Chinese workers poisoned while making touchscreens for Apple ask for help.
Some 137 workers suffered adverse health effects following exposure to a chemical, known as n-hexane.
[Workers] Injured while making touchscreens for mobile devices, including iPhones, have written to Apple asking it to do more to help them.
Apple did not offer comment on the letter.
Wintek, the Taiwanese company that owns the factory, said that it used the chemical in place of alcohol because it evaporated more quickly and speeded up production of touchscreens.
Wintek also supplies components to a number of other companies, including Nokia and HTC.
Full article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12550429
More:
Apple admits China factory workers poisoned: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/17/3141880.htm
The fatalities come amid mounting condemnation of working conditions at the Taiwanese-owned plant and the decision of several of the company’s biggest clients – Apple, Dell and Hewlett Packard – to investigate how their products are being manufactured.
WINTEK Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintek
This is not the first problem Apple has experienced with its Chinese factories.
Its annual report also references an incident at its main China supplier Foxconn’s factory, where over a dozen workers committed suicide.
FOXCONN Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn
Clients:
- Apple Inc. (United States) [19][7]
- Amazon.com (United States)
- Intel (United States)
- Cisco (United States)
- Hewlett-Packard (United States) [20]
- Dell (United States)
- Nintendo (Japan)
- Nokia (Finland) [19]
- Microsoft (United States)
- Sony (Japan)
- Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden) [21]
Foxconn suicides: ‘Workers feel quite lonely’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10182824
Yesterday Foxconn sent a letter to be signed by all employees, removing liability to the company should an employee die. It immunised them against law suits. There was an outcry in the Chinese media and today Foxconn withdrew the letter.
Experts talk of ‘mass hysteria’ after eleventh Foxconn suicide
The company’s plant in Shenzhen is a city-sized complex set up to feed the global appetite for cheap technology.
Speculation that big brands might take their business away from Foxconn to protect their image is unrealistic, said one Tokyo-based electronics analyst. He said that consumers were no longer prepared to pay the sort of money it would cost to build computers, digital cameras and iPods without the productivity of companies such as Foxconn.
