The production of computer chips -- the thumbnail-sized bits of silicon at the heart of any information-age appliance -- is a massively wasteful process and one that may be dumping an unknown level of toxic chemicals back into the environment, a new study says.
The study, led by Eric Williams of the United Nations University in Japan, says the production of a garden-variety computer chip known as DRAM consumed 800 kilograms of fossil fuel and chemicals for every kilogram of DRAM chips made -- a ratio of one unit of chips for 800 units of input.
By comparison, it takes about two tonnes of fossil fuels to make a car that weighs a tonne, a ratio of 1:2.
Moreover, almost none of the chemicals used to produce computer chips end up in the final product, Mr. Williams said, which means most of that material must be discarded or reused.
And researchers say there is little publicly available data about those chemicals or the environmental effect of the semiconductor industry.
"Microchips themselves are small, valuable and have a wide variety of applications, which naively suggests that they deliver large benefits to society with negligible environmental impact," Mr. Williams wrote in the December issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology. "On the other hand, the semiconductor industry uses hundreds, even thousands of chemicals, many in significant quantities and many of them toxic."
High-tech industries have long fashioned themselves as environmentally friendly and capable of supporting sustainable development policies. But Mr. Williams's work raises some fresh questions about that assumption.
New anecdotal evidence is also coming to light about some of the manufacturing operations of the world's biggest high-tech companies.
In Albuquerque, N.M., for example, residents say air pollution from a chip-making plant there is making some people sick. Intel Corp., the company behind the Pentium microprocessor, has its biggest chip-making operation in Rio Rancho, a suburb of Albuquerque.
"The people who live nearby and downwind report a great deal of sickness and their sickness coincides with when they smell strong chemical odours when the wind is coming their way from Intel," said Fred Marsh, who lives a few kilometres from the Rio Rancho plant and who recently retired from his job as a research chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "While we don't have absolute proof, the circumstantial evidence is very strong. Also, the sicknesses began about 10 years ago when Intel did its first major expansion. Before that, there were no complaints. There are so many facets, so many different angles here to be concerned about. It is not a clean, simple situation or problem by any means."
Intel has refuted the claims made against it and says it is complying with all environmental regulations.
On Wednesday in Mountain View, Calif., a suburb of San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held a public meeting to tell residents there that levels of trichloroethylene -- a solvent used to clean microchips and degrease industrial machinery -- were 65 times higher than normal in parts of the city. Intel, again, and other chip makers have been linked to one of the sites where the higher-than-expected chemicals were found.
Mr. Williams and his colleagues did not set out to assess the semiconductor industry's environmental record. But in his paper, he wrote, "It is plausible to believe [industry] claims that emissions issues have been largely addressed. However, little real evidence exists to support or refute this."
Mr. Williams also said significant data has not yet been put on the public record that independent researchers could use to assess the industry's environmental record.
For his paper, titled The 1.7 Kilogram Microchip, Mr. Williams was able to secure some data from an anonymous industry source that detailed some of the materials used in a U.S. semiconductor company. The researchers also relied on data provided by various government agencies in the United States and Japan, industry association data, and some company data.
Using all those sources, Mr. Williams and his research team concluded that the total weight of secondary fossil fuels and chemical inputs to produce a single two-gram 32-megabyte DRAM chip is 1.6 kilograms.
So, to produce one kilogram worth of computer chips -- or 500 two-gram chips -- a manufacturer would use up 800 kilograms of fuel and chemicals.
As for energy consumption, using Mr. Williams's calculations, it would take more than 300 megawatt-hours of electricity to produce one tonne of computer chips. By comparison, it takes just 75 megawatt-hours of energy to produce a tonne of aluminum, long believed to be one of the most energy-intensive materials manufactured.
A 32-megabyte DRAM chip is a garden-variety memory chip, used in millions of devices around the world, including personal computers, video game consoles, cellphones and even cars. DRAM stands for dynamic random access memory. Even though the study looked at this particular kind of microchip, the results would be broadly applicable to almost any other kind of computer chip.
"The materials intensity of a microchip is orders of magnitude higher than traditional goods," Mr. Williams wrote.
Computer chips, containing hundreds and often thousands of individual electrical circuits, are manufactured on thin wafers of silicon. Silicon is the world's best-known semiconductor.
David Akin is national business and technology correspondent for CTV News and a contributing writer to The Globe and Mail.
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