Google Employees Exposed To Toxic Vapors

Google’s buildings QD6, and QD7 in Mountain View, California sit on top where Fairchild Semiconductor manufactured semiconductors starting in 1956. After decades of dumping chemicals on the ground it became time to clean it up in the 1980s after drinking wells on the property tested extremely high for trichloroethylene, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, 1,1- and trans-1,2-dichloroethylene, according to analyses conducted by a consultant to Fairchild. The contamination was believed to have resulted from leaking underground tanks. Just down the street Intel Corp.’s and Raytheon Corp.’s Mountain View Plants were doing similar things and were also closed and made by the EPA to start cleaning up the mess. It was so bad that the area became a Superfund cleanup site! The bad news is that despite using special air filtration systems at the Google offices located on the ground above where these contaminates once were, the readings of Trichloroethylene (TCE) are too high. The normal range of TCE is five micrograms per cubic meter. Readings as high as 8 micrograms per cubic meter were found in the Google buildings. No word on what Google is going to do to fix the issues, but their employees are breathing in Trichloroethylene at work thanks to the mess semiconductor companies left behind back in the 1950’s!