3 ms·

History of Silicon Valley and the Toxic Remnants of the First Computers

53 points by danboarder 11y ago

schiffern 11y ago
>“Twenty-three soil vapor extraction wells have been built, along with a carbon adsorption treatment facility,” the EPA reports. “Groundwater is being extracted, treated by air stripping, and discharged into Calabazas Creek.” What are the possible side-effects of transferring ground water in quantity to surface waters? The CIR report is also worth reading. http://cironline.org/reports/cleanup-silicon-valley-superfund-site-takes-environmental-toll-6149 http://cironline.org/reports/cleanup-silicon-valley-superfun... >Waste begets waste. At every step along the trail, treatment leaves behind a new batch of waste that needs to be shipped somewhere else. At one stop, a plant in Wisconsin creates more waste than it takes in. I wonder if biological technologies can take some of the "zero sum" out of this system? The technology doesn't have to be particularly 'high' either; perchlorate rocket fuels (which btw are also present in lethal quantities in the regolith of Mars) are broken down by... wait for it... composting. http://www.denix.osd.mil/edqw/upload/GEOSYNTEC_BIO_P2.PDF http://www.denix.osd.mil/edqw/upload/GEOSYNTEC_BIO_P2.PDF
modeless 11y ago
I've been walking past a mysterious bunch of tanks and pipes in the middle of a parking lot in Sunnyvale for the past year. It often smells terrible. I just realized that it's almost certainly a Superfund water treatment site. I'll probably give it a wider berth from now on...
DrScump 11y ago
Interesting that they don't mention one of the worst Superfund sites (Lorentz Barrel and Drum), which lies right across Alma from Spartan Stadium and right across 10th St. from Sharks Ice.
userbinator 11y ago
I suppose one of the reasons why they thought it was harmless for so long could be that trichloroethylene really does smell good and not at all repugnant, so people are less inclined to notice its presence or be concerned about it. It's a pleasant, clean smell that somewhat resembles minty chocolate.
McGlockenshire 11y ago
You can contrast this story with another Fairchild Superfund site, this time in south San Jose on Bernal. http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/ViewByEPAID/CAD097012298 http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/ViewByEPAID/CA... I grew up a few miles from here, close enough that my parents were worried about the contamination. Thankfully the well supplying our neighborhood wasn't contaminated. For years, I'd always wondered what the giant concrete sarcophagus was whenever we'd drive out to the freeway, but it never occurred to me to look it up. Only when visiting the Bay Area in the early 2000s and finding it demolished and replaced with a freaking strip mall did I look things up and realize both what a horrible thing it was (birth defects and all) and how lucky we got that this site was clean enough to build on again.
vt240 11y ago
I found the comments section following this article is especially funny. My favorite, the thread claiming that lead poisoning is the only statistic correlated with the violent crime rate... The authors proof- a single academic pre-print. I love the new internet science.
- pja 11y ago
  IIRC the correlation between lead exposure & violent crime rates 20 years later is fairly good: you can track it on a state by state level as each state banned lead additives in fuel at different times. But proving any cause with a with a 20 year delay in its effect is going to be very difficult. At best it seems reasonable to believe that lead in fuel was a sizable chunk of the problem, but it’s certainly not proven beyond doubt.
  - vt240 11y ago
    Yea, there have been a couple good summary articles I've seen here on Hacker News. Personally I find it kind of mind boggling. It's like discovering the cause of Alzheimer's, dementia, or autism. I just find it funny, when discussing issues in comments, the depths people will go to, to frame things in black and white.
kator 11y ago
I was reading the article when I ended up taking a detour to watch the embedded video promoting IC's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z47Gv2cdFtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z47Gv2cdFtA As sad as the pollution is it's still quite amazing to imagine that in 1967 they were on the cusp of a revolution driven mainly by efficiency. At one point in the video they talk about magazine pages that have chips on the front and a schematic for a "real industrial application" on the back. This was literally the start of the "maker" revolution, it just took original makers like Woz to see it and many years of evolution so that people with minimal electronics training can build amazing things on the shoulders of giants before them.
tiredwired 11y ago
Google silicon valley toxic plumes and you get some stories and maps like this- http://whatsdown.terradex.com/#12/37.3674/-121.9649/ http://whatsdown.terradex.com/#12/37.3674/-121.9649/
- vitd 11y ago
  That may is extremely misleading. In it's default state, it's zoomed out so that you can't tell San Francisco from Los Angeles. The markers are not scaled with the size of the map, so a single marker, when zoomed out, covers several miles, but when zoomed in is less than a single city block. In other words, looking at it in it's default state, the entire coast of CA is covered in toxic plumes, but when zoomed in, you see there are several areas along a particular road but large areas in between that are unaffected. It's a good idea, but the implementation is extremely misleading.
martin1b 11y ago
The video is very interesting. Kator's comment is spot on.
Grazester 11y ago
Interesting. I do remember reading about this and the fact that at one of Google's building they have to use special air filters to filter the air due to where it was built.
- sjg007 11y ago
  Google and Symantec and most of the offices in that area.

53 points by danboarder 11y ago

>“Twenty-three soil vapor extraction wells have been built, along with a carbon adsorption treatment facility,” the EPA reports. “Groundwater is being extracted, treated by air stripping, and discharged into Calabazas Creek.” What are the possible side-effects of transferring ground water in quantity to surface waters? The CIR report is also worth reading. http://cironline.org/reports/cleanup-silicon-valley-superfund-site-takes-environmental-toll-6149 http://cironline.org/reports/cleanup-silicon-valley-superfun... >Waste begets waste. At every step along the trail, treatment leaves behind a new batch of waste that needs to be shipped somewhere else. At one stop, a plant in Wisconsin creates more waste than it takes in. I wonder if biological technologies can take some of the "zero sum" out of this system? The technology doesn't have to be particularly 'high' either; perchlorate rocket fuels (which btw are also present in lethal quantities in the regolith of Mars) are broken down by... wait for it... composting. http://www.denix.osd.mil/edqw/upload/GEOSYNTEC_BIO_P2.PDF http://www.denix.osd.mil/edqw/upload/GEOSYNTEC_BIO_P2.PDF

modeless 11y ago

I've been walking past a mysterious bunch of tanks and pipes in the middle of a parking lot in Sunnyvale for the past year. It often smells terrible. I just realized that it's almost certainly a Superfund water treatment site. I'll probably give it a wider berth from now on...

DrScump 11y ago

Interesting that they don't mention one of the worst Superfund sites (Lorentz Barrel and Drum), which lies right across Alma from Spartan Stadium and right across 10th St. from Sharks Ice.

userbinator 11y ago

I suppose one of the reasons why they thought it was harmless for so long could be that trichloroethylene really does smell good and not at all repugnant, so people are less inclined to notice its presence or be concerned about it. It's a pleasant, clean smell that somewhat resembles minty chocolate.

McGlockenshire 11y ago

You can contrast this story with another Fairchild Superfund site, this time in south San Jose on Bernal. http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/ViewByEPAID/CAD097012298 http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/ViewByEPAID/CA... I grew up a few miles from here, close enough that my parents were worried about the contamination. Thankfully the well supplying our neighborhood wasn't contaminated. For years, I'd always wondered what the giant concrete sarcophagus was whenever we'd drive out to the freeway, but it never occurred to me to look it up. Only when visiting the Bay Area in the early 2000s and finding it demolished and replaced with a freaking strip mall did I look things up and realize both what a horrible thing it was (birth defects and all) and how lucky we got that this site was clean enough to build on again.

vt240 11y ago

I found the comments section following this article is especially funny. My favorite, the thread claiming that lead poisoning is the only statistic correlated with the violent crime rate... The authors proof- a single academic pre-print. I love the new internet science.

pja 11y ago
IIRC the correlation between lead exposure & violent crime rates 20 years later is fairly good: you can track it on a state by state level as each state banned lead additives in fuel at different times. But proving any cause with a with a 20 year delay in its effect is going to be very difficult. At best it seems reasonable to believe that lead in fuel was a sizable chunk of the problem, but it’s certainly not proven beyond doubt.
- vt240 11y ago
  Yea, there have been a couple good summary articles I've seen here on Hacker News. Personally I find it kind of mind boggling. It's like discovering the cause of Alzheimer's, dementia, or autism. I just find it funny, when discussing issues in comments, the depths people will go to, to frame things in black and white.

kator 11y ago

I was reading the article when I ended up taking a detour to watch the embedded video promoting IC's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z47Gv2cdFtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z47Gv2cdFtA As sad as the pollution is it's still quite amazing to imagine that in 1967 they were on the cusp of a revolution driven mainly by efficiency. At one point in the video they talk about magazine pages that have chips on the front and a schematic for a "real industrial application" on the back. This was literally the start of the "maker" revolution, it just took original makers like Woz to see it and many years of evolution so that people with minimal electronics training can build amazing things on the shoulders of giants before them.

tiredwired 11y ago

Google silicon valley toxic plumes and you get some stories and maps like this- http://whatsdown.terradex.com/#12/37.3674/-121.9649/ http://whatsdown.terradex.com/#12/37.3674/-121.9649/

vitd 11y ago
That may is extremely misleading. In it's default state, it's zoomed out so that you can't tell San Francisco from Los Angeles. The markers are not scaled with the size of the map, so a single marker, when zoomed out, covers several miles, but when zoomed in is less than a single city block. In other words, looking at it in it's default state, the entire coast of CA is covered in toxic plumes, but when zoomed in, you see there are several areas along a particular road but large areas in between that are unaffected. It's a good idea, but the implementation is extremely misleading.

martin1b 11y ago

The video is very interesting. Kator's comment is spot on.

Grazester 11y ago

Interesting. I do remember reading about this and the fact that at one of Google's building they have to use special air filters to filter the air due to where it was built.

sjg007 11y ago
Google and Symantec and most of the offices in that area.