Semiconductor Safety Handbook: Safety and Health in the Semiconductor Industry

PREFACE

It is hard to imagine that less than fifteen years ago building and fire codes specific to the construction of a wafer fabrication facility were just in the process of being developed. Detection and evaluation of leaking underground storage tanks and epidemiological health studies aimed at qualifying and quantifying our “cleanroom” image were in their infancy stages and CalOSHA had just completed the first in-depth study of the industry’s chemical processes and associated industrial hygiene exposures. From a technology perspective, 64 k RAM chips were the hot item for a newly developing computer game market and the 8088 microprocessor provided previously unavailable information processing and storage capabilities at an affordable price. “Silicon Valley,” stretching from Palo Alto to South San Jose, still retained much of its agricultural base and we were always amazed at the beauty and contrast of blooming mustard fields and plum orchards adjacent to wafer fabs, deionized water plants, and chemical storage areas. SEMI was developing a Safety Division, and the Semiconductor Safety Association’s (SSA) annual conference was in its third year attended by a handful of health and safety professionals.

Fifteen years later, “Silicon Valley,” as we have known it, now exists in cities like Austin, Phoenix and Boston. Megafabs with property values exceeding $1 billion have become commonplace. We think in terms of gigabytes of hard disk storage for our home computers and the Internet has become a way of life. The Pentium is becoming passé as the next generation of microprocessor looms on the horizon and submicron technology continues to push the envelop of our processing capabilities.

However great our technological advances have been over this period of time, they have not been exclusive to semiconductors and related high technology products. Interwoven within our semiconductor technology development has been the development of technologies aimed at identifying, evaluating and mitigating the environmental, health and safety (EH&S) risks and exposures associated with the manufacturing and packaging of integrated circuits. Driving and advancing these technologies have been international efforts by SEMI’s Safety Division, the Semiconductor Safety Association (SSA), and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

The purpose of the Semiconductor Safety Handbook is to provide a current, single source reference for many of the primary semiconductor EH&S technologies and disciplines. To this end, we have assembled a comprehensive text written by some of the leading experts in EH&S in the semiconductor industry. This text has taken three years to complete and has involved tremendous effort and commitment by the text’s authors.

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Richard A. Bolmen, Jr.

San Francisco, California, September, 1997

CONTENTS

1.      Injury and Illness of Semiconductor Workers: Experience and Epidemiologic Studies

2.      Environmental Compliance in the Semiconductor Industry: Detection, Correction and Prevention

3.      Chemical Hazards in Semiconductor Operations

4.      Industrial Hygiene

5.      Electrical Hazards

6.      Radiation Safety

7.      Recognition, Evaluation and Control of Some Plasma Processing Hazards

8.      Fire Protection Technology for Semiconductor Operations

9.      Building and Fire Codes Impacting the Semiconductor Industry

10.   Gases and Gas Equipment

11.   Toxic Gas Monitoring