Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/5376

KEYWORDS : IT Industries, Semiconductor Production, Water Pollution, IndustrialWastes, Environmental Economics

Throughout the world the fast-paced march of IT (Information technology) has made semiconductor manufacturers busy and changed the face of economies mainly in the US and Asia. It is safe to say that Asia is becoming a center of IT production. In a previous article, High-Tech pollution (Eonomic Journal of Hkkaido University, Vol.23, 1994), I demonstrated why we cannot overlook the IT industry's environmental impacts. The leaky underground organic solvent tanks of semiconductor plant in Silicon Valley ignited public concern over drinking water contamination, congenital anomalies, high spontaneous abortion rates, cancer, and other problems already in the 1980s. But this problem is no longer confined to Silicon Valley. The IT industry is expanding into Asia and bringing pollution with it. Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, one of the world's biggest IT bases, has contaminated surface water, soil-groundwater, and must deal with waste organic solvents. This article is an attempt to get a handle on the globally expanding IT industry and the environmental problems it causes by examining the overall process from the production, distribution, and consumption of IT products to their disposal in Asia. (JEL Q21, Q24, Q25)