Next month, amid the usual hoopla, Apple is expected to officially unveil its latest gadget: the much-awaited iPhone 4G. But halfway round the globe from the company’s California headquarters, a young worker who has spent months in an eastern Chinese hospital wants consumers to look beyond the shiny exterior of such gadgets.
“People should know what we do to create these products and what cost we pay,” said Bai Bing as she perched on a bed in her ward.
She is one of scores of young workers in the city of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, who were poisoned by the chemical n-hexane, which they say was used to clean Apple components including iPhone touch screens.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Wu Mei — who, like the others, asked me to use her nickname — recalled her fear as her health suddenly deteriorated last spring.
At first, she thought she was simply tired from the long working hours at Wintek, a Taiwan-owned electronics giant supplying several well-known brands. She was weaker than before and noticed she could not walk so fast.
“Then it became more and more serious. I found it very hard to go upstairs and if I squatted down I didn’t have the strength to get up. Later my hands became numb and I lost my balance — I would fall over if someone touched me,” she said.
By summer, she was admitted to hospital, where doctors struggled to diagnose the cause.
“I was terrified. I feared I might be paralyzed and spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair,” she said.
As she was using n-hexane directly, she was one of the first and worst affected.
More and more workers from the same room were suffering headaches, dizziness and weakness, and pains in their limbs.
An occupational diseases hospital which saw several victims diagnosed the problem in August and Wintek stopped using the chemical. But thanks to the previous months of exposure, at least 62 workers would require medical care. Many spent months in hospital.
Some believe more employees left Wintek after being taken ill, before they realized what was wrong.
Prolonged over-exposure to n-hexane can cause extensive damage to the peripheral nervous system and ultimately the spinal cord, leading to muscular weakness and atrophy and even paralysis, said Paul Whitehead, a toxicology consultant and member of the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry. It can also affect male fertility. Recovery can take a year or more.
The chemical’s potential risks are well-known in industry, as are safe exposure limits. But the Wintek manager who decided to switch from alcohol to n-hexane for cleaning — apparently because it dried more quickly — did not assess the dangers. It was used without proper ventilation.
The change was obvious; workers disliked the pungent smell of n-hexane, but had no idea it might affect their health.
“We hadn’t even heard of occupational illnesses before,” Wintek worker Xiao Ling said.
Asked if they knew what products they were working on, three of the affected Wintek employees said team leaders told them they were working for Apple. They instantly recognized pictures of an iPhone and said they were cleaning touch screens, adding that items for other brands were not affected because Apple had isolated its production line. A lawyer acting for 44 of the poisoning victims also said several had named Apple.
Wintek, which does not discuss its clients, said it had replaced the factory’s general manager.
It now notifies workers whose jobs may involve risk in advance, has tightened procedures for the introduction of new chemicals and carries out medical checks. It has paid medical fees for those affected and says it will pay compensation according to the law.
Given that the assessment and appeals process for compensation can take as long as a decade, lawyers hope the firm will pay quickly as well as fairly.
Other patients at the hospital say they too became sick while using n-hexane on Apple products.
Bai Bing said she and her colleagues were cleaning components, including Apple logos — the kind that appear at the bottom of desktop screens — when she fell ill.
Her employer, Yunheng, could not be reached, but work safety officials in Suzhou have said eight employees were poisoned there as they carried out work sub-contracted by another firm, Surtec.
A Surtec employee confirmed it made Apple logos, but a spokesman said it knew nothing about Yunheng or the poisoning.
Wintek has previously faced questions about its treatment of workers, with disputes in Taiwan and at another plant in China. The Suzhou case only grabbed public attention when lingering concern over the poisoning and anger over unpaid bonuses sparked a mass protest.
The US and the Philippines plan to announce new sites as soon as possible for an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which gives the Western power access to military bases in the Southeast Asian country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last month granted the US access to four military bases, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, amid China’s increasing assertiveness regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan. Speaking at the Basa Air Base in Manila, one of the existing EDCA sites, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the defense agreements between the two countries
‘DUAL PURPOSE’: Upgrading the port is essential for the Solomon Islands’ economy and might not be military focused, but ‘it is not about bases, it is about access,’ an analyst said The Solomon Islands has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, a Solomon Islands official said yesterday. China Civil Engineering Construction Co (CCECC) was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Solomon Islands Ministry of Infrastructure Development official Mike Qaqara said. “This will be upgrading the old international port in Honiara and two domestic wharves in the provinces,” Qaqara said. Responding to concerns that the port could be deepened for Chinese naval access, he said there would be “no expansion.” The Solomon
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
Seven stories above a shop floor hawking cheap perfume and nylon underwear, Thailand’s “shopping mall gorilla” sits alone in a cage — her home for 30 years despite a reignited row over her captivity. Activists around the world have long campaigned for the primate to be moved from Pata Zoo, on top of a Bangkok mall, with singer Cher and actor Gillian Anderson adding their voices in 2020. However, the family who owns Bua Noi — whose name translates as “little lotus” — have resisted public and government pressure to relinquish the critically endangered animal. The gorilla has lived at Pata for more