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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

#91

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…

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 perime…

>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.

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#92
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?

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#93
post #46

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?

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.

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#95
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#97

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…

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

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#98

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…

> 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.

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#99
post #47

Why was the previous discussion flagged?

probably because it's a pdf on dropbox, which can't really be trusted to be legit

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?

Re: US EPA Enforcement and Compliance on Apple Fabrication

#100

> (...) 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 explosio…

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

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