Toxic, Flammable Chemicals, Gases Breed Trouble in Electronics Plants
BY R. L. NAILEN
Staff Correspondent
What once filled a room now fits on the surface of a postage stamp. That sums up the progress of electronics since World War II. Computers are revolutionizing our civilization—including some fire service operations—because they can now be made so small that microcircuits and microprocessors are common terms in the industry.
Though its products are small, the electronics industry is huge and growing fast. Annual growth rates from 15 to 30 percent are forecast through 1983. Total value of chemicals used in producing integrated circuits and related components is approaching half a billion dollars a year and is expected to double by 1985.
The manufacture of such electronic components as semiconductors is no ordinary industrial operation. Typical processes are plasma enriched deposition, reactive ion beam etching, pulse electron annealing, and deep ultraviolet flash polymerization. These involve materials and methods which are toxic or explosive and can generate unpredictable combinations of deadly hazard. Recent events in Santa Clara County, Calif., have emphasized the importance of this to fire fighters everywhere.
Silicon Valley
The once agricultural flatland comprising the county’s northern section is now known as Silicon Valley because of its massive concentration of semiconductor manufacturers (a billion-dollar investment) using silicon chips in their work. These chips are the basic building block of many electronic circuits— tiny bits of highly complex, precisely formulated chemical structure which perform the memory and calculation routines upon which data processing is based—from the pocket calculator or kid’s electronic game to the giant computers that control a power plant, regional air traffic, or an entire oil refinery.
Scores of electronics firms of all sizes form the major industrial base of this area of half a dozen cities with nearly a million residents. Companies headquartered in Silicon Valley generate nearly half the entire country’s output of integrated circuits, and 40 percent of the world’s semiconductors. This is the ninth largest manufacturing center in the United States and the fastest growing one.
Santa Clara (pop. 100,000) contains many such companies. The buildings tend to be one-story, tilt-slab construction, often in parklike complexes having little conflagration potential and ample water supply. But besides the extreme danger of exotic chemicals and processes, they frequently include very large undivided areas with few access openings. Early in 1980, one computer component manufacturer occupied a building in Santa Clara containing 10 acres under a single roof with few windows or doors over much of its periphery. Plant security is a problem. Trade secrets—and the hardware itself—have been pirated many times in this highly competitive field.
Several fires yearly
How often does the fire service face problems at these facilities?
Fire Marshal Gary Smith of nearby Mountain View said, “We have had a fairly typical fire history in these plants. We have several fires a year . . . losses sometimes over $100,000. One of the most common causes … is immersion heaters igniting fiberglass dip tanks used on a plating line.”
Bill Fleming, Santa Clara’s fire marshal prior to his death last June, stressed the danger of chain reactions among processing chemicals following outbreak of a fire. Said Fleming, “A major concern in most semiconductor fires is the mixture of chemicals and the unknown toxic results of their reactions when fire causes them to explode.”
He added that, no matter how frequently buildings are inspected, “It is fairly common for a company to alter a building without taking out the proper permit. In those cases, things like sprinklers, fire extinguishers and good exit paths are usually overlooked.”
Chemical spill problem
Actually the fire or explosion hazard is less than the chemical spill hazard. The gases and liquids, such as cyanide compounds, used for electronics manufacturing are unlike anything in the experience of most fire departments. These materials are used as plating solutions, doping gases, substrates and etchants. They include such toxic gases as arsine, phosphine, hydrogen chloride, and diborane, which have become of such concern to the semiconductor industry itself that a gases safety task force was formed in 1980 to prepare standards on their handling, storage and use.
Explosive hydrogen is sometimes involved. The pyrophoric gas, silane, is common. Silane bursts into flame immediately upon contact with air.
Hence, as Smith pointed out, “Once a leak is detected, it is too late.”
According to a July 1980 survey of the type of research lab that abounds in and around Santa Clara, nearly half of all workers and two-thirds of the chemists regularly work with toxic and flammable compounds. Yet more than a third of all chemists surveyed reported that no overall safety program existed in their plants. Although most major firms do have a safety officer, the smaller companies do not.
Have to be prepared
The safety officer of one of Santa Clara’s biggest electronics manufacturers commented, “Even with elaborate detection systems, the potential for fire still exists. You have to be prepared for an inadvertent spill of flammable liquids.”
By the end of 1979, such dangerous spills were occurring in Santa Clara “almost weekly,” according to Fire Chief Don Visconti. Two recent incidents there are good examples. The first took place April 15 at the Memorex plant and kept six fire companies busy for two hours. A valve malfunction permitted nearly HXX1 gallons of highly flammable cyclohexanone solvent to flow into a diked yard. Exposures had to be covered, 300 employees evacuated, and hose lines manned until arrangements could be made to pump the liquid into a tank. One engine company checked a nearby residential area for fume odor, some of which was detected around an apartment building.
Second incident
The second, much longer incident occurred at the National Semiconductor Corp. late at night May 4. Nitric acid leaked from a 5000-gallon storage tank onto a copper pipeline containing compressed nitrogen. Escaping gas then dispersed a huge cloud of acid vapor into the air. No one could be found who knew where to shut off the nitrogen line, which was erroneously labeled “compressed air.” Eventually, company officials were located who had a knowledge of the system, which included several other large nearby tanks containing sulfuric and hydrofluoric acids. Plastic shields around the diked tank area were broken away to get at the shutoff valves, after which chemical neutralization of the spilled material was completed. A pump, installed to transfer spills within the dike to a holding tank, was destroyed by the acid. One fire fighter suffered minor face burns and some equipment was contaminated.
There had been few fires in Santa Clara. However, within a six-month period, several multiple-alarm blazes occurred which led to drastic action by Visconti to deal with the problem of chemical hazards in general and electronics manufacturing specifically. The worst of these was a third alarm of electrical origin at International Materials Research last Jan. 22, which resulted in a million-dollar loss.
During the four-hour extinguishment of this fire by 10 companies of the Santa Clara Fire Department, toxic fumes of a still-unidentified nature, drifting in the large cloud of smoke, affected two police officers some distance away with facial rash and headache. Despite extensive use of breathing apparatus (55 air bottles) by the 70 fire fighters involved, three men were treated for nausea, headache, or rash. Four others were hospitalized with more conventional injuries.
“I was worried about the TV news helicopter hovering up near that smoke,” added Fleming, “but apparently they didn’t get too close.”
Fumes spread to hall
During a recent two-alarm blaze in an electronics plating shop, fumes were drawn into the air conditioning system at a nearby meeting hall, where 15 occupants had to be treated for breathing problems. Said Visconti, “When I see large numbers of people requiring medical treatment like this, I am alarmed.”
The Santa Clara chief found himself unable to rely on conventional building inspection methods or reports to keep abreast of hazards in this fast-growing industry.
Said Battalion Chief Bob Boeker, “They change their processes just as fast as you change your underwear.”
Manpower limitations in Santa Clara have meant two or three-year intervals between inspections of some firms. In other Silicon Valley cities, inspections are no more often than annually.
Said another officer in one of those cities, “Our fire fighters can do a good maintenance inspection of a commercial building, but to inspect a semiconductor processing facility, you need to know the chemicals, the processes and the mechanical systems. And that requires a specialist.”
Building survey made
So Visconti proposed a citywide chemical hazard assistance program. His first step, completed during May, was to take a complete chemical survey of every commercial building in Santa Clara—some 5000 in all. This required putting all his companies on the street six hours daily, six days a week, for a month. (Santa Clara operates 13 fire companies from eight stations with a paid force of 140, plus 50 active “volunteer reservists.” Members of the latter group responded on all the incidents described here, 20 of them at the third alarm in January.)
“No other department in the nation has taken this approach,” Visconti claimed, although several others in the county and the adjacent territory north toward San Francisco have recognized the problem and are trying to improve their communications with industry.
Here are samples of what the Santa Clara survey disclosed:
Inside storage of over 25 gallons of combustible liquids in 781 buildings; over 2000 cubic feet of flammable compressed gas in 525 buildings; poison gas in 48 buildings; toxic liquids in 233 buildings; over 55 gallons of corrosive liquid in 418 buildings; corrosive solids in 106 buildings; over 500 pounds of oxidizers in 123 buildings; and poisons or insecticides in 189 buildings.
Program objectives
Using the results of the survey, Visconti’s program includes such steps as:
- To create within the fire department a chemical hazard assistance unit, manned by specialists, to provide expertise within the department and to work with industry and the community for solutions to the chemical problems.
- To create fire department operational plans for dealing with chemical hazard incidents.
- To support the development of educational programs (working particularly with the Chamber of Commerce) for industry, fire department personnel and the community.
- To support the creation of a “center of excellence” at Mission College, providing a West Coast facility for research, testing, and information retrieval relating to hazardous chemicals.
As part of a $162,000 budget for this total program, since accepted by the City Council, the Santa Clara chief asked for two chemical hazard assistance specialists and a chemical vehicle with trailer. Job specifications were being drafted in July, and a Chamber of Commerce task force was being put together as liaison between industry and the fire department.
This group, explained a chamber spokesman, “will address what types of hazards and toxic chemicals are out there, where they are located and how they are being watched over and protected now.”
Visconti is optimistic that this kind of industry and fire service cooperation, combined with the new specialists under his command, will substantially raise the level of public protection in his part of Silicon Valley.
