Chemically sensitive people being ignored from "green" computer strategies

http://www.macopinion.com/index.php/site/more/the_road_warrior_mailbag_june_18_2007/

Here's an excellent discussion about chemical sensitivities and computers.

Chemical Sensitivity Evidently Being Ignored In "Green Computing" Strategies

From AC

Well, as a chemistry/philo lecturer who suffers from asthma and sensitivity to various chemicals, I feel qualified to ask some questions.

1) Can we determine what the correlation level is between outgassing of specific chemicals and your reaction to them?

2) What would be the economic effect of ensuring that 99% of all computing machines have no significant effect on people like us?

I'm afraid that the problem is insurmountable, except for the rich, and I'm not rich enough.

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Hi AC;

1) It would be a challenge. I know empirically, that at some point the level of off-gassing diminishes to the point where I no longer have physical reactions. I presume that using gas chromatography in a controlled environment over a long period of sporadic sampling, it would be possible to establish the "threshold" safe level - for one individual. Not very practiacl though.

A more useful approach would be to determine which circuit board and other plastic materials are more or less problematical for the chemically-sensitive. For example, while the original WallStreet PowerBooks, which were built in Cork, Ireland, did have an odor when they were new, I didn't react to them. I used a demo 233 MHz "MainStreet" for production for a couple of months in late 1998, and experienced no problems, However, the Taiwan-built 233 MHz WallStreet "PDQ" machine that I purchased in January, 1999 had a completely different circuit board odor, that make me quite ill upon even short exposures. My deduction is that a different chemical formulation was used in the circuit boards of the Taiwanese units. It was 3 1/2 years before I could use the WallStreet as a proper laptop without wearing a charcoal respirator....

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