While the environmental impact of smelters, tanneries, fertilizer producers, and chemical companies has received a great deal of scrutiny over the past few years, the IT industry has been more or less given a free pass. So says Ma Jun, the director of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs, one of the 34 NGO’s that published a report last month accusing IT companies of contaminating water and soil with heavy metals, particularly in the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas. The report even leveled chargesat prestigious international firms like Microsoft and Intel, claiming that pollution caused by component suppliers, particularly circuit printing factories, is damaging both environmental and public health. In the city of Huizhou, where one electronics company’s copper discharge was measured at 5,000 times acceptable levels in 2009, heavy metal pollution has been linked to a spate of Hepatitis B cases. 
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