Semiconductor Industry and Birth Defects

Massachusetts birth defects attorneys focusing on workplace exposures

The Boston law offices of Thornton & Naumes, LLP has a long, distinguished history of helping semiconductor workers and their families seek justice for birth injuries caused by their workplace environment.

Our firm first represented semiconductor workers with reproductive health injuries in the late 1990s. Our initial semiconductor case, Edward Ayers et al v. Shipley Company, Inc. and J.T. Baker Inc., was one of the first lawsuits filed in the country involving a clean-room worker in the semiconductor industry who suffered reproductive harm. This suit involved claims against the manufacturers of dangerous semiconductor chemicals. It was successfully resolved in Massachusetts state court after three years of litigation.

Leaders in semiconductor birth defect litigation

Over the past several years, Thornton & Naumes has litigated cases against the manufacturers of semiconductor wafers or chips and other components involving birth defects among the children of employees in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. One of these cases, Parikh v. Digital Equipment Corporation, alleged that Digital Equipment Corporation in Hudson, Massachusetts failed to provide employees with a safe workplace resulting in exposures to numerous birth-defect-causing chemicals such as ethylene glycol ethers (EGE). Our law firm litigated this case against Digital’s successor, the Hewlett Packard Company, for several years. The case resolved in 2009.

The Pastides Study links semiconductor exposure to spontaneous abortions

The Parikh case was of particular significance as the exposures took place in the same facility that became the subject of the first major epidemiological study of reproductive harm in the semiconductor industry. This study, commonly known as the Pastides Study, was performed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts in the early to mid 1980s and found significant association between spontaneous abortions and employment in semiconductor manufacturing.

While litigating Parikh and other semiconductor birth-defect cases in Massachusetts, Thornton & Naumes expanded its representation to hundreds of families with children with birth defects related to work in semiconductor manufacturing facilities across the United States. The firm represents plaintiffs in cases involving semiconductor manufacturing plants in Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and other states. These cases involve birth defects arising from a mother’s and/or father’s exposure. The types of birth defects involved in these cases include:

Broad range of semiconductor workers suffer harm

The semiconductor workers involved in these cases held different positions in manufacturing or fabricating semiconductor wafers, from photolithography operators and etch operators to engineers, maintenance, and even clerical workers. Common to all workers was their presence in the Fabs, or manufacturing facilities where silicon wafers were constructed (fabricated). They worked in so-called clean rooms that were designed to protect the chips or wafers from contamination. However, the recirculated air and inadequate exhausts on the tools in the cleanrooms resulted in harmful exposures to the workers.

Multiple studies document dangers

It was well known to the industry that certain chemicals integral to the semiconductor manufacturing process (such as ethylene glycol ethers) were reproductively harmful. In fact, the semiconductor’s own trade association, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), informed their members as early as 1982 that EGE was causing birth defects in animal studies.

Many of the companies in the semiconductor manufacturing industry had health and safety personnel or industrial hygienists who were also aware that, as early as the late 1970s, animal studies existed in published literature reporting birth defects. The federal government (NIOSH) and the State of California in the early 1980s released official notices of the reproductive hazards associated with EGE.

These government reports indicated that dermal exposure (skin absorption) was particularly dangerous and should be completely avoided. At the same time, the manufacturers of solvents containing EGE used in semiconductor manufacturing facilities also informed the semiconductor manufacturers about the availability of safer, less-toxic alternatives to EGE, known as propylene glycol ethers (PGE).

Manufacturers knew but failed to act quickly

Although the semiconductor industry had actual knowledge of the reproductive harm of EGE, the industry’s response was slow. Most companies did not substitute EGE with PGE until the mid to late 1990s. This is even more stupefying as the Pastides Study, reporting a positive association between reproductive harm and work in semiconductor manufacturing was released to the industry in 1986.

Several more years lapsed until the industry completed and published its own epidemiological study in 1996. Not surprisingly, this study confirmed the findings of the earlier Pastides Study. In 1996, a third study by Johns Hopkins University of IBM semiconductor workers was published. It found similar results of elevated miscarriages among workers in the IBM semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

While the industry was undertaking these studies from the mid 1980s to early 1990s, untold numbers of spontaneous abortions and birth defects occurred among the workers in this industry and their children.

Thornton & Naumes and our co-counsel expect the first trials of this new wave of birth defect semiconductor manufacturing lawsuits to take place in 2011 in cases filed against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in the state court of Delaware. The trials of these cases will be followed shortly thereafter by Thornton & Naumes’ other cases filed in Illinois and California.

Trust our birth defect attorneys to help

Contact the Boston law firm of Thornton & Naumes online or at 1-888-491-9726 for a free consultation with a recognized leader in toxic tort and birth defect litigation. You have nothing to risk. We offer a fair and accurate assessment of your case, and, perhaps, some hope.