Two chemicals banned from iPhone assembly factories

Apple is banning the use of benzene and
n-hexane in the production of iPhones.

Apple is banning the use of two potentially hazardous chemicals during the final assembly of iPhones and iPads as part of the company's latest commitment to protect the factory workers who build its trendy devices.
The decision comes five months after the activist groups China Labor Watch and Green America launched a petition drive calling on Apple Inc. to abandon the use of benzene and n-hexane in the production of iPhones.

A four-month investigation at 22 factories found no evidence that benzene and n-hexane endangered the roughly 500,000 people who work at the plants, according to Apple.

No traces of the chemicals were detected at 18 of the factories and the amounts found at the other four factories fell within acceptable safety levels, the Cupertino, California, company said.

Nevertheless, Apple decided to order its suppliers to stop using benzene and n-hexane during the final assembly of iPhones, iPads, iPods, Mac computers and various accessories.

What's more, Apple is requiring all its factories to test all substances to ensure that they don't contain benzene or n-hexane, even if the chemicals aren't listed in the ingredients.

Benzene is a carcinogen that can cause leukemia if not handled properly and n-hexane has been linked to nerve damage. The substances are often found in solvents used to clean machinery and electronics.

Apple is still allowing use of the two chemicals during the early production phases of its products — activities that primarily take place at hundreds of other factories besides the ones responsible for the final assembly of the devices.

As an additional precaution, Apple is lowering the maximum amount of benzene and n-hexane that can be present in the materials used during those earlier phases of production.

Green America's petition drive collected nearly 23,000 signatures urging Apple to phase out benzene and n-hexane.

Neither chemical is unique to Apple's manufacturing process. They are also used in the production of electronics products sold by other large technology companies that have also been criticized for their practices.

Source: San Jose Mercury News
This article has been edited for length.

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UPDATE: 
Other technology giants still using hazardous chemicals, Greenpeace says. Read the full article here. 

New brominated flame retardant under the microscope

Electronics manufacturers may be using the compound as a replacement for toxic PBDEs

Household dust is a main source of
exposure to flame retardants for humans.

A team of scientists using a rapid screening test have detected a new type of brominated flame retardant in homes — the first such compound found since 2008.

They discovered the compound in plastic electronic products made since 2012, suggesting manufacturers are using it to replace flame retardants that were phased out or banned due to toxicity issues.

Flame retardants are used in many consumer products, including electronics, clothing, and furniture, and as a result, scientists find the chemicals in outdoor air, household dust, and human blood and milk.

Between 2002 and 2008, the manufacture of brominated flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) was banned or phased out in Europe and the U.S. after researchers linked the compounds to neurotoxic effects and disruption of hormonal signaling.

“As a result of these regulations, the use of alternative flame retardants is increasing rapidly,” says Ana María Ballesteros-Gómez, an analytical environmental chemist at VU University Amsterdam.

Manufacturers don’t report the flame retardants used in consumer products, so scientists must use their best sleuthing technology to monitor new compounds introduced to the market.

Ballesteros-Gómez and her colleagues developed a rapid screening process that involves scratching the surface of plastic products with a probe to release fine particles of the material into the inlet of a high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometer.

To look for new compounds, she and her team went shopping for household electronics encased in hard plastic likely to contain flame retardants. They bought 13 products made since 2012, including televisions, power strips, and a vacuum cleaner. They also visited a recycling center in Amsterdam and retrieved 13 products made before 2006, when PBDEs were still in use.

The mass spectra from the new plastics contained an unknown peak signifying a compound with nine bromine atoms. Using data analysis software, the chemists generated several potential molecular formulas for the mystery compound.

The scientists then ran the formulas through several online chemical structure databases and found only one match: a triazine brominated flame retardant named 2,4,6-tris(2,4,6-tribromophenoxy)-1,3,5-triazine (TTBP-TAZ).

To confirm the match and to measure the compound’s concentrations in the plastic, the team subjected plastic samples to liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry. They detected TTBP-TAZ in eight of the 13 new products at levels up to 1.9% by weight of the product.

Ballesteros-Gómez says the data suggest widespread use of the new compound. The researchers couldn’t find TTBP-TAZ in the old plastics. “Manufacturers may be using TTBP-TAZ to replace the banned octaBDE and decaBDE in hard plastics,” Ballesteros-Gómez says.

Because household dust is the major route of human exposure to flame retardants, the researchers visited nine Dutch homes and took dust samples directly from electronic equipment, from tables around the equipment, and from the floor. They detected TTBP-TAZ at levels between 160 and 22,150 ng per g of dust.

These concentrations are lower than those reported for PBDEs and about the same as those for V6, a chlorinated organophosphate flame retardant. TTBP-TAZ is the first new brominated flame retardant found in homes since tetrabromobisphenol-A-bis-(2, 3-dibromopropylether) was detected in 2008, the researchers say.

Source: Chemical & Engineering News by American Chemical Society

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