On April 1, the Korean media “Business Korea” broke the newspoint out3M’s production line using PFAS at a semiconductor cooling plant in Belgium is in indefinite shutdown because it cannot pass local environmental regulations for a long time.
3M officials have privately notified customers such as Samsung, TSMC, Intel, and Hynix in mid-March, pessimistically saying that the existing inventory can only last for at most another three months. If work cannot be resumed by then, it may have a major impact on the semiconductor industry.
Why does a factory as far away as Belgium have such a big impact? It turned out that the plant provides up to 80% of the world’s semiconductor coolant production, and PFAS is often used in the manufacturing process.
Unfortunately, the recent series of local pollution scandals at 3M have made PFAS the No. 1 public enemy in the eyes of the Belgian government and local environmental groups, and the cooling plant has been delayed for resumption of work.
What kind of special compound is PFAS? Where is the controversy regarding the harm to the human body?
The Chinese name of PFAS is “fluorine-containing surfactant”, which is actually a general term for perfluorinated and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and is a common chemical substance in life. Because of their water and oil repellency, they are used in a wide variety of applications, from dental floss, food wraps, cosmetics, pots and pans to furniture.
Once the protagonist of the DuPont Teflon incident, it was also adapted into a movie
However, the PFAS family includes the notorious PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid).
For example, PFOA is the protagonist of the decades-long pollution incident at DuPont, a major American chemical company. The incident was filmed as a documentary “The Devil We Know”; Knowing regarding it, but deliberately concealing it from the public for many years, the front-line workers in the factory have also given birth to abnormal fetuses.
It turned out that the company developed and used PFOA in Teflon non-stick coating in the 1950s. As a result, chemical wastes polluted local soil and drinking water for a long time. Finally, medical research confirmed that PFOA not only exists in residents’ bodies, but also causes a variety of cancers. associated disease.Finally, DuPont finally$670 million in 2017Reparations settled with thousands of residents.
Today, PFOA has been classified as a human carcinogen by the International Center for Research on Cancer. Many Teflon and non-stick pan manufacturers once developed and switched to PFOS, but later it was confirmed by many studies that there would also be concerns regarding human health. Therefore, these two compounds are listed as pollutants that need to be regulated in the EU in 2020, requiring companies to reduce production, and non-stick pan manufacturers have also switched to Gen-X to replace them.
The 3M pollution incident in Belgium this time was originally detonated by the previous generation of PFOS. In 2018, around the factory of 3M in the town of Zwijndrecht in Antwerp Province, during the urban reorganization construction, it was found that PFOS chemicals, which had been discontinued by 3M more than ten years ago, remained in the soil. .
Belgian factory pollution, officials have long known
Unexpectedly, the Belgian media “VRT” later revealed that some local government officials and the mayor of Antwerp had known regarding it as early as the year before (2017), but pretended not to know.
The scandal led to the resignation of the mayor, and the local government had to actively investigate the local soil, water sources and residents, and worried that eggs produced within 15 kilometers of the surrounding area might be contaminated, and advised the public to avoid eating them.
Also because of this disgraceful record, in November last year, when the local government detected relatively high levels of PFAS residues in the blood of 800 residents around the 3M plant, it immediately aroused intense dissatisfaction among the local people and environmentalists, forcing the local government to immediately. A ban was issued, requiring 3M to completely ban the operation of the plant’s PFAS-related production lines until the wastewater discharge was improved. It is the strictest practice of any government to date.
Since last year, 3M has sought the court to dismiss the injunction, but all failed, and issued an official statement a few days ago, pointing out that 3M is willing to take responsibility for improvement, and has committed to improving air and wastewater discharge. But so far the factory has not fully resumed the original production line operation. Therefore, 3M privately informed its customers in the semiconductor industry, fearing that it would have an impact on the industry.
Is that so? In fact, there are five 3M semiconductor cooling plants in the world, in addition to Belgium, there are four in the United States and Germany. According to research and judgment, the production capacity will be transferred to these factories in the short term for emergency. Tianfeng International Securities analyst Guo Mingji also said on his personal Twitter that these coolants are mainly used for equipment maintenance or repair, and do not need to be replaced in daily production.
The impact on semiconductor supply from the shutdown of 3M’s coolant plant in Belgium might be almost ignored. The coolant is mainly used for equipment maintenance or repair, and it doesn’t need to be replaced for daily production.https://t.co/Hdg0HLPqEh
— Ming-Chi Kuo (@mingchikuo) April 4, 2022
Europe and the United States discuss banning PFAS on food packaging
However, this year the United States and the European Union are also discussing environmental protection regulations to ban PFAS. Denmark has become the first country in the world to ban PFAS, because following years of research, it has been shown that PFAS is difficult to be metabolized by the human body and is called a “permanent chemical”. . But at present, it is only aimed at food packaging, because if these chemicals are accidentally imported, they will have the greatest impact on people’s health. As for factory manufacturing-related pollution concerns and regulations, it is not included.
However, if the European and American governments change their attitude to ban PFAS because of the incident at the 3M factory in Belgium, it may have an impact on the semiconductor industry.
When pollution occurs in other people’s homes, can semiconductor companies stay out of it? When the global chip shortage in recent years has made every link in the semiconductor supply chain more important, this issue has become even more unavoidable. How to solve it? It depends on how the semiconductor industry, which is regarded as a strategic material by European and American countries and has enjoyed a lot of policy dividends, can work together to do more for environmental protection.
(This article is written by Foresight Magazine Reprinted with permission; source of the first image: shutterstock)
