SK hynix to support cancer-stricken workers

Panel finds no apparent link between working environment and illness

Published : Nov 25, 2015 - 16:44 Updated : Nov 25, 2015 - 17:08

An inspection committee for workplace safety and health at chipmaker SK hynix said Wednesday it could not find a direct link between diseases suffered by its employees and the working environment at its facilities.

Announcing a yearlong inspection of the working conditions at the chip manufacturer’s factories and its correlation to illnesses, including cancer and leukemia, the committee noted that “some research showed meaningful results from a statistical perspective, but more time and data is required to verify the direct causes of the diseases among workers.”

Chip-maker SK hynix`s factory in Icheon, Gyeonggie Province. (Yonhap)

The committee composed of 11 medical specialists, scholars and officials from the labor union and management, had compiled relevant data and conducted surveys among workers and on-site inspections at a wafer manufacturing line and a semiconductor packaging line at the firm’s two plants in Icheon in Gyeonggi Province and Cheongju in North Chungcheong Province, for the past year.

The manufacturing line, dubbed the M8, and the packaging line, called the P&T, started operating in 1996.

The SK Group affiliate uses 860 types of chemicals including carcinogenic substances ethylbenzene and cresol in the chip making processes, according to the committee.

Jang Jae-yeon, preventive medicine and public health professor at Ajou University School of Medicine and head of the inspection group, said some mechanical workers were exposed to relatively higher levels of chemicals compounds compared to office workers, but the exposure levels were not critical and within the industrial standards set by the law,”

The number of SK hynix workers diagnosed with cancer stood at 108 from 2010 to 2014 -- 61 workers, or 56.5 percent, were diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Brain tumor, and stomach and brain cancer were among other types of cancer.

Female workers at the lines are up to 3.2 percent more vulnerable to metabolic syndrome compared to those who have desk jobs at the firm. They were 1.3 times more likely to have miscarriages, compared to the entire female employees.

The committee advised the company to come up with support programs for those workers suffering from critical illnesses, which are often hard to prove to be work-related.

Upon the announcement of the advisory group, SK hynix promised that it would compensate its employees suffering from the life-threatening diseases even if there are no clear links to the working environment.

Korean chipmaker Samsung Electronics is also in talks with a group for workers who have contracted leukemia and other cancers, presumably, after working at its semiconductor plants.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)