Industry Leaders Endorse Hughes CFC Replacement
Business leaders, scientists and environmentalists Wednesday gave Hughes Aircraft Co. favorable reviews for its new non-toxic, citrus formula that replaces ozone-damaging chemicals widely used in the defense electronics industry.
Hughes plans to formally unveil its new substitute for chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, at news conferences today in Los Angeles and Washington. The formula, developed at the company’s sprawling Fullerton complex, is water soluble and can be used in the manufacture of most circuit boards, company officials say.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington called the new technique “environmentally superior,” with one top official giving Hughes “high marks across the board.”
Other major electronics companies, including AT&T; and Northern Telecom Ltd., have created a variety of new ozone-safe processes to eliminate the use of CFCs, which react in the upper atmosphere and damage the Earth’s protective layer.
But the most promising aspect of the Hughes technique is that it is the first to meet the Defense Department’s rigid specifications for manufacturing military components, according to Hughes officials and the EPA. It also is hailed as a low-cost process that most industries can adapt easily, while maintaining or even improving the quality of their products.
UC Irvine atmospheric chemist Ralph Cicerone, a leading national expert on ozone depletion and global warming, said Wednesday that he was pleased at the prospect that a major company such as Hughes could replace CFCs used as cleaning solvents.
Cicerone said if it works in defense work as Hughes contends, it could eliminate much of the worldwide use of CFC 113, which is the most potent ozone-depleting chemical and the most difficult to replace.
“I’m optimistic that they really have something here,” said Cicerone, chairman of UCI’s geosciences department. “If this process by Hughes works for (defense projects), it is going to be very, very helpful.”
Although environmentalists welcome the Hughes development, they want even greater assurances from the defense industry.
David Doniger, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, challenged Hughes--and the rest of the nation’s defense contractors--to vow to eliminate use of all CFCs, as soon as possible, no later than 1994.
Doniger noted that other electronics firms are working on similar technologies which also could be available soon to defense manufacturers.
“This is a step forward. It sounds like another arrow in the quiver of the electronics industry,” said the attorney, who has helped lead the movement to stop use of CFCs. “When industries fighting environmental regulations finally put their best people on doing it, instead of complaining about it, they come up with remarkable breakthroughs.”
Hughes officials say the new formula, researched since 1989, was developed with the input nd approval of the Defense Department and is already being used on four Navy contracts that Hughes manufactures at the Ground Systems Group in Fullerton.
“From the looks of it, this is very welcome news,” said Theresa Pugh, senior environmental affairs manager for the American Electronics Assn., an organization that represents 3,500 electronics companies.
“Evidently, this has broad-reaching ramifications for military specifications, which have been the bane of everyone’s existence,” she said. “In the past, even if companies wanted to get out of CFCs, the government said you can do it but you can’t sell it to us anymore.”
CFCs react in the stratosphere and eat a hole in the Earth’s ozone layer, the shield that safeguards the planet from ultraviolet radiation. The solar radiation can cause skin cancer and cataracts as well as upset the world’s ecosystems.
Electronics firms have been struggling to find safe and efficient substitutes because an international agreement called the Montreal Protocol gradually phases out production of the chemicals and bans them by the year 2000.
Large quantities of CFCs are used by commercial electronics firms and defense contractors to remove acidic compounds, known as fluxes, from circuit boards. The fluxes are applied to clean corrosion from the boards before they are soldered.
Instead of the acidic fluxes, which leave a residue, the new Hughes process uses the citrus material to remove corrosion, which means strong cleaners like CFCs are unnecessary.
Many large electronics companies throughout the world, including IBM and AT&T;, have come up with new techniques and vowed to stop using CFCs by 1993 or 1994. One major company, Northern Telecom Ltd., based in Ontario, Canada, stopped using CFCs two months ago.
Echoing the comments of other industry officials, Hughes said it cannot vow to eliminate CFCs by a certain date, as Doniger suggested, because of the stringent production demands of the military.
One Hughes representative said that the new technique will be used “as soon as possible” in all Hughes plants but that each project has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis because of military standards. The only promise they could make is that they will meet the requirements of the Montreal Protocol.
Environmentalists credit Northern Telecom, a worldwide telecommunications firm, for making the biggest advances in eliminating CFCs. On Nov. 30, it became the first major electronics company in the world to stop using CFCs at its 42 manufacturing operations.
The company uses a new flux called “No-Clean” that leaves far less residue on circuit boards and eliminates the need for cleaning solvents. Unlike Hughes, Northern Telecom did not seek a patent for the development and shared it worldwide for free, including publication of a manual distributed by the EPA.
The Northern Telecom technique has not yet obtained military approval. But Art FitzGerald, a vice president of environmental affairs for Northern Telecom, said he believes that it is “just a question of a short period of time before” that approval comes.
FitzGerald said Northern Telecom spent $1 million on its technique but already has saved $4 million by eliminating CFCs and will save $50 million by the end of the decade. He also said its products are better than when they were using the chemicals.
Times staff writer Kristina Lindgren contributed to this report.
