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Comment by user_7832 | Hacker News Reader

> (...) 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?

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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.

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...

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.

That part of Sunnyvale and Santa Clara used to have many silicon fabs in the 1980s and 1990s before they all shut down.

People did many things in the past that are now not OK.

> 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

They make display screens there, not semiconductors.

It’s like something out of some old Batman film: „we‘ll put the poison factory right in the middle of Gotham city!“

She invented the idea that they are making semiconductors there.

They make device screens: https://www.siliconvalley.com/2018/03/19/apple-secretly-deve...

"LCDs are manufactured in cleanrooms borrowing techniques from semiconductor manufacturing"

> The problem that Ashley faced was that she was exposed 24/7.

She never faced to industrial chemical exposure, let alone 24/7. She didn't work in that building. She worked as a program manager for a software engineering team in an office building in Sunnyvale.

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

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.

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

Hydrofluoric acid. Nasty, nasty stuff.

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...

just two? given how massive the US and its industrial capacity is, I'd expect it to be way more

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.

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.

Having "contacts" in important places does pay off.

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