High tech and toxics: A guide for local communities

192

Reports and reviews

BOOK REVIEW : HIGH TECH AND TOXICS : A GUIDE FOR LOCAL COMMUNITIES . By Susan Sherry and eight contributing authors . Published by National Center for Policy Alternatives, 2000 Florida Ave . NW, Washington DC 20009, 469 pp ., 1985 . Price : US $31 .15 including overseas postage . Reviewed by Robert B . Dean . High Tech, in this work, means the Electronics Industry of Silicon Valley and many other locations . Examples are essentially limited to the U .S .A . but much of the data is useful abroad . The various authors have contributed chapters that have apparently not been edited . This results in a number of repetitions . There are valuable appendices including a Glossary of over 200 terms with definitions that in some cases show evident bias, e .g . "Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW) : A sewage treatment plant which may be owned and operated by a single city or may be owned by a district which provides sewage treatment for several cities . POTWs are built to handle domestic sewage rather than industrial wastewater contaminated with hazardous materials" ; and "Sludges: The semi-solid matter that results from the aqueous treatment of hazardous waste" . Some definitions are technically incorrect, e .g . "Organic Compounds : Chemicals which always have one or more carbon and (usually) hydrogen atoms . Hence, organic compounds are also known as hydrocarbons" . The terms used with special meanings in the electronics industry are useful as are the abbreviations used by the EPA . Unfortunately "billion" is used without definition-it means 10 9 in the U .S .A . and 10 12 in England . There are also useful tables of U .S . laws and standards and a list of the hazardous properties of about 100 chemicals commonly found in the electronics industry . The emphasis is on environmental damage and risks to health caused by discharges from the High Tech industries . There is some discussion of risks to workers, but I found no mention of possible risks to users of High Tech products such as microwave radiation or skin allergies from copying materials . The lack of an index makes it very difficult to locate items not expressly mentioned in the table of contents . The main purpose of the book seems to be to serve as a guide for citizen action against potentially hazardous High Tech industries . Such industries are otherwise welcomed by local governments because they offer employment without dirty smokestacks . This book points out that there are other, less obvious, ways of polluting the environment and everything that lives in it . REPORT : GLASS GAZETTE . Published by FEVE, the European Glass Container Federation . Edited by M . Vermylen, Ave. Louise 89, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium . Reviewed by R . B . Dean . The October 1986 issue (No . 12) contains information on glass recycling from 12 of the 18 countries in Western Europe . The fraction of glass recycled as cullet and remelted to make new bottles reached 27% with the Netherlands reaching 53% . For the first time, reclaimed bottles (presumably other than beer and soft drink bottles) were recognized as accounting for a significant part of bottle recovery programmes .