Bay Area tech offices sit on some of the most contaminated land in America, new book claims

FILE - This Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, file photo shows Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Employees at a Google building were exposed to harmful chemicals in late 2012 and 2013 when trichloroethylene got into the ventilation system. less FILE - This Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, file photo shows Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Employees at a Google building were exposed to harmful chemicals in late 2012 and 2013 when trichloroethylene ... more Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez Image 1 of / 74 Caption Close Bay Area tech offices sit on some of the most contaminated land in America, new book claims 1 / 74 Back to Gallery

We may not have coal power plants polluting the air, but a new book by former New York Times science reporter Tatiana Schlossberg calls Silicon Valley one of the dirtiest places in the country.

"Santa Clara County has 23 active Superfund sites, more than any other county in the United States. All of them were designated as such in the mid to late 1980s, and most were contaminated by toxic chemicals involved in making computer parts. Completely cleaning up these chemicals may be impossible," reads an excerpt from the book published in the Atlantic.

The Environmental Protection Agency designates especially polluted and contaminated locations as Superfund sites to force their cleanup. The Google Quad Campus in Mountain View, Schlossberg writes, sits atop one of the Superfund sites. For two months in late 2012 and early 2013, Google employees who worked there were exposed to levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) that exceeded EPA limits when it got into the ventilation system. TCE is an industrial solvent used to make computer chips. It is known to cause cancer, among other health side effects.

In 1981, south San Jose residents found they were unwittingly drinking water that contained TCE as well as freon, which had been leaked into the groundwater out of underground storage tanks at IBM and Fairchild Semiconductor.

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In the years that followed, 300 companies in the South Bay "found solvents leaking from tanks, waste ponds or past dump sites," the San Francisco Examiner reported in 1996. It caused the shutdown of 69 private and public water wells, many of which were used for drinking water.

The Examiner reported six months later that women living near such sites were more likely to have babies with birth defects, according to a survey by the California Department of Health Services.

"Computers and cellphones — which require semiconductors and microchips to work — have become so essential to life all over the world that it's easy to ignore the problems with building them," Schlossberg writes, before encouraging readers to think about the environmental impact their devices may have — and not just the impacts on our psyche or happiness.

Schlossberg's book, titled "Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have," published Aug. 27. You can read a longer excerpt from the book from the Atlantic.

Alix Martichoux is an SFGate digital editor. Read her latest stories and send her news tips at alix.martichoux@sfgate.com.