News media across the globe have been heaping praise on Samsung's cool new Galaxy S9 and S9+ smartphones. But amid all the raves about the tech innovations and fancy features of these devices, the lives of the mostly female workers who make them have been virtually ignored.
Few consumers or reporters are aware, for example, that half of all Samsung phones are manufactured in Vietnam by a female-majority workforce in their twenties.
Our organizations explored this hidden story by conducting in-depth, open-ended, confidential interviews with 45 women who work on the assembly lines at two Samsung factories in Vietnam. What we found was shocking.
Electronics corporations converge at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week where they roll out latest tech innovations.
Health and environmental advocates are holding a counter event called the Mobile Social Congress to make visible the social, health, and environmental impacts in the design, raw material mining, production, use and waste of electronics. Recent research from IPEN Partners, the Research Center for Gender, Family and Environment in Development (CGFED), exposed health and labor violations of women workers at Samsung Vietnam mobile phone factories. IPEN made a presentation for Mobile Social Congress laying out the concerning findings, Samsung’s efforts to suppress the study, and why the safe and healthy working conditions in the electronics industry should concern us all.
January 18, 2017: Your dry cleaned clothes may be unsuspectingly exposing you to PERC, a toxic chemical, known to have high probability of being carcinogen, reveals “Cleaning Clothes: but what about environment and health” , a report released by Toxics Link today. In the first of its kind of study in India done by this environmental group, garments were tested for PERC after dry cleaning and 75% of them were found to contain the harmful chemical residue.
Central and Eastern Europe regional meeting in Lodz, Poland (English/русский)
These documentshighlight IPEN views on SAICM Beyond 2020 issues such as vision, policy principles, objectives and milestones, governance, high-level political commitment and financing. The document also follows IPEN comments that were provided to Brazil and Canada, the Co-Chairs of SAICM's "Beyond 2020" intersessional process.
Updates about IPEN's work during the SAICM regional meetings will be posted here. Additional IPEN policy papers relevant to the Beyond 2020 process can be found here, and IPEN's activities during the 1st Meeting of the Intersessional Process for SAICM Beyond 2020 that took place in Brazil in February, 2017 are detailed here.
The Czech environmental group Arnika is ringing alarm bells. According to the results of a recent study it conducted, some children’s toys and grooming accessories, such as hair brushes, sold in the EU contain toxic substances. Arnika’s Karolína Brabcová says this is an unfortunate side product of the drive to promote plastics recycling.
IPEN Participating Organization, Toxics Link has released a new report revealing detections of the endocrine disrupting chemical, BPA in thermally printed paper.