Safety Problems Plague Circuit Board Industry
The warning signs at Tustin Circuits were apparent long before Jose Robles took a job there.
The plant often reeked of ammonia, evoking numerous complaints from neighbors. Inside, toxic and incompatible chemicals were stored, unmarked, next to each other, the state said. In the back room, vats of acid emitted fumes so pungent that an Anaheim fire inspector who visited in May 1995 wrote: “It burned my eyes when I entered.”
For Robles, a 21-year-old newcomer from Mexico, another hazard loomed. The drill machine he was operating was missing a protective guard. And at 1 o’clock one morning last July, the young man’s right forearm was crushed, and two of his fingers were later amputated, according to Cal/OSHA, which fined Tustin Circuits $22,000.
Tustin Circuits refused to comment, and owners Py and Marvin Cha are appealing the fines. But said Albert Sanchez, a former plant manager who quit last September: “Robles wasn’t trained, and the equipment was old.”
Robles’ accident, as horrifying as it sounds, didn’t surprise safety specialists familiar with the burgeoning printed circuit board industry in Southern California, which now has the biggest segment of the industry in the country.
Only a few years ago, the industry seemed to be on its last leg. Although circuit board manufacturing grew up in California in the ‘60s, thanks to the Silicon Valley and the growing defense sector, in the last decade manufacturers started to turn to lower-wage countries in Asia. As military spending declined, California’s employment in the industry fell by a third from 1988 to 1992.
Since then, however, the domestic industry has made a dramatic comeback, fueled by booming consumer demand for personal computers, cellular phones and electronic games. And as in the garment industry, the work has also returned because of the need for smaller orders requiring quick turnaround and mid-production changes.
More than 26,000 people in the state, most in Southern California, now work in circuit board factories, up 11% from four years earlier, making it one of the fastest growing manufacturing industries.
But circuit board manufacturing also is one of the most hazardous industries around, according to CAL/OSHA, and inspection records and interviews indicate that serious health and safety problems abound.
That such high-tech sweatshops exist may seem at odds with an industry reputation of precision and cleanliness. But in circuit-board production, especially in the early stages--in which workers cut panels, bore holes and apply solutions and acids--conditions are far from dust-free. At some shops, immigrant laborers earn low wages toiling in harsh, grimy conditions that harken back to an earlier era.
“It’s ugly, nasty, hazardous work,” said Sam Richardson, a Cal/OSHA industrial hygienist in Anaheim, who has inspected a dozen circuit board companies in the last year. “There are a greater number of serious hazards that need to be addressed.”
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The problems aren’t with the few big circuit board makers that dominate the region’s industry. Companies such as Toppan West of San Diego tend to have highly automated processes and generally run safe operations, experts say.
“In general, it’s a pretty well-run business,” said Fred Friedman, vice president at Kirk-Miller Associates, a Palo Alto firm that does market research for the industry. “I don’t think they’re any more guilty than other industries.”
But scores of mom-and-pop contractors battle for the industry’s crumbs, and it is in this cutthroat arena where shop owners cut corners around safety and environmental regulations to shave costs.
Most of the state’s 550 printed circuit board makers are small businesses, shops employing fewer than 20 workers and often tucked away in light industrial buildings in communities such as Santa Ana and Chatsworth, according to experts and business directories.
Many of the factory workers are immigrants, and their tasks include etching, plating and soldering, usually involving dangerous chemicals.
Inside some of the worst circuit board shops, inspectors say, the air is thick and putrid because employers have not installed proper ventilation systems. Carpets have been eaten away by acids, and workers without adequate protections can get stung by the spatter from vats of oil cooking at 300 degrees. Bathrooms are often filthy, and on the outside, patches of grass have turned brown because of chemical spills.
Budd Warshauer, a Huntington Beach consultant who advises circuit board makers on safety and environmental issues, is a frequent visitor to these shops.
“They’re out there, they exist, they undercut the legitimate businesses,” he said.
Cal/OSHA, the state’s safety and health agency, ranks circuit board manufacturing among the high hazard industries, along with forestry, coal mining and heavy construction.
But for the most part, circuit board shops have slipped by Cal/OSHA’s radar because inspections are mostly triggered by complaints. And in this industry of immigrants, workers aren’t likely to finger an employer.
Although Cal/OSHA records show only a dozen accidents at circuit board shops in the last five years through February, analysts say that’s because people in the industry aren’t reporting injuries.
Take Tustin Circuits, where neither the workers nor managers notified Cal/OSHA about Robles’ accident, though all serious injuries are supposed to be reported. Cal/OSHA found out about the amputation through interviews with workers and an inquiry of the company’s workers’ compensation carrier.
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A number of industry workers, including Robles and his co-workers at Tustin Circuits, did not want to be interviewed. But safety inspectors and company managers who have talked with them say the workers fear they will lose pay or wind up on the streets if they complain.
“When you talk to these people, they say they’re lucky to have a job and don’t want to rock the boat,” Richardson said. “So it doesn’t get reported and nobody cares about it.”
Richardson said his dozen inspections of circuit board shops have yielded an average of 17 violations per shop--a rate eight times greater than the norm for all businesses. Other inspectors who have visited circuit board manufacturers also reported a high rate of violations.
Among the most common problems, the inspectors said: lack of employee training, inadequate equipment to protect workers from pounding noise and acid splash, substandard eye wash and safety showers, and improper storage of toxic materials.
“It’s not unusual to find shops in this business to take shortcuts in some areas,” said David Shapiro, director of sales and marketing at Advanced Controls, a company that sells machinery to circuit board makers.
Even so, Cal/OSHA records obtained through the Public Records Act show that inspections of the industry have been haphazard, averaging just 30 shops a year this decade. At that rate, a shop could expect to come under a Cal/OSHA examination once about every 18 years--less than half the inspection frequency for garment contractors.
“Why such an intense focus just on garment?” asked David Bacon, a former electronics worker in the Silicon Valley and organizer with the United Electrical Workers Union, which has had little success in unionizing printed circuit board shops.
Bacon recalls one case that drew public attention in late 1992, when dozens of immigrant workers at Versatronex in Sunnyvale walked off their jobs after complaining of low pay and nose bleeds caused by working around toxins. Workers at Versatronex eventually won union recognition, but the company responded by shutting down the plant.
There have been other notable accidents. incidents. Of the dozen logged by Cal/OSHA, one case in mid-1993 involved 15 workers at a shop in Upland who were taken to a hospital emergency room after complaining of headaches and nausea. The workers were released later in the day, and the company, New Bedford, received one general citation.
A year later, in another facility, ADI Isola Inc. in the Bay Area, a worker named Jose Lopez was assigned to a cleaning operation in the mixer room using dimethyl formamide, a toxic liquid that penetrates the skin. Lopez worked with the chemical for 10 hours, according to Cal/OSHA reports, without a respirator and adequate protective foot and body gear.
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The chemical soaked through his shoes, Lopez told Cal/OSHA, and his feet became discolored. The next day, Lopez said, he became ill, vomiting every hour throughout the night. When he went to the hospital, he was diagnosed with chemical hepatitis and was hospitalized for six days. He returned to work a month later, Cal/OSHA said, even though his liver test results indicated he shouldn’t.
The company was cited for 19 violations, including six serious ones related to Lopez’s injury, and fined more than $15,000. A follow-up visit by Cal/OSHA six months later found that ADI had not corrected all of the problems, and it was again cited for five serious violations and fined $4,360. The company did not return telephone calls, but records show it has paid all the fines.
The circuit board business has always been fiercely entrepreneurial. Many shops were born as one-person operations with little more than shears, soldering guns and chemicals bought in hardware stores.
“It’s one of the industries some did in their garages,” said James Weigand, a hazardous materials specialist at the Anaheim Fire Department who has inspected a number of circuit board businesses over the years. “They know the mechanics but don’t understand the safety issues.”
But owners also flout safety and other regulatory laws because compliance is expensive. In an industry of thin profit margins that is lightly regulated by Cal/OSHA, experts say, some find noncompliance--and the savings they can pocket from it--worth the risk.
“With more and more competition, you’ve got people trying to cut corners,” said Valerie Griswold, an Orange County deputy district attorney.
Griswold and Kip Kinnings, an investigator in Orange County’s environmental protection unit, have long been chasing rogue circuit board makers. Though they are careful not to paint it as a scofflaw industry, they note that they have had plenty of work, coming across a new case of illegal chemical dumping about once a month.
In one of the most recent cases, two brothers who operated a pair of related shops, Pentadyne in Anaheim and Pentaflex in Placentia, earlier this year pleaded guilty to felony charges of dumping acids and other metal wastes into the sewer system.
Late last year, Pentadyne was also cited by Cal/OSHA for 17 violations. The allegations included failing to provide an emergency shower, eyewash equipment and training on the handling of combustible materials and toxic acids. The company, which has since relocated to Placentia and continues to operate, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Upendra Shah is a part-time environmental/safety manager at Velie Circuits, which employs 150 people and does about $40 million in annual sales.
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Shah said his company spends about $10,000 a year on health and safety programs. “We have lots of good equipment, most procedures are automated,” he said.
Equipped with computers that can drill holes as small as the diameter of a human hair, some employees work in sealed-off rooms wearing blue gowns, gloves and masks.
But on a recent visit by Cal/OSHA, Velie was cited for two dozen violations, including several serious ones, and was assessed fines of about $10,000. The inspector’s report said employees complained of burns from splatter, and one worker had wrapped paper and tape around his forearms to protect against acid splash.
The company has appealed the fines. Shah said he provides training as well as safety glasses, respirators and other protective equipment. But workers don’t always use them, he said.
“I understand it’s the company’s responsibility. But on the other hand, the company cannot baby-sit employees all day long.”
Cosmo Innamorato, quality control manager at Rock Industries, a 35-employee shop in Huntington Beach, said it’s a struggle to keep up with all the safety and environmental regulations.
Innamorato has worked at Rock Industries for the last 17 years, through the boom and the bust years. But it wasn’t until last May that the 20-year-old company encountered its first Cal/OSHA inspection. The result: 16 citations, though none of them serious, along with $3,600 in fines.
Innamorato said the fines have been paid and the violations corrected. But he complained that the citations were technical, such as an electrical cord out of place or a safety shower not being close enough to the production area.
Still, he said the company installed a safety shower for $700 and has since hired a safety consultant to go through the entire 12,000-square-foot plant. The consultant, he said a bit grudgingly, costs about $60 an hour.
“We find it very difficult to compete with offshore shops, and part of it has to with costs of safety,” he said.
