" I am
| taking notes.
| happosai wrote:
| Having "contacts" in important places does pay off.
| AdamN wrote:
| Inside industrial settings I would presume stuff like this
| happens all the time. In fact, people even die sometimes. Even
| when a refinery blew up in Texas a few years back it barely
| made the news.
|
| On a side note, Fluorine is bad stuff but I believe it doesn't
| have a long lifespan so any impact would be immediate or not at
| all
| user_7832 wrote:
| I'm not surprised that such stuff happens often, I myself
| know people who've worked in such factories and lost
| colleagues. What I find odd/unusual is more about how this
| occurred (occurs?) in an urban area where regulations
| should've done something.
|
| Factory workers working in dangerous conditions and losing
| their lives is unfortunate, but their effects hurting/killing
| the general population (a-la Bhopal Gas Tragedy) should not
| be legally possible.
| youngtaff wrote:
| My brother works in a oil refinery lab...
|
| One of the test samples he opened (unexpectedly) had a
| flourine compound in it that strips calcium from bones... he
| jumped in the lab shower which sets of an alarm when
| activated, which leads to lab evacuations and an emergency
| team in hazmat gear arriving
| p4ul wrote:
| This is correct, sadly.
|
| I've done some work with the public data from the US
| Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA
| does a great job of making detailed data on inspections and
| accidents public. If memory serves me correctly, it turns out
| there are about two deaths per day from work-related causes
| in the US...
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I think not because all the concentrations were pretty low. The
| problem that Ashley faced was that she was exposed 24/7. But to
| me it looks like almost all of the gas concentrations would
| have been considered an A-OK working environment for up to 8
| hours of exposure.
|
| And while it's not wrong that fluorine is a lethal gas, it is
| heavily used in many industries and in medicine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorine#Inorganic_fluorides
|
| Her documentation shows a careless attitude on Apple's side.
| And there are enough independent parties documenting accidents
| that she can sue and win. But overall, this doesn't look worse
| to me than how many other industrial companies operate.
| disillusioned wrote:
| Isn't a bigger factor here, in addition to their careless
| attitude, the fact that they've started manufacturing
| semiconductors on land specifically only zoned for light
| industrial use, when, at least per her article, fabricating
| semiconductors is work that is required to be zoned heavy
| industrial?
|
| The issue being, of course, the proximity of residential to a
| "light industrial" vs. "heavy industrial" plot sure changes
| things for the people moving into those residences...
| infecto wrote:
| I would be surprised if they are not operating within the
| correct zoning but you never know.
|
| I think the bigger untouched issue is this is already
| contaminated land. Unclear if it's apple or the residential
| built on top of contamination.
|
| These cleanups seem to almost never work well.
| osnium123 wrote:
| That part of Sunnyvale and Santa Clara used to have many
| silicon fabs in the 1980s and 1990s before they all shut
| down.
| amelius wrote:
| People did many things in the past that are now not OK.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > they've started manufacturing semiconductors on land
| specifically only zoned for light industrial use
|
| This looks strange indeed, I thought light industry is like
| bicycle repair and large bakeries, definitely wouldn't
| expect a chemical plant
| ant6n wrote:
| It's like something out of some old Batman film: ,,we'll
| put the poison factory right in the middle of Gotham city!"
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| She invented the idea that they are making semiconductors
| there.
|
| They make device screens:
| https://www.siliconvalley.com/2018/03/19/apple-secretly-
| deve...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Has the linked article changed? It is currently an EPA report
| that doesn't seem to contain the quoted text?
|
| It's a bit weird that most of discussion seems focused on the
| person sharing the report rather than it's contents.
|
| Edit: OK, dang's comment sort of clears things up but the
| "thread consolidation" really results in some confusion.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Apple doubling down on the evil. No wonder the stock is up.
| murderfs wrote:
| The author of this has been on a crusade against Apple for years,
| stemming from an incident that was probably hypochondria. They've
| outright lied about multiple incidents (see
| https://twitter.com/shantinix/status/1433297575914971136), and I
| would very strongly doubt any new claims made. For example, a
| spot check of one of the claims has them currently saying "Still,
| Gjovik's limited testing returned results showing a number of the
| chemicals in use by Apple at ARIA including Acetone,
| Acetonitrile, Acetaldehyde, Benzene, 1,2-Dichloroethane, Ethanol,
| Ethylbenzene, Hexane, Isopropanol, Isopropyl toluene, Methylene
| Chloride, Toluene, and Xylene."
|
| But, in 2021 (at https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-
| dying-my-apart...), "I wanted to get some formal data in the
| brief time before I moved out, so I hired an industrial hygienist
| to sample the indoor air and some of the topsoil. Despite the
| $1,555 I had to pay for it, the results were inconclusive."
| chx wrote:
| Your slander doesn't mesh with the EPA report.
| murderfs wrote:
| My "slander" is a _quote from the author_.
| viraptor wrote:
| You haven't shown the lie you claim exists. Those could be
| references to completely different tests. (Or not, but from
| the limited information we can't say either way)
| murderfs wrote:
| The surrounding context makes it clear that isn't the
| case.
|
| From the linked post: "In September 2020, Gjovik hired an
| industrial hygienist to test the indoor air at her
| apartment. She purchased an inspection, soil testing, and
| a two-hour sorbent tube-based TO-17 air panel. Only half
| the total contaminants were accounted for in the test and
| the California EPA informed her that testing with Summa
| canisters for 24 hours is superior and would have yielded
| better results. Still, Gjovik's limited testing returned
| results showing a number of the chemicals in use by Apple
| at ARIA including Acetone, Acetonitrile, Acetaldehyde,
| Benzene, 1,2-Dichloroethane, Ethanol, Ethylbenzene,
| Hexane, Isopropanol, Isopropyl toluene, Methylene
| Chloride, Toluene, and Xylene."
|
| From the 2021 SF Bay View article: "I did try to do my
| own testing, but it was incredibly expensive and turned
| out to be insufficient. I wanted to get some formal data
| in the brief time before I moved out, so I hired an
| industrial hygienist to sample the indoor air and some of
| the topsoil. Despite the $1,555 I had to pay for it, the
| results were inconclusive. Apparently a different test -
| a "summa canister" - over a longer period of time would
| have been better. "
| proxyon wrote:
| This doesn't prove that she's lying. It proves that at a
| particular moment in time (day:hour:minute:second) she
| tested the air and had to spend $1500 to do it and it
| came up inconclusive.
|
| That doesn't align with how industrial air pollution
| works.
| murderfs wrote:
| I am interpreting that as her testing the air at a
| particular moment in time, and in 2021, the results from
| that specific test were inconclusive, but in 2024, they
| were very much not inconclusive. Either the article in
| 2021 was misleading, or the current one is.
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without swipes.
|
| If someone else is wrong, the thing to do is either (1)
| respond with correct information and better arguments; or (2)
| let go and move on.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| cjk2 wrote:
| This is in line of when I worked in a semiconductor lab in
| suburban UK in the 90s. We had a couple of local residents
| report problems immediately even though we hadn't even started
| fabrication at that point. They eventually sent out a press
| release saying that we had moved manufacturing to Scotland. The
| complaints stopped instantly. The lab was running until at
| least 2017 with no complaints and regular inspections from
| local authorities.
|
| YMMV but some people are crazy. The EPA is however not. But
| what the EPA say and what the woman claims are disparate.
|
| Edit: to be clear I'd expect the EPA to install independently
| maintained monitoring equipment which is not subject to the
| bias of Apple or the reporter. Then collect more data!
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > YMMV but some people are crazy. The EPA is however not. But
| what the EPA say and what the woman claims are disparate.
|
| To complicate it further, this woman did in fact live on top
| of an industrially-zone area which had industrial
| contamination on site. The apartments are very new (finished
| construction in ~2019) and they had to agree to a ton of
| cleanup to get permits to build.
|
| There are so many confounding factors that mean she could
| still have been poisoned by toxic industrial byproducts and
| the factor next door could still be innocent.
| cjk2 wrote:
| Well it would require more data which is the problem, and
| something I outlined elsewhere. Is she the only person
| complaining? The case is put forward as if that is the
| case. If that is the case then there is little evidence to
| discard the null hypothesis that there's nothing wrong and
| either alternate hypothesis that it's the Apple facility or
| the previously contaminated site seem very unlikely.
| synctext wrote:
| > many confounding factors
|
| Indeed. May 2022 TechCruch [0] about sexism at workplace:
|
| "Privacy watchdogs in Europe are considering a complaint
| against Apple made by a former employee, Ashley Gjovik,
| who alleges the company fired her after she raised a
| number of concerns, internally and publicly, including
| over the safety of the workplace." "At the time, Gjovik
| had been placed on administrative leave by Apple after
| raising concerns about sexism in the workplace, and a
| hostile and unsafe working environment which it had said
| it was investigating."
|
| [0] https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/11/gobbler-complaint-
| europe/?...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| She better hope she wins one of her lawsuits because she
| probably will never get a career job again.
| jldugger wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised the area is zoned for residential;
| the central expressway corridor has lots of industry
| nearby, including Intel. Plus that apt complex is right
| next the intersection of a major highway and major
| expressway, which won't be helping anyone breathe.
|
| But she's not the only resident and I haven't heard any
| indication of a class action.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| It's not zoned for residential. This one apartment
| building got an exemption.
|
| I'm sure the area being so desperate for housing is part
| of why this was allowed. Adding 1800 housing units is a
| huge deal in a city that size.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > But what the EPA say and what the woman claims are
| disparate.
|
| Yeah, the reports quoted with scary big red boxes seem to
| be... mostly minor or procedural stuff?
| npteljes wrote:
| Similar hysteria surrounds the 5G rollout as well. I remember
| anecdotes of people reporting health issues, when the already
| erected tower wasn't even on, but unfortunately I can't find
| the source for this again.
|
| In general, I find that people are hit or miss regarding
| their observations. Sometimes they are so on point that they
| seem like a savant, and sometimes they miss the mark so hard
| that I find believing anything further impossible.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_misinformation#List_of_prot.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_testimony
| cjk2 wrote:
| 5G was a fun one. When they built the 5G tower near me they
| didn't put any equipment in it. People complained about it
| at local planning meeting saying that it was giving them
| migraines, then someone burned it down. I moved and I have
| 5G but they still don't.
| npteljes wrote:
| This is exactly the type of story I remember reading
| about too.
|
| I feel the best type of public education would have been
| the listing of the many electromagnetic radiation sources
| we already have. Taking a sample person, say, from inner
| London, and enumerate just how many of the radiation gets
| to them already, from the 4G and previous sources, radio,
| the different equipment that a city has, and so on. I
| feel like people are missing the historical context is
| these cases, same with the COVID vaccine. We were already
| subject to many of the vaccines, and in many cases, the
| COVID vaccine wasn't anything different.
|
| https://www.immunize.org/official-guidance/state-
| policies/re...
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| EPA isn't the only governing body. It says right in their
| report the facility is being properly managed by the city of
| Santa Clara and the state of California.
|
| Also, they weren't doing chip fab there. It was R&D for Titan
| and MicroLED. There's a reason she's litigating her case
| against Apple pro se and without any expert witnesses and
| other lawyers. She's a basket case who went from _almost_
| fainting one time to now saying she almost died. She scared a
| lot of people at work who live in the same apartment building
| with this: https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-
| dying-my-apart... We all bought equipment thinking we were
| being poisoned. TL;DR, we weren't. I was on the bottom floor
| and 0000000000 VOCs.
|
| https://www.siliconvalley.com/2018/03/19/apple-secretly-
| deve... https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/apple-tech-
| layoffs-...
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| > I was on the bottom floor and 0000000000 VOCs.
|
| If the source of the chemicals was actually the emissions
| from the other facility and not the soil below the
| building, you would expect none in the lower floors where
| you were and more on the higher floors where this person
| was.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| That's because in 2020 she said it was vapor intrusion
| from the Superfund the apartments were built on.
|
| None of the rest of us got sick, including the people who
| worked in that building and the one next to it (we have
| 2).
|
| I'm not an environmental policy enforcer or scientist,
| but I can read from this report that the issue was
| mislabeled/unlabeled containers and haz waste treatment
| w/o EPA-required permit. None of that is going to make 1
| single person in the entire area sick.
| reaperman wrote:
| It's really hard to "catch" these things in the moment. I work
| in chemical plants and there are tons of huge releases of
| extremely toxic gases all the time, which I can often smell
| from my apartment. I know what they are by smell because I
| manufacture them myself. Proper continuous monitoring for a
| broad range of chemicals would cost about $1 million per
| monitoring station and we'd need to build them along the
| perimeters of each plant so that leaks can be assigned to the
| offending companies, and they need to be built near housing so
| that we know how families are being affected. That sounds
| expensive, but really isn't that much added cost for a $100
| million to $10 billion manufacturing site.
|
| I live in the western hemisphere's largest integrated
| industrial complex (Freeport, TX integrated with the eastern
| edge of Houston as well). Note that Freeport, TX has ZERO state
| or federal EPA VOC analyzers which can actually detect which
| chemical is leaking. They can only detect "this amount of
| something with either {sulfur, N-O bonds, aromatic carbon
| rings} -- no clue what precisely though!". This is the same
| capability of the most advanced atmospheric pollution
| satellites. Completely fucking useless for an area which
| manufactures something like 15-20% of all USA domestic
| chemicals. The technology to measure individual chemicals
| exists, but the government isn't paying for it or installing
| it.
|
| The ENTIRE east side of Houston metropolitan area is dedicated
| to or "next door" to massive chemical manufacturing. This is an
| industrial area nearly equal to the area encompassing all of
| Seattle+Bellevue+Redmond+Renton+Tukwila. That's not including
| nearby housing - that's just how big the manufacturing
| facilities themselves are! This massive area has only THREE air
| quality monitors which test for these kinds of chemicals[0].
| During huge major events like the ITC fire[2], they typically
| show no increased pollution at all, which proves that it's
| woefully inadequate even during big emergencies that very
| obviously affect breathing air quality. I lived next to leaks
| every day and because I worked in the plants I knew the smells
| - one day acrylates, next day thiols, next day hydrocarbons,
| etc. But all 3 monitoring sites (over 10 miles from me) showed
| nothing at all.
|
| Here is the one "correct" monitoring station near the chemical
| plants of Houston: [0]... but several of its analyzers are
| often offline/broken/pending maintenance. Here's a map of all
| the other ones: [1] Generally single/dual color dots mark "not-
| useful" monitoring sites which might measure only PM2.5 or
| Ozone, for example. The 4+ color dots are generally useful,
| they measure specific (large) families of chemicals so you can
| see very roughly what is leaking, even if it doesn't have
| "soot" in it.
|
| The data used by ProPublica[3] is actually far worse than the
| woefully inadequate data collected by TCEQ/EPA air monitoring
| stations -- because what ProPublica used was "self-reported"
| data from the chemical plants. But I know from working in them
| and living next to them that many leaks are never reported and
| many leaks are never even known internally! Our government's
| data collection is a travesty. ProPublica couldn't use the real
| air quality measurements because having 2-3 points across 1000
| mi^2 is completely useless for the wind models they wanted to
| apply to the problem. We don't actually have any data. The
| government is failing us.
|
| ITC fire which blanketed houston's sky in smoke: [2]
|
| :
| https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id...
|
| 1:
| https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id...
|
| 2: https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-
| qualit...
|
| 3: https://www.propublica.org/nerds/visualizing-toxic-air
| ImaCake wrote:
| >per continuous monitoring for a broad range of chemicals
| would cost about $1 million per monitoring station
|
| This seems a bit high, closer to $100k installation cost for
| fairly basic real time regulatory monitors seems about right.
| CEMS (automated stack testing) monitors should be somewhat
| cheaper if the engineers didn't screw up the housing location
| on the stack/vent.
|
| Otherwise, your prose very much matches my experience with
| air quality monitoring in Australia. It's an absolute mess
| and very much amateur hour compared to water monitoring or
| meteorology.
| reaperman wrote:
| $100k is about right in the USA as well for a single family
| of chemicals.
|
| Like in this case, if they only wanted to test for
| fluorinated compounds. Testing for "Acetone, Acetonitrile,
| Acetaldehyde, Benzene, 1,2-Dichloroethane, Ethanol,
| Ethylbenzene, Hexane, Isopropanol, Isopropyl toluene,
| Methylene Chloride, Toluene, and Xylene." might be
| somewhere in the middle of $100k to $1M, depending on
| desired level of differentiation between similar chemicals.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| I don't know anything about this... I'm curious how small
| could the monitoring station be. Could it be something that
| could be mobile, like in a trailer or cargo container format,
| and dropped off at a site temporarily and moved.
| reaperman wrote:
| Yes, there are vehicle and even aircraft-mounted options
| but typically a comprehensive station would be the size of
| a decently large shed / medium hauling trailer. Here you
| can browse a set of photographs[0] of one of the rare
| "comprehensive" air pollution monitoring stations in Texas.
|
| 0: https://www17.tceq.texas.gov/tamis/index.cfm?fuseaction=
| repo...
| ryandrake wrote:
| News articles about the user behind this twitter account have
| gone through a few rounds on HN in the past: [1][2][3][4][5]
| and she has a personal blog documenting her various legal
| battles with Apple: [6]
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28477392
|
| 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28811746
|
| 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830236
|
| 4: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35778735
|
| 5: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35179170
|
| 6: https://www.ashleygjovik.com/apple-legal-battle.html
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| You at all concerned about your exposure to random chemicals?
| reaperman wrote:
| Moving from the plant areas to downtown houston has brought
| a massive improvement in my health. I suspect that 4 years
| of living next to the plant has caused long-term damage ...
| but it's extremely difficult to prove anything, especially
| when there is no data at all that supports an assertion
| that my apartment was exposed to any leaks at all - not a
| single one of those near-daily emissions events was caught
| by the air quality monitoring stations, only a few were
| voluntarily reported to the EPA, and all of the emissions
| are permitted by the EPA / TCEQ either on an ongoing basis
| or one-off "forgiveness" basis after voluntary pro-active
| reporting.
|
| In one unit that I personally worked in and was responsible
| for, an intern was analyzing our procedures for emptying
| our tanks of waste products and realized that we had been
| "illegally" venting (without a permit) a lot of vapor from
| a waste tank every couple weeks when the liquid was full
| and needed to be emptied into trucks for proper disposal.
| We told the state regulatory authority that we realized we
| were out of compliance, and asked for permission to
| continue doing it this way until we had time to fix it. We
| got permission to continue doing what we were doing for
| another 2 years, with options for additional extensions. So
| the "illegal" emissions became "legal" overnight once we
| reported ourselves, and there were no consequences for the
| 10+ years of "illegal" emissions. This is very typical - in
| general if a company "self-reports", they do not face any
| punishments, but will face some small punishments if the
| regulatory agencies are the ones who find the problem. This
| encourages companies to be upfront about acknowledging,
| reporting, and (eventually) fixing their own problems.
|
| One woman I know worked in a facility that produced a
| chemical known to cause issues with pregnancies, and
| suffered 4 miscarriages while trying for a baby before she
| simply refused to go out into the plant she ran at all
| during her fifth pregnancy, which she successfully brought
| to term. It's still not cut-and-dry that the chemicals
| caused her miscarriages, and there's no hard "evidence"
| that she was even exposed to those chemicals at all, or in
| concentrations above EPA limits.
|
| Unless a pipe bursts suddenly and coats you with a chemical
| and sends you to a hospital, it's very difficult to prove
| that you were ever really "exposed" to the chemical. Even
| if you do get an obvious harmful exposure, it's difficult
| to assign any long-term consequences to that particular
| exposure.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| I'm still looking into this and forming my opinion. It's very
| curious how at the end of her YouTube video she mentions other
| residents in her building came forward and said they too were
| sick (numerous ER visits over 2 years), and they DIDN'T KNOW
| WHY, until they saw her expose in the newspaper. That seems to
| counter your hypochondria theory, no?
|
| see: https://youtu.be/pGK4_sR1CvY?si=KEK9xh0mUEStV76-&t=2680
| 42lux wrote:
| You can't really use a questionable source to verify the same
| source.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| fair point. i guess i'm just illustrating that it's not as
| clear as the parent makes it seem.
| Angostura wrote:
| People get strange symptoms all the time. I currently have a
| chronic scalp condition that doctors haven't really
| identified and a really stiff neck. Of course I'm going to go
| 'aha!' If someone gives me a plausible explanation
| Citizen8396 wrote:
| Psoriasis and computer neck?
| dekhn wrote:
| There are many situations where people assign causality when
| there is no true evidence or mechanism. One of the best
| examples are cancer clusters. There have been examples of
| well-understood (almost certainly causal) cancers caused by
| industrial occupation, but cancer is common enough that some
| things that look causal are purely coincidental. For example,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls was almost
| certainly causal, while "high voltage electrical lines cause
| cancer" probably is not
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/health/long-after-
| an-80s-...)
|
| So no, it doesn't counter the hypochondria theory.
| buro9 wrote:
| > and I would very strongly doubt any new claims made
|
| And I would very strongly doubt the word of a People Team
| member as the conclusive evidence of any lying.
|
| People Team are there to reduce the liability for the company,
| the company in this case are the very company in question for
| alleged environmental issues.
|
| What actually happens vs what a trained People Team member
| knows to document are seldom the same thing, and people on the
| receiving end of the consequences of this seldom have their
| full wits about them at the time and are almost never lawyered
| up at that time.
|
| If you had other receipts I'm sure people might consider them,
| but if your main gripe is based on what a People Team / HR
| person says... yeah, that's not conclusive either.
|
| The one party I would trust most here are the EPA, and the
| author didn't fabricate (pun intended) the reports made by
| them.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I've seen non-redacted versions of what she's shared on
| Twitter versus her redacted versions which tell a completely
| different story, and she puts her own spin on it that is
| detached from reality. I've seen her lie directly on at least
| one occasion (and play the victim card about it), and when
| combined with everything else makes me trust her 0%.
| noptd wrote:
| Any sources to link?
| spacemule wrote:
| I'm naturally inclined to be suspicious of people claiming
| pollution is the cause of a disease. It's certainly possible,
| and it certainly happens, but every individual case is a sample
| size of one, and the best we can say is it's likely an
| environmental factor played a part. On top of this, it seems
| the claimant has either through frustration or with malicious
| intent exaggerated or fabricated some of the claims. So, I'll
| agree with you to be highly skeptical.
|
| On the other hand, it's entirely reasonable to assume that a
| large corporation would maximize its profits: it has a duty to.
| If the expected profits exceed the expected costs of breaking
| the law, guess what's going to happen. Probably the fairest
| outcome here is better enforcement mechanisms. Unfortunately,
| this outcome leaves both parties worse off in exchange for an
| improvement to society.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| The EPA ruling against Apple casts doubt on your ad hominem
| accusations.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Did you read the report and specifically the areas of concern
| the EPA had? They seem minor at best. More than half of them
| are mislabeled containers that are _too broad_.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| "The Author"? Was this once a different link? The current link
| seems to be a report by the EPA.
| jmah wrote:
| This was originally a comment on
| https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html via
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773136
| CHB0403085482 wrote:
| More details:
| https://mastodon.social/@ashleygjovik/112668309100333232
| sgt wrote:
| There should be more strict zoning laws. You can't have
| industrial processes happening anywhere near homes like these. I
| thought California was strict on zoning?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| "Silicon" Valley was a super-fund site full of contamination
| long before this was desirable to live in. The semiconductor
| industry poisoned the valley decades ago. Santa Clara county
| has more superfund sites than any other county in the US.
|
| If there is an issue, it's that these apartments were built (in
| ~2018). There are a number of other industrial sites nearby and
| the building was built in industrial zoning, after agreeing to
| numerous requirements to clean up the land to make it safe.
|
| https://www.envirostor.dtsc.ca.gov/getfile?filename=/public%...
|
| https://www.santaclaraca.gov/home/showdocument?id=17071
| mcfedr wrote:
| It's funny, mostly your zoning laws seem to create crazy
| problems, and yet the one actual problem they are supposed to
| solve and they completely fail
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I find it surprising that apparently she's suing Apple not only
| for dumping toxic chemicals into the air directly next to her
| apartment, but also for an unrelated case of Apple's security
| videotaping the women's toilet rooms.
|
| That chemical court case seems very strong to me, with multiple
| indipendent parties having measured the gas in the air. (Edit:
| and multiple government agencies reporting chemical accidents at
| Apple) So it doesn't seem like she's trigger happy to sue, which
| would imply that there might also be merit in her other case.
|
| Good thing Apple never had "don't be evil" as their slogan ;)
| canogat wrote:
| I recognized her name when this story dropped. She's been on an
| Apple vendetta for some time.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| At what point does legitimate whistleblowing become a
| vendetta?
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| When the Apple fan boys say so.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| As yet, none of it is legit
| eqvinox wrote:
| People can be right and on a vendetta at the same time. The
| only thing relevant for this heading is: does the EPA report
| point at an actual problem?
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| No
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Such credulous people in this thread.
|
| I'll keep an open mind, but it seems strange that this lady was
| an Apple employee and happened to also be the victim.
|
| Have other people been identified that suffered similarly to her?
| Where are their lawsuits? Or is there something special about her
| health condition, or her specific apartment unit, or something
| which means only she was susceptible to this?
| abdellah123 wrote:
| This is crazy. I'm ashamed of using Apple devices at home ...
| i5heu wrote:
| Does Apple really owns this Fab? I thought they do almost
| anything manufacturing wise outsourced like their CNC
| contractors.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| They did R&D for Titan and microLED screens and were part of
| the layoffs in April.
| kazinator wrote:
| Yes, before you can have a Japanese-like zoning system where you
| can have factories close to homes, people have to stop being
| dickheads like this.
| itmm wrote:
| More context about Ashley Gjovik and her relationship with Apple.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Gj%C3%B8vik
| JSDevOps wrote:
| Her YouTube video sounded so fake with the fake coughing and
| everything perfectly choreographed.
| infecto wrote:
| This person seems unhinged and not of sound mind. I had to skim
| through this...article because it jumped around too much.
|
| The problem is really most of her examples seem like she is
| forcing the connection. Like her 3am dying spells and one of the
| times it happened her VOC measurements went up. It could very
| well be there is an issue with the plant exhaust but it could
| also be the land the apartment was built on or any number of
| issues with the new construction.
| eqvinox wrote:
| Was looking for a better source (or better data), found this:
|
| "Emergency Permit for Treatment of Hazardous Waste, Apple, Inc.,
| Sunnyvale, California" https://ceqanet.opr.ca.gov/2022120706
|
| ... but it's for half a liter of some weird shit that seems to
| primarily be a fire hazard(?)
| Infinity315 wrote:
| There is a disappointing amount of character slander rather than
| refutation of the author's claims happening on this thread. The
| foremost trustworthy party is the EPA.
|
| Note, I am not a lawyer or anyone who could professionally give
| an opinion on this.*
|
| The most egregious violation the author purports Apple did is the
| illegal venting of hazardous chemicals.
|
| IMHO, the most plausible evidence supporting the author's claim
| can be found in the (redacted) EPA report in observation #11.[1]
|
| My understanding is that waste streams (hazardous materials being
| vented into the environment) must be accounted for in order to
| accurately calculate how often you must change carbon filters
| (called breakthrough time in the report) and that carbon filters
| lose efficacy as hazardous gasses are passed through it.
|
| Anyways, the report found that Apple did not account for all the
| waste they were putting through the filters and thus could not
| accurately assess the "breakthrough time" of the filters. There
| is a plausible case that could be made that a filter had reached
| its "breakthrough time" -- potentially leaking hazardous gases
| into the environment. This reportedly has been occurring since
| atleast* Dec 2020, which could be around the time the author
| moved in which was also 2020 (unspecified range).
|
| 1.
| https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/312oqvretg7yyhfx0ohx4/AGZduVX...
| cyanydeez wrote:
| the coincidence between the author and the "atleast" date
| simply means there's not enough evidence before that date.
| Dealing with EPA and other pollution control agencies will tell
| you very much they dont want to get into these situations
| because it makes them look bad.
|
| It likely was happening way before this and the EPA could
| likely pinpoint the exact date based on simple log entries, but
| they won't stick their neck out farther than corroboration
| goes.
| Aurornis wrote:
| What do you mean they don't want to? Their job is to report
| the facts in a legally consistent manner, not imagine what
| might have happened.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| it's not imagination to look at log books and say "well,
| they weren't reporting things here that they were reporting
| there".
|
| Thats not imagination. However, they're simply following up
| the "corroboration" part. Because someone identified a
| problem, _now_ they have to be a detective.
|
| I'd posit, _it is their job_ to find incriminating evidence
| and thus enforcement. In many places, they are not doing
| this. They are purely reactive.
|
| Thats my point; has nothing to do with imagination.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to read the actual reports. The
| Mastodon thread is editorialized and manipulated to an extreme
| and it's clear that the author is pushing an agenda. I wish we
| had some better news coverage and analysis, rather than a
| social media post to link to.
|
| This author wastes no time mixing her imagined claims with the
| EPA report, such as insinuating that Apple was doing worse
| things but hid them before the inspectors could get there.
| moralestapia wrote:
| The agenda of making companies operate in a safe and sane
| way?
|
| Sign me up!
| lloeki wrote:
| There's a notable difference between fucking up the filter
| efficacy lifetime expectancy - meaning there are filters
| that were expected to work - and "I don't care" venting
| toxic fumes straight out the window like a Breaking Bad
| meth homelab or a Dark Waters dig dump cover up.
|
| A GP scenario doesn't mean there's no blame either, but
| it's markedly different than the Dark Waters scenario
| described in the Mastodon thread, the latter which does
| read like it's using all the incendiary social media
| tropes.
|
| Which one it is in reality I don't know and certainly won't
| claim I do.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The agenda of injecting completely unsubstantiated claims
| into the story and trying to pass them off as fact, such as
| the claim that Apple hid many more violations before the
| inspectors could get to them.
|
| No basis in fact, just pure ragebait conjecture.
|
| Her agenda is about getting clicks and followers first.
| She's not making companies operate safer, she's just
| editorializing a public report from the agency that
| _actually_ works on making companies operate safely. All of
| her editorializing and fake claims is undermining the
| actual situation by making the facts unclear and making
| people trust reporting on the subject less.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| I think her agenda might be more about winning her
| expensive lawsuit
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Apple hid many more violations before the inspectors
| could get to them
|
| Yeah, that one claim is definitely hard to take
| seriously. Companies usually try to look their worst when
| they know an inspection is due.
| pc86 wrote:
| I used to follow her on Twitter but as the cases dragged on
| and she started losing various arguments the editorialization
| and manipulation of facts to be almost-but-not-quite-untrue
| to serve her agenda became way too much.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| The problem is that the EPA report doesn't say what she says it
| does.
|
| 1. Apple doesn't do chip fab at Scott Blvd. They did R&D for
| Titan and microLED screens and were part of the layoffs in
| April.
|
| 2. The EPA says that they didn't have permits WITH THE EPA, but
| were permitted with California and Santa Clara County/City.
|
| 3. She says the carbon filters weren't changed, not the EPA.
|
| 4. She says Apple said materials weren't hazardous waste, but
| the report says they were labeled "California Waste", meaning
| they weren't properly reporting the materials to the EPA, but
| were to the state of California.
|
| 5. How is it this woman was nearly killed, while the employees
| who WORK in the building are perfectly healthy, the next door
| businesses have no sick employees, and the other thousands of
| residents in the apartment building are also not sick?
|
| 6. Why isn't the news covering this? Why aren't they shut down?
|
| None of this makes any sense and looking at her lawsuit, she
| seems like she needs to serious mental help.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Why are you so keen to whitewash potential mishandling of
| dangerous chemicals and poisoning of the public? You do not
| appear to have any more understanding of the situation that a
| layman. Your points to do not sound convincing and do not
| engage with the issue at all.
|
| > How is it this woman was nearly killed, while the employees
| who WORK in the building are perfectly healthy
|
| This is quite ignorant of how this actually works. How is it
| possible that Union carbide plant in Bhopal killed 16,000
| people in one day but most employees were perfectly healthy?
|
| > the next door businesses have no sick employees other
| thousands of residents in the apartment building are also not
| sick?
|
| You are obviously wrong, have you ever tried going around
| your neighbourhood and asking people: "hey, there has been
| consistent release of dangerous chemicals, is anyone sick?".
| That's a population of thousands of people, dozens of people
| will have bronchitis, asthma, inflammation, cancer, god knows
| what. How do you know if it is related to the chemical
| pollution?
|
| Perhaps dozens of people have felt symptoms and went to the
| doctor, and maybe they were diagnosed with Asthma or
| allergies or some other erroneous disease. Maybe they moved
| to the countryside by now, believing themselves to be ill.
|
| Unless someone knocks on the door, polls the residents, takes
| blood samples and tests them at an independent lab, conducts
| statistical analysis of all the medical records, etc. you
| have no moral right to assert this.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| the EPA actually does monitor that area's residents because
| they live on Superfund site
| threeseed wrote:
| I wish she would just state the facts as it makes it hard to
| read.
|
| For example, she says that EPA typically arrives unannounced but
| because the Apple EH&S team were present this is indicative of
| some conspiracy to allow Apple time to cover-up issues.
|
| But this is just her opinion with a more logical explanation
| being that Apple Security simply contacted the EH&S team when the
| EPA arrived at the front door.
| water-data-dude wrote:
| Reading the screenshots, it sounds like they showed up with the
| fire dept., which was going to do some sort of unrelated
| inspection. Apple wasn't informed that they were going to be
| there, the author even highlights "EPA's participation in the
| inspection was unannounced". I'd assume the EH&S team was there
| for the (expected) fire department inspection
| ru552 wrote:
| She's not a reporter. She was fired from Apple for breaking an
| NDA. This isn't the first time she's made sensational claims
| against Apple.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Issues surrounding the author's personality aside (that have been
| raised enough in other threads, and quite a few of them in a tone
| I'd say borders on unethical): in Germany, we have strict zoning
| rules for heavy industry - some particularly bad polluters have
| up to 1500m of required distance to residential use [1], even if
| the area they're planning on operating in is already zoned
| industrial.
|
| Wonder how Apple got approved to even construct this facility so
| close to residential (or, if Apple was there prior to residential
| usage, why residential construction was allowed so close to
| them), in California of all places that's even known here in
| Germany to have really strict zoning requirements.
|
| [1]
| https://recht.nrw.de/lmi/owa/br_bes_text?anw_nr=1&gld_nr=2&u...
| microtherion wrote:
| Silicon Valley is so littered with superfund sites that it
| would probably be near impossible to find places safe for human
| habitation under such rules.
|
| Which is not to say that the rules are unreasonable, mind you.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| It's because it is not a chip fab. They make device screens
| there.
| Teever wrote:
| Why is it so hard for companies to just do the right thing?
|
| Like it isn't a lack of resources for Apple, it isn't a lack of
| education or safety awareness.
|
| It's wilfull disregarding of the health of innocent strangers.
|
| People need to go to jail for this.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| It's hard for companies to do the right thing because the wrong
| thing is cheaper, and cheaper is king in business
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| In case it's not a rhetorical question:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I worked as an engineer in Apple for several years in a core
| division, and there was extensive training, and not
| perfunctory, about being ethical and doing the right thing. It
| was a very serious core principle.
|
| Because of that, this case really looks like a mistake, not
| willful disregard, when I consider all we were trained in
| earnest back then. It seems the EPA found no violation, and
| Apple learned someone had failed to change filters as
| frequently as needed.
| linuxftw wrote:
| This is just one small facility in the US. Imagine the damage
| being done world wide where there are fewer regulations and and
| even fewer inspectors. We're outsourcing our pollution.
|
| Is this the same person that wrote about how their apartment
| complex was constructed on an un-mitigated FEMA site? I think she
| should move to a more rural location, many cities have this kind
| of contamination.
| millzlane wrote:
| Moving away won't fix the problem. As someone who lives in a
| large city, The response to companies destroying our
| environment shouldn't be move away. I'm not even a "tree
| hugger" and this pisses me off. We only have us to rely on.
| Fixing and preventing this issue doesn't seem like a hard
| decision to make.
| linuxftw wrote:
| I meant for her personal well being. Some people are much
| more sensitive to chemical exposure than others.
| infecto wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Gj%C3%B8vik
|
| Helpful context on the validity of this heavily editorialized
| site. Seems like Apple definitely is not in the right here but
| very unclear if it has anything to do with this persons claims.
| If you follow her history of forming complaints it is hard to
| take her serious as most of her complaints get dropped and these
| are complaints filed against different agencies.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| She also filed a 650 page complaint which so irritated the
| legal system that new case law was formed to bound the
| permissible lengths.
|
| It seems she originally got fired by Apple, where she was a
| product manager, for leaking NDAed info. It also seems she's
| been on an anti-apple tear since.
|
| Personally, I worked as an engineer in Apple for several years,
| and it was by far the most ethically run and conscientiously
| run place I've ever seen, so her sequence of Apple complaints
| originates in a non core division, so is not like the
| engineering core world I was in, but sets off my "wait, what?"
| sense honed from experience.
| ajdude wrote:
| Here's the whole thread "unrolled", including the EPA report:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1805006150410162322.html
| tr3ntg wrote:
| Thanks for this. It's amazing how useless twitter links have
| become to signed out viewers.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks. I included that in the top comment I pinned above.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I love how anything negative to Apple gets buried with the
| quickness. They can do no wrong it seems.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post low-quality overgeneralizations to HN. There
| are plenty of anti- stories about every $BigCo.
| dang wrote:
| Can anyone find the OP on epa.gov? That would be preferable to a
| dropbox.com link.
|
| We merged half a dozen of these threads. Related URLs follow. If
| there are others, let me know here and I can add them.
|
| https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1805006150410162322 and
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1805006150410162322.html
|
| https://mastodon.social/@ashleygjovik/112668309100333232/
|
| https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| Here is the facility:
|
| https://echo.epa.gov/detailed-facility-report?fid=1100011682...
|
| Maybe the document is from a FOIA request or something similar
| (and therefore not public)?
|
| > The US EPA notified her they finalized the report but are
| currently unable to share it with her as Apple apparently
| declared the report of their (assumed) numerous environmental
| violations is Apple Confidential. Gjovik has a pending FOIA
| request as well.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| It's probably not been uploaded to their docs yet
| settsu wrote:
| Not that it should matter, but it seems impossible to conclude
| anything from the publicly available information and neither
| party seems interested in building a coherent narrative that
| strengthens their position.
|
| And, like it or not, if an argument relies on confusion (
| _especially_ if intended to bring the other party 's credibility
| into question with the general public) then _that_ argument can
| easily appear specious.
| gtmitchell wrote:
| As a chemist who has actually done micro fabrication work, this
| reads to me like a classic case of a non-chemistry company trying
| to do chemistry R&D and finding out it's a lot more complicated
| to follow all the rules than they thought it would be.
|
| Robust chemical safety systems (both equipment, procedures, and
| employees) are expensive to implement and maintain, and they
| don't scale downward easily. Companies doing small-scale
| production or R&D tend to have the worst practices.
|
| That said, the findings in this EPA report don't seem terrible,
| just indicative of a sloppy small-scale operation. Finding
| labeling issues is the lowest of low hanging fruit for any sort
| of chemical inspector, and Apple not being able to manage even
| that is just sad.
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| They don't do chip fabrication there, they make device screens:
| https://www.siliconvalley.com/2018/03/19/apple-secretly-deve...
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