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US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

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Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#81

Post by murderfs »

viraptor wrote: post #73
murderfs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My "slander" is a quote from the author .

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)

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. "

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#82

Post by pmontra »

ro_bit wrote: post #47

Why was the previous discussion flagged?

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.)

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#83

Post by piyushpr134 »

langsoul-com wrote: post #74
piyushpr134 wrote: post #45

Americans discovering the real reason why things are made in China

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.

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

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#84

Post by Arn_Thor »

jackjeff wrote: post #75
nehal3m wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All publicly traded companies with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders will always externalize any cost they can. The problem is bigger than Apple.

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 regulati…

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

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#85

Post by piyushpr134 »

sgt wrote: post #68
piyushpr134 wrote: post #45

Americans discovering the real reason why things are made in China

How would complaining about this be received in China? I guess you have very few rights.

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.

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#86

Post by vineyardmike »

cjk2 wrote: post #72
murderfs wrote: post #55

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…

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 fr…

> 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.

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#88

Post by greyface- »

pmontra wrote: post #82
ro_bit wrote: post #47

Why was the previous discussion flagged?

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.)

> 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

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#89

Post by proxyon »

murderfs wrote: post #81
viraptor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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…

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.

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#90

Post by newaccount74 »

throwaway4good wrote: post #79
dinobones wrote: post #42

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.

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.

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.

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