Environmental Engineering
where can i get good information on microchip factories in a place such as india especially about its enviromental impact
There is much recent news about job outsourcing to places like India, especially in the semiconductor integrated circuit industry. Most of these jobs are engineering design and customer support jobs. Although some manufacturing is moving to India, many of the major microchip manufacturing and assembly factories are in Taiwan, China, Korea and Malaysia, where labor costs are significantly cheaper. These countries have fewer environmental protection laws than in the US, Japan, and Western Europe. (There are also several major microchip fabrication facilities in the US, Japan, and Europe.) I work with a lady whose husband recently came back from a trip to China. He performed water analysis at the request of the Chinese government. From what my colleague informs me, after analyzing the water in Beijing, her husband was afraid to take a shower. His concern was more for the biological contamination than for semiconductor processing effluence, although the industrial and chemical contamination remains an issue in China. With respect to microchip manufacturing, several countries like India and Taiwan are making voluntary agreements to pursue a cleanup of their environment. Some of this voluntary activity was initiated by the Kyoto Protocol, although the US finally decided not to sign the agreement. See the following links for more information. http://www.semichips.org/backgrounders_environment.cfm http://www.semichips.org/iss_environment.cfm http://www.semichips.org/iss_world.cfm http://www.cleantechindia.com/eicnew/index.htm http://www.cleantechindia.com/eicnew/guidelines/Electronics1.htm http://www.roc-taiwan.org.uk/taiwan/5-gp/eco/eco3_a6.htm http://unfccc.int/program/mis/wam/attachments/wamatt007_2.pdf