The regulatory environment may take a new twist. U.S. legislators are considering a bill that would require companies to track the origin of raw materials, raising several questions about reporting and enforcement.

Kansas Senator Sam Brownback has drafted a bill that requires companies to report where ore for tin, tantalum and tungsten was mined. The intent is to cut off funding for rebel groups in the Congo, mimicking the ban on so-called blood diamonds.

A similar bill proposed by Washington Congressman Jim McDermott explains why the legislation was written. He cites a 2008 study by the International Rescue Committee which estimated that 5,400,000 people have died due to conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1998. The ongoing rate is as many as 45,000 deaths each month.

The electronics industry will be among the fields that will be encompassed in any legislation that emerges. That's prompting a lot of studies and raising questions about the eventual impact on the supply chain.

The U.S. Senate's proposed Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009 requires companies that sell products containing these materials to tell the SEC the country of their origin. If they're from the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the surrounding countries, they need to disclose the mine of origin. If the bill passes, it will require significant changes in materials monitoring.

"While we support the intent of the bill, the challenge is, there's no tracing or tracking mechanism for these materials," said Michael Loch, Chairman of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group that provides environmental input to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

Once materials get into the supply chain, tracking becomes increasingly difficult. "It's a very challenging issue, it's hard to know where materials come from. There's no chemical way to tell where the ore comes from," said Leann Speta, Social and Environmental Program Manager for Sun Microsystems' Global Supply Chain group. She will provide focus on this topic during the IPC Materials Conference: Engineering for Compliance conference in Irvine, California, November 11, 2009.

She noted that many ore processors dump all incoming materials into what many refer to as a swimming pool, so the origin of the ore is quickly lost. "In many parts of the Eastern Congo, miners and traders will carry the ore for a couple days to other traders who may then take it to companies for export. By the time the material leaves the Congo. it has likely been handled by several people or entities making it quite challenging to know exactly what mine it came from," she said.

That marks a significant change from RoHS, REACH and other regulations that require vendors to keep specific materials out of their products. "It's a lot more difficult to understand the source of material than to know whether your product contains it," said Loch, who's also Director of Supplier Corporate Responsibility at Motorola.

Though it's still uncertain whether Congress will find time to pass a bill this year, the electronics industry is already doing research so corporations can better understand what may happen.