“Invisible” Pollution? Knowledge Gridlock in Regulatory Science on Electronics Toxics

Abstract

“High-tech” provides a cachet of futuristic wonders to localities claiming cutting-edge technological research and industrial innovation. But the high-tech electronic manufacturing processes release hundreds of chemicals and are no doubt ridden with extremely high but hidden environmental health risks. This article aims to increase our understanding of “ignorance” about electronics hazards in the Asian context. It argues that the electronics industries have been under constant innovation, and novel uses of chemicals are introduced to the industrial operation at a much faster pace than the health and environmental assessment can work to comprehend the impacts of the chemicals. In such a context, regulatory science has often failed to effectively monitor and control toxic waste discharges in the high-tech electronics sector. Taking several high-tech pollution disputes in Taiwan as examples, and based on interviews with experts in pollution regulation, this paper discusses multiple constraints on scientific advance in studying toxics that are exacerbated by lagging regulations. These are further entangled with research resource limitations, privileging of high-tech industries in suppressing negative information about toxicity risks, and knowledge repression within the scientific community due to dependence on government and industry, all of which has crippled building knowledge for effective regulatory science–resulting in knowledge gridlock.