Danger in The Clean Room

For 8,000 male and female workers at five AT&T manufacturing plants around the U.S., a "clean room" is the low-humidity, highly sanitized workplace where noxious chemicals are used to make silicon wafers into microchips. Yet the clean rooms may be anything but. Last week AT&T disclosed that 15 pregnant employees who worked in those production areas had been warned about a sharply increased risk of miscarriage. When the company "strongly recommended" that they transfer to new jobs, at least until after they had given birth, all complied.

The AT&T move was the most recent response to evidence that the work involved in creating microchips can lead to miscarriages. Other semiconductor manufacturers, such as Intel, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments and Advanced Micro Devices, already encourage mothers-to-be to remove themselves from microchip production areas. The latest round of corporate concern originated with Digital Equipment, the computer-manufacturing firm, where a number of women production workers suffered miscarriages over the past five years. Digital commissioned a study of the problem by Harris Pastides and Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's division of public health. The two investigated a group of 744 women and found a somber correlation. Pregnant women working where nitric and sulfuric acids were used to engrave circuitry patterns on silicon wafers experienced a miscarriage rate of 39%, vs. the national average of roughly 20%. Even though it has long allowed pregnant workers to transfer from such areas, Digital says, its study is inconclusive. "We have the data," says Spokesman Jeff Gibson, "but we have no way of drawing any causal inferences from them."

For her part, Lydia Whitefield of AT&T emphasized that the latest wave of transfers was a "precautionary move." The company has commissioned its own study, which will explore the effects of clean-room operations not only on expectant women but on men and on women of childbearing age who are not pregnant. Meanwhile, all those employees may seek transfers out of the clean room.