Producers of PFAS chemicals, a key component in most electronic devices, and semiconductors have formed a group to develop science favourable to their industry to avoid regulation because of high levels of toxic waste discharged from their facilities, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
The group, called the PFAS Consortium, formed during the boom in domestic semiconductor manufacturing spurred by the Science and Chips Act, which led to $825 billion in investments aimed at bolstering the semiconductor industry.
But experts worry that if left unchecked, the boom could generate huge amounts of toxic waste. The semiconductor industry is a highly polluting industry and a major source of unregulated and unmonitored toxic PFAS (“forever chemicals”), some of which are also potent greenhouse gases.
“Toxic waste from the industry has been growing exponentially, and almost no one has paid any attention to it,” said Renee Siegel, a member of Chips Communities United, a group that works with industry and government officials to implement environmental safeguards.
“The next time you Google something or chat, you will be using a chip that was manufactured in a way that irreversibly releases PFAS into the environment.”
Testing data from one US manufacturing facility (fab) in 2022, reviewed by The Guardian, showed that some samples of wastewater contained as much as 78,000 ppt of PFAS. The EPA’s legal limit for common compounds is 4 ppt.
Public health advocates are increasingly sounding the alarm, calling for simple safeguards to curb PFAS waste in semiconductors and urging the industry to find safer alternatives, and manufacturers are responding.
The consortium’s white paper, circulating among policymakers, makes the case against regulation. In a document titled “Impacts of Potential PFAS Regulation,” the consortium acknowledges PFAS contamination but repeatedly emphasizes that little regulation exists and opposes any proposals for waste oversight or regulation.
Finding safer alternatives is “in some cases impossible,” the paper said, adding that finding replacements would require “going back decades in technological progress.”
The paper touted the industry’s efforts to reduce waste and said the industry would continue to voluntarily reduce pollution “if exemptions are granted.”
That appears to have caught the attention of lawmakers: A bipartisan amendment to the defense bill likely to be approved would exempt new semiconductor manufacturing projects from environmental review, and federal records show lobbying by the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade group that organized the PFAS Consortium.
The consortium is a “purely technical effort comprised of industry experts from around the world dedicated to gathering the data needed to develop a science-based industry approach to PFAS,” Laurie Bue, executive director of the Semiconductor Industry Association, said in a statement.
Siegel said the CHIPS Act contradicts the Biden administration’s comprehensive 2021 plan to curb PFAS contamination and that policymakers have largely ignored the public health impacts. But a group of U.S. senators, including Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, recently called on the Commerce Department to impose tougher regulations on chip manufacturers.
“The American people have invested more than $50 billion in this industry and should be able to reasonably expect that in return they won’t be exposed to toxic chemicals or breathe polluted air,” Markey said.
PFAS are a group of about 15,000 chemicals that are often used to make products resistant to water, dirt and heat. Known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down naturally, PFAS are linked to cancer, liver damage, thyroid problems, birth defects, kidney disease, weakened immune systems and other serious health problems.
Manufacturing semiconductors is a highly complex process, and PFAS are key ingredients used in as many as 1,000 nanometer-level steps, including photolithography and plasma processing, the industry document said.
Manufacturing plants are notorious for contaminating nearby drinking water and air with an array of dangerous toxins, including TCE, arsenic, and chloroform. It is largely because of the toxic pollution from this industry that Silicon Valley is the Superfund capital of the United States, and when public pressure led tech companies to open factories overseas, their operations made employees in those countries sick.
“It’s not just about PFAS. This is a very dirty business,” said Arlene Blum, president of the Green Science Policy Institute, a public health advocacy group.
Still, an amendment to the defense bill authored by Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly would eliminate environmental reviews of semiconductor production projects that require companies to disclose the types and amounts of pollutants from their planned facilities.
Environmental groups are using the review as an opportunity to lobby the Commerce Department to require monitoring and treatment of PFAS wastewater, something that is not currently required by law.
“Exempting these factories from regulation seems like a really bad idea,” Bloom added.
“It’s a difficult challenge.”
The chip manufacturing process releases PFAS into water and air. The industry uses fluorinated, or PFAS, gases in a variety of processes, but the toxicity risks of these gases are poorly understood.
But their impact on the climate is clear: Once in the atmosphere, fluorinated gases can be transformed into TFA, a greenhouse gas with a lifespan of more than 1,000 years. Researchers have been alarmed in recent years by the ever-increasing levels of TFA in air, water, human blood and other environments.
Industry recovers some fluorinated gases but cannot destroy them. Manufacturers sometimes try to incinerate or thermally destroy the chemicals, but this often does not completely remove the compounds and can create dangerous by-products.
“It’s a challenge because there are so many different types of PFAS in use,” said Ariana Spentzos, a science and policy associate at the Green Science Policy Institute. “The industry says, ‘Just burn it and you’re good to go,’ but in reality they’re just releasing different types of PFAS.”
Like other industries, chipmakers have stopped using two of the most toxic PFAS compounds, PFOA and PFOS, and switched to less toxic alternative chemicals. The PFAS Consortium touts this switch in its white paper as evidence of environmental activism, but a growing body of research shows that alternative PFAS chemicals are also dangerous.
Siegel noted that PFBS, an alternative compound commonly found in industrial wastewater, is less toxic but still more toxic than most of the other regulated substances.
Some chip makers ship the captured PFAS to hazardous waste treatment facilities, but deep-well injection sites are prone to leaking, and the PFAS is then sent to incinerators, which release the chemicals directly into the environment.
That’s why public health advocacy groups are pushing for alternatives to PFAS, rather than waste management, Siegel said.
“The agency wants to send PFAS to licensed treatment facilities, but in the absence of more data, my interpretation is that they will likely send it to communities of color to be incinerated, creating toxic by-products,” he added.
Chip makers lobby Congress to lift regulations
Many of the chipmakers in the PFAS Consortium belong to the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade group that fights legislative and regulatory issues on behalf of manufacturers.
Taiwanese multinational semiconductor maker TSMC pays about $160,000 in annual membership dues to the trade group and $50,000 annually in fees to participate in the consortium, documents show. Federal election records detail how the Semiconductor Industry Association spent about $1.5 million last year lobbying Congress and the Biden administration, armed with the PFAS Consortium’s science to underscore the industry’s position to avoid PFAS regulations.
This year, they’re on track to far surpass that figure, including lobbying for a defense bill that would block environmental review.
“The consortium strongly opposes these measures,” Siegel said, adding that the industry is exploring alternatives, “but we’re looking at what we can do without disrupting production.”
The consortium’s Beu said in a statement that it could not comment on individual members’ lobbying activities.
“We remain committed to providing the tools needed to support industry efforts to track and reduce PFAS, the availability of alternatives, and the development of further reduction technologies,” she said.
The consortium also argues in its white paper that removing PFAS from some production processes could take years or even decades, and that removing some of the chemicals may be impossible.
That may be true, but “they can’t just sit back and do nothing” and should increase research and development into alternatives, Spentzos said. He cited the University of Massachusetts’ 2022 collaboration with high-tech materials maker Transscene to quickly and successfully develop replacements for PFAS in semiconductor etching processes as an example.
“They really have to innovate and create safer alternatives to PFAS … but this is a great example of them doing that in a much shorter time than they expected,” Spentzos said.
