Solar panels pose an environmental hazard, claims report
Sometime in the late 1970s, toxic chemicals from semiconductor plants in San Jose, Calif. began leeching chemicals into the local water supply. As birth defects soared and families sickened, investigators began a search for the culprits, eventually fingering IBM and Fairchild Semiconductor in 1981.
At the time an extremely high-profile case, the episode helped introduce public safeguards to high-tech manufacturing. It also provided for the birth of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a group that is… Continue Reading