> I don't know anything about that industry but there has to be a way to paint cars in a safe way, right??

There are. They just cost more and take more time.

> But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic

People say this all the time, but semiconductor fabs simply aren't very toxic compared to just about every other industrial manufacturing process. Mostly this is because everything is sealed and sealed and sealed some more.

Yes, they handle stuff like arsenic gas (arsine AsH3), but they really try to reclaim it all. The semiconductor waste stream is often purer than most industrial inputs. Yeah, old plants would just dump crap into the environment. However, for modern semiconductor facilities, it is generally more economic to reprocess your waste than try to purify from primary sources.

Now, PCB manufacturing, on the other hand, is quite terrible or at least it used to be. I don't know if people have sealed and automated that yet.