26 years in IBM
I used to work at IBM. I started working there when I was nineteen years old and I worked there for twenty six years. I was laid off in 99. Start out in the assembly and then work my way up to different jobs. But I get bored kind of easily so I went to the graveyard and got cross trained on a lot of the processing.
I'm one of the very few people that know the disc processing area from the beginning to the very end. I've done all the processed work.
It was just basically an assembly job, assembling a disk into a pack in a clean room. I never knew what a clean room was. It's just an air shower, a gown, a mask, hood, little booties, and then push buttons. That's all I did at the beginning.
I moved on to mixing the chemicals, cleaning the substrates with chemicals. We had a recycle program where we had to take the iron oxide off the substrate with sulfuric acid.
Never got bit by a bug
In mixing the chemicals, I did not want to do it because I was very health conscious and I knew that chemicals were bad for you. I actually quit but as a young man with a young family, I had to continue working so I took on this job.
One of the things that I noticed is that I used to go camping a lot and you get bit by mosquitoes. After doing this job, I never got bit. Until I left the job, a year and a half later, I finally got bit by a mosquito and I felt like my system had just finally got back to normal. But for about four and a half years, I never got bit by any kind of bug.
We did have safety training on safety wearing, the right gloves and the hood and all that. And the only thing I remember is if you do get exposed to like, let's say there's a spill there's a shower there. That's it. MSDS(Material Safety Data Sheet), it's sort of like a contract. Lots of words, you sign the bottom, you don't really understand it and you go to work.
I know that we use probably eight different types of freon for cleaning processes and stuff like xylene and oh gosh I can't remember the name for the mixture of the iron oxide and then I know I used a lot of acetone to clean up.
(It smelled) like rotten eggs and that was the most distinctive one. You desensitize. After working for a while you don't smell it anymore. So new people coming in they're like “Oh my god. What is that smell?” “Don't worry. You'll get used to it.”
Looking at Sammy’s scrapbooks
I lost a lot of friends, a lot of colleagues over the years. In fact I'm on the list. I get emails every month of somebody dying, somebody either I knew or worked with. And I just keep in my own mind keep thinking ‘when is it going to happen to me?’
Oh my god this is like going back in time. I work with every single one of these people. I recognize all these people. This was my family. Okay?
Heartache. When you work with all these people everyday, for years and years and years and then you're looking at an album and they're all dead. Horrible. I'm pissed. I'm mad. You know Hindsight's twenty twenty. If you know then what you know now, you'd have spoken up. You'd have said something. You would have spoken to somebody to say what's going on here?
Deformed babies in the town
I lived right outside of IBM and my wife at the time used to work at Fairchild and she was actually a witness of them dumping fifty five gallon drums right into the ground, right into the ground. I myself we're told by management to dump certain chemicals right before our inspection. Into the drain. Where the drain goes? I don't know.
Well as a matter of fact because I lived just two blocks away from IBM and two or three blocks from Fairchild, that whole area was involved in a lawsuit because there were a lot of miscarriages, a lot of deformed babies being born. I heard of miscarriages all the time and deformed blind babies, cleft palate, short arms, missing fingers, or extra fingers, a multiple of things.
You're the only one that can stop this
It is about the money, get the money regardless of the cost of the byproduct which is toxic to everybody around. They get the money, dump the chemicals and they're out. And who's dumping the chemicals are the people they're paying to do their job. People just want to work, make a living and don't understand the repercussions from being exposed to all these different kinds of chemicals. I did not know. Trust me. If I had known, I would have done anything else but that.
To all the people out there who are working to make a living and you're exposed to chemicals and you're being told to do a job to get paid so you can supply for your family, educate yourself. Talk to people. learn what you're doing. learn the chemicals that you're dealing with because they're not good for you. It's gonna destroy you, it's gonna destroy your family, it's gonna destroy your future generations, your babies, your grand babies, all of them will be affected. Don't let that money change your life and everybody else around you. It's not worth it.
You're the only one that can stop this. You're the only one that can slow down this massive chemical exposure of our mother earth. One person can't do it but we all can do it, if we all stick together and teach each other. Watch out for each other and don't allow that big money to rule your life.
Interviewer Media Cuckoo
Writer Lim Dayun
Painter Park Jeongwon
26 years in IBM
I used to work at IBM. I started working there when I was nineteen years old and I worked there for twenty six years. I was laid off in 99. Start out in the assembly and then work my way up to different jobs. But I get bored kind of easily so I went to the graveyard and got cross trained on a lot of the processing.
I'm one of the very few people that know the disc processing area from the beginning to the very end. I've done all the processed work.
It was just basically an assembly job, assembling a disk into a pack in a clean room. I never knew what a clean room was. It's just an air shower, a gown, a mask, hood, little booties, and then push buttons. That's all I did at the beginning.
I moved on to mixing the chemicals, cleaning the substrates with chemicals. We had a recycle program where we had to take the iron oxide off the substrate with sulfuric acid.
Never got bit by a bug
In mixing the chemicals, I did not want to do it because I was very health conscious and I knew that chemicals were bad for you. I actually quit but as a young man with a young family, I had to continue working so I took on this job.
One of the things that I noticed is that I used to go camping a lot and you get bit by mosquitoes. After doing this job, I never got bit. Until I left the job, a year and a half later, I finally got bit by a mosquito and I felt like my system had just finally got back to normal. But for about four and a half years, I never got bit by any kind of bug.
We did have safety training on safety wearing, the right gloves and the hood and all that. And the only thing I remember is if you do get exposed to like, let's say there's a spill there's a shower there. That's it. MSDS(Material Safety Data Sheet), it's sort of like a contract. Lots of words, you sign the bottom, you don't really understand it and you go to work.
I know that we use probably eight different types of freon for cleaning processes and stuff like xylene and oh gosh I can't remember the name for the mixture of the iron oxide and then I know I used a lot of acetone to clean up.
(It smelled) like rotten eggs and that was the most distinctive one. You desensitize. After working for a while you don't smell it anymore. So new people coming in they're like “Oh my god. What is that smell?” “Don't worry. You'll get used to it.”
Looking at Sammy’s scrapbooks
I lost a lot of friends, a lot of colleagues over the years. In fact I'm on the list. I get emails every month of somebody dying, somebody either I knew or worked with. And I just keep in my own mind keep thinking ‘when is it going to happen to me?’
Oh my god this is like going back in time. I work with every single one of these people. I recognize all these people. This was my family. Okay?
Heartache. When you work with all these people everyday, for years and years and years and then you're looking at an album and they're all dead. Horrible. I'm pissed. I'm mad. You know Hindsight's twenty twenty. If you know then what you know now, you'd have spoken up. You'd have said something. You would have spoken to somebody to say what's going on here?
Deformed babies in the town
I lived right outside of IBM and my wife at the time used to work at Fairchild and she was actually a witness of them dumping fifty five gallon drums right into the ground, right into the ground. I myself we're told by management to dump certain chemicals right before our inspection. Into the drain. Where the drain goes? I don't know.
Well as a matter of fact because I lived just two blocks away from IBM and two or three blocks from Fairchild, that whole area was involved in a lawsuit because there were a lot of miscarriages, a lot of deformed babies being born. I heard of miscarriages all the time and deformed blind babies, cleft palate, short arms, missing fingers, or extra fingers, a multiple of things.
You're the only one that can stop this
It is about the money, get the money regardless of the cost of the byproduct which is toxic to everybody around. They get the money, dump the chemicals and they're out. And who's dumping the chemicals are the people they're paying to do their job. People just want to work, make a living and don't understand the repercussions from being exposed to all these different kinds of chemicals. I did not know. Trust me. If I had known, I would have done anything else but that.
To all the people out there who are working to make a living and you're exposed to chemicals and you're being told to do a job to get paid so you can supply for your family, educate yourself. Talk to people. learn what you're doing. learn the chemicals that you're dealing with because they're not good for you. It's gonna destroy you, it's gonna destroy your family, it's gonna destroy your future generations, your babies, your grand babies, all of them will be affected. Don't let that money change your life and everybody else around you. It's not worth it.
You're the only one that can stop this. You're the only one that can slow down this massive chemical exposure of our mother earth. One person can't do it but we all can do it, if we all stick together and teach each other. Watch out for each other and don't allow that big money to rule your life.
Interviewer Media Cuckoo
Writer Lim Dayun
Painter Park Jeongwon