**COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES, PERSONAL INJURY AND WRONGFUL DEATH**

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**Page 29**

**MM 006980**

**Document Content:**

1. Defendants Union Carbide Corp. and Pacific Pac International, Inc., and Spacific Pac, Inc., represented to IBM and its employees, including plaintiffs throughout the 1970s and 1980s in written product communications that this product could be used safely in IBM clean rooms without any special or particular ventilation or other process controls as long as its concentration remained below the OSHA "PEL" for isopropyl alcohol, without disclosing that the PEL is set only for non-cancer effects. This misrepresentation was made by sophisticated suppliers of so-called "ultra high purity" electronic grade chemicals who knew that IBM workers would use the isopropyl alcohol in open containers and under circumstances where vapors can be expected to escape to the workplace air. This misrepresentation was made by sophisticated suppliers of so-called "ultra high purity" electronic grade chemicals who knew that IBM would cause workers to use the isopropyl alcohol in conjunction with other so-called "ultra high purity" electronic grade chemicals in the manufacture of microelectronics products and devices.

2. Defendants also knew that the function of air circulation devices serving a clean room is to remove particulates and that these devices actually recirculate and distribute gaseous air contaminants throughout the clean room. Notwithstanding such knowledge, these suppliers conveyed grossly misleading and inadequate information to IBM regarding these dangers, knowing and intending that IBM would repeat, convey, or in some fashion communicate these misleading statements to its employees, including Plaintiff and Plaintiffs' decedent, who detrimentally relied upon these misrepresentations and omissions made to IBM and repeated, communicated and/or in some fashion authoritatively conveyed to them.

3. This representation that isopropyl alcohol posed no health risk to clean room workers as long as isopropyl alcohol exposure levels stayed below the OSHA "PEL" was at all relevant times affirmatively misleading and induced users to undergo exposure to isopropyl alcohol. Union Carbide has since acknowledged the dangerously misleading character of these representations. In a Material Safety Data Sheet for isopropyl alcohol dated 4/01/94, Union Carbide explicitly concedes the need for special local ventilation "at points where vapors can be expected to escape to the workplace air" and further advising that general mechanical room ventilation is satisfactory only when isopropyl alcohol is stored and handled in closed equipment.