SIA to research cancer risk for semiconductor clean room workers

San Jose (CA) - The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced that it will initiate a large scale study to be able to draw conclusions, whether semiconductor clean room workers face increased health risks.

Allegations that semiconductor materials are not the healthiest work environment have been around for as long as the industry exists. According to the SIA, these allegations never have been backed up by sufficient and credible data to provide affirmative evidence of the health influence of semiconductor clean rooms.

The organization currently is seeking proposals from interested investigators for the conduct of an independent retrospective epidemiological study of US semiconductor wafer fabrication workers. A request for proposals (RFP) solicits proposals from public and private institutions - including universities, colleges, laboratories, and governmental agencies - to conduct the study. The study will span data collected through US semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities over a period of more than three decades, from the late 1960s to the present, the SIA said.

SIA spokesman John Greenagle declined to comment on the budget of the study, but said that data from more than 200,000 people will be reviewed with results of the study expected to be available no earlier than 2008. Greenagle said that the organization will work with a substantial team of researchers with expertise in different fields. The study will be sponsored by SIA member companies which collectively employ more than 255,000 people in the US.

The study is motivated by an 18-month study conducted by the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), which found that there is no affirmative evidence of increased cancer risk among semiconductor workers but that it had not found sufficient data to determine whether exposure to chemicals or other hazardous materials created an increased risk of cancer. In 2002, the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Bloomberg School of Public Health told the SIA, that sufficient records do exist to conduct a scientifically valid epidemiology study.

"Allegations of increased health risks are not going away," Greenagle said. While the SIA hopes that there is no increased health risks, results of the study would allow making decisions what actions to take, he said. The study would face significant challenges as well as in a technological as well as scientific respect. Due to the long incubation time of cancer and the rapid change in semiconductor clean room working environments, it would take time to draw the right conclusions. "In a first step, we will get the facts," Greenagle said.

According to the SIA, the process of collecting data presents several challenges. Some early data are written by hand, later data in some cases is recorded on systems which cannot be read with today’s devices."

Several media reports and especially the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition raised questions whether the clean room is so clean after all. "It’s only clean if you’re a chip," said Dr. Joseph LaDou, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of California-San Francisco said in an article published in the Houston Chronicle in 1998. More than 100 former employees of IBM had sued the company, after they were diagnosed with cancer. In 2003, one of these employees testified that working in clean rooms was a "dirty job," where hazardous chemicals stained floor tiles, discolored machines and splashed workers.

The SIA plans to select a research team in the first quarter of 2005. According to the organization, the stury will be one of the largest epidemiology studies ever funded by private firms.