latest Euro ROHS fun

Does

"This would bring into scope all electrical products used in building and transport (unless covered by other legislation such as the ELV directive), all "fixed installations" and electrical parts in aircraft, trains, ships, and commercial vehicles."

mean planes will be falling out of the sky with greater frequancy than at present ?

Buy a titanium umbrella.

Possibly. However, the increased weight of the RoHS stickers will probably prevent the airplane from leaving the ground.

Personally, I suspect that government meddling and technical ineptitude are more detrimental to public health than any alleged toxic substances. Like any good dinner, good ideas like RoHS can become intolerable when overly well done. The question is where does one stop regulating? This limit line varies radically with agenda, politics, and position. Worse, when the EU wants to extend their control into a few small areas, they will usually demand control over many more areas, so that the inevitable compromise results in the limited expansion originally desired.

(Drivel: What I want to see is some disincentive for manufacturers to make and sell throw away and disposable products. However, that's another topic for another day).

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
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I am a believer in aggressive government regulation. Really. But...

I also believe there is no such thing as a hazardous substance -- it is how materials are used and disposed of that makes them hazardous -- or not.

Lead is a poison, and a nasty one. We know that. The question is really what happes to the lead in the solder when the item is disposed. I'm still not convinced that it easily finds its way into the water supply.

On 11/21/2009 5:40 PM William Sommerwerck spake thus:

It does. Like most every other element, lead reacts with other stuff in the environment to form salts, acids, etc., so while elemental lead itself may not be a huge environmental problem, these compounds can very easily contaminate water and soil.

It's really bad for kids. And I definitely don't want to be ingesting that stuff. So the RoHS rationale is very understandable.

The problem, of course, is the unintended consequences on the electronics side (like planes falling out of the sky?).

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I'm undecided. Sometimes, such regulations work well. Other times, they're a waste of time and tax dollars. The problem is that once regulations are in place, they never seem to go away. Even the bad ones.

I don't think you can expect the average consumer to follow (or read) the instructions or warnings. Try reading the instructions and warning that come with one of the most hazardous substances we commonly handle, perscription drugs. Don't forget to read the fine print.

It does. It's showing up in all manner of odd places. The theory is that once it ends up in the landfill, it's only a matter of time before it ends up in the water supply. I consider the logic, testing, and some of the regulations to be seriously flawed. I covered this in previous rants at:

While we're sealing nuclear wastes in glass for long term storage:

apparently that's not good enough for sequestering lead from CRT's.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

how

what

As far as I can see RoHS is designed to increase the amount of stuff ending up in landfill, ok not containing lead perhaps. Institute a system that on average makes things fail a factor of 3 to 10 times quicker than before (dependent on vibration and temperature regimes in use). Knowing that there is next to no-one who will repair this stuff and also keep the makers happy knowing that their resupply rate is faster - they sell more.

But that's not quite the same thing. It's assumed that broken CRTs will exposed to rain in landfills. Nuclear wastes aren't supposed to be exposed to rain or a flow of water.

Paying for disposal or recycling when you buy something new, or turning in the old item when you buy its replacement is probably the best approach.

PS: Someone who can't tell the difference between a CRT and an LCD display ain't very bright.

I've not heard of one case of innocent children being poisoned by eating Pb based solder. Isn't that the watermark for government intervention?

The thing i find interesting about that is that i read somewhere one way of stabilizing spent nuclear waste is encapsulating it in glass. Is a CRT not essentially encapsulated in glass? If the lead is in the glass and the glass does not break down, how is any quantity of it going to leach out?

This is the part that is so simple yet so hard. With mandatory recycling of used electronics and such, only a small percentage would ever hit the landfill and the rest would be properly separated and recycled or disposed of. Screw the ROHS on the front end, take care of it on the back end.

I truly think these environmentalist wack ohs are just like mid level bureaucrats. They live to make up rules to justify there existence. The state of California is a good example. There trying to pass crazy energy regulations on large flat TV's. Nothing wrong with using less energy, but these idiots won't be happy until every 50" TV consumes 1/2 watt of power and call the industry a liar if they cannot make one. These are the same brain surgeons that want you to buy electric cars and plug them into your garage every night. And how many 50" TV's would it take to use the same energy as charging your electric car? Yet there is plenty of energy for that.

If California is so short of energy, they should utilize what plentiful sources they have now. If they put all the illegal aliens in the state on large scale hamster wheels hooked to generators, they would have tons of extra power.

In twenty years or so, we will truly be in a throw away society. There will be no one left to fix anything. The only thing trades are teaching anymore are computers. Repairs shops will be excavated in the future like dinosaurs for artifacts. They will all be extinct.

bob

As I said in another, recent post, radioactive wastes are not dumped into landfills, where they are washed by rain.

I'm inclined to agree. Of course, you can never remove 100% of the solder from the board, short of stripping off the copper traces and melting them down. Which is not a bad idea -- if you can find enough poverty-stricken people to do it for next to nothing.

I don't think all environmentalists are whackos -- humans are doing a very good job of destroying this planet. However, the proposed energy requirements for large-screen TVs, though well-intended, make little sense in light of the fact that the consumer-electronics industry wants to produce lower-consumption sets, simply because they'll be more reliable and cost less. This is one of those very rare cases where big business does the right thing on its own.

You're not thinking this through. Where does the energy to power the car -- or an electric power plant -- come form?

Well valid question. Supposedly, there is a shortage of power in California. So adding a million electric cars is going to do what? Require building new power plants. I think they more or less tapped out hydro capacity. So that leaves nuclear and coal as the only feasible alternatives. It would take 20 years to get a new nuke plant built (if ever). So that leaves coal. With all the new environmental regs on coal plants, that leaves tons of toxic fly ash to be disposed of. Where is that all going to go? There was a big release of fly ash in Tennessee that is still an environmental nightmare. Its an environmental shell game of shifting blame and who has to pay on any given day.

The Bio fuels industry is in shambles in some parts of the country due to dropping oil prices. many plants were abandoned or sit half completed. Wind power and solar are feel good alternatives, but realistically are supplemental sources of power. It won't be long until the "no cell phone tower in my back yard" group moves on to wind mills.

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:cLin2x92YrwJ:cmegroup.barchart.com/ethanol/archive/1232044724CME-Weekly-Ethanol-12-Jan-2009.pdf+ethanal+plant+shut+down+nebraska&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Our local public owned utility in Nebraska is asking for a 5% or so increase in rates next year. The reason? they did not sell enough power last year. So, you ask the public to conserve, they do, then they charge you more. Go figure.

All of the materials moving through the US cost more to ship now due to the new class 8 truck emission laws. While i don't think some improvement was out of line, i think it has gone beyond that. Even farm tractors and train locomotives are liable now too. Between he cost of the new low sulpher diesel and the lower mileage of the newer class 8 trucks, it was a double hit to the increase in costs of transporting goods

bob

Agreed. However, grinding down the CRT and exposing the remains to an acid is not my idea of suitable testing. Yet, that's what it took to get any numbers for lead leaching into the environment from CRT's. How many landfills grind their waste to powder and then acid etch them?

Really? I find it a great excuse not to properly dispose of anything. After all, there's no financial incentive. The only good thing about this system is that it subsidizes recycling centers for handling unprofitable wastes, such as CRT's. The only reason it exists is that the alternatives are worse. Penalizing anyone owning something deemed hazardous will result in CRT's getting dumped by the road side. That's exactly what happened here during the short period when the local "transfer station" was charging outrageous amounts (i.e. what it really costs to handle the stuff) for disposing of CRT's. Incidentally, the high cost was due to the classification of CRT's as hazardous waste because of the lead content and therefore requiring special handling. That lasted about 6 months and was replaced by the pay in advance system you seem to favor.

That's exactly why we have a recycling fee on LCD monitors, which have very little lead content. Santa Cruz City landfill employs the mentally handicapped to do sorting, which certainly qualifies.

Here's the local disposal fee schedule:

Note the entry for "Major appliances containing regulated hazardous materials (e.g., washers, dryers, water heaters, microwaves)". These contain a circuit board or glass with potentially some lead in them, and are thus deemed hazardous waste. The problem is that while most manufacturers have switched to lead free manufacturing, the local landfill will probably continue collecting the fee because there's a small possibility that some old lead containing appliances might appear.

Now, expand the above lead handling to a wider assortment of "toxic" substances. Do you smoke in front of your computah? Too bad because Apple claims the residue is toxic and will not honor the warranty.

Yeah, I know this is the "slipper slope" argument, but without sane guidelines as to what constitutes hazardous, the list will grow without bounds which seems to be what the EU now wants.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

It's not primarily a question of "eating pB based solder." It's a question of total exposure to lead from all paths, including release of lead from equipment being dismantled.

Consider the research documented at

This documents the effects of the electronic-waste recycling practices in Guiyu, China. A high percentage of e-waste from the U.S. is exported to locations in Asia for recycling, and much of this is done via rather primitive methods such as those described in Guiyu.

"Results: BLLs in 165 children of Guiyu ranged from 4.40 to 32.67 ?g/dL with a mean of 15.3 ?g/dL, whereas BLLs in 61 children of Chendian were from 4.09 to 23.10 ?g/dL with a mean of 9.94 ?g/."

"In conclusion, elevated BLLs in Guiyu children are common as a result of exposure to lead contamination caused by primitive e-waste recycling activities. Lead contamination from e-waste processing appears to have reached the level considered to be a serious threat to children." Back in 2003, the results of a five-year study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine seems to indicate that children can suffer a measurable (and quite significant) decrease in their intellectual capacity from blood-lead levels of 10 uG/dL or less.

"In our sample, most of the damage to intellectual functioning occurs at blood-lead concentrations that are below 10 mcg/dl," said Canfield. The amount of impairment was also much greater than the researchers had expected. "Given the relatively low exposure levels, we were surprised to find that the IQ scores of children with blood-lead levels of 10 mcg/dl were about seven points lower than for children with lead levels of 1 mcg/dl," Canfield said.

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Few. The worst that would happen is that the bulb would be thoroughly broken -- but not ground to powder.

The other issue is what happens over a period of time. My gut feeling is that only a little lead, from the surface of the glass, would efer leach out.

in

I don't know. We can't continue to dump huge amounts of electronic waste without making a reasonable effort to at least extract the useful and dangerous components of it.

When I bought my plasma TV, I paid Magnolia an extra $50 to pick up my 32" Toshiba IDTV. I don't know what they did with it.

Best Buy will take almost anything for (supposed recycling) for $10, then give you the $10 back as a store credit.

Gold is now around $1000 an ounce. That's $35 a gram. Is that enough to justify simply extracting the gold?

Again, I don't know. I'm a Liberal who believes in extreme government regulation -- but these sorts of things go beyond what I consider "common sense".

As for smoking voiding your warranty -- that's going a little far.

I was been a bit facetious but hey I'd rather be exposed to lead than aircraft and satellites falling from the sky.

Yep. Yet China's RoHS is even more restrictive that the EU. The EU is modeling their new and expanded regulations on Chinas.

Mexico is even worse. Find a concrete pad. Bulldoze a pile of ewaste over the pad. Add diesel. Ignite. The lead and most useful metals melt to the pad, where it's collected. Shove the slag out of the way and repeat.

However, there's hope. The bottom fell out of the scrap metals market last year mostly due to China deciding not to buy as much US scrap. The children of China are safe. Now, all we have to do is figure out what to do with the scrap ourselves.

I'm surprised they didn't study the effect of lead on the researchers.

occurs

Chuckle. That sounds like a repeat of a similar study done in the

1960's. I'll see if I can find the references (later). What they did was compare the IQ scores of children that lived near a lead recycling plant in Colorado(?) with those in a more pristine atmosphere. The former were in a designated poverty area, while the latter were in a more affluent location. The IQ test results were predictable. The same data also showed an increased incidence of various diseases in the former. Hopefully, this report is a bit more sane.

Incidentally, one of my friends is a biomedical researcher. She does the numbers for many such research projects. I don't know if it's really true, but many such studies cannot be funded unless the result is known in advance. They can't afford to embarrass those that are paying the bills.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Were the two groups of children controlled for family background? Those with the higher lead might have been from lower-income communities with poorer parenting.

In the UK the Fly ash and the gypsum are used to manufacture building blocks and drywall sheet.

We have got a group locally that wants to ban the construction of a wind farm five miles or so away. Unfortunately for them its a wasted quest since the construction is a forgone conclusion. The master control system for it and several others has already been built and commissioned.

A new wood (Willow) fired power station was built not too far away. It ran for less than three months and is now in mothballs. A waste of the millions spent to purchase the land, build it, contract the farmers to produce the willow, commission, test and close it down.

ethanol/archive/1232044724CME-Weekly-Ethanol-12-Jan-2009.pdf+ethanal+plant

That sounds like our electricity utilities here.

Fortunately, unlike Europe "Bio Diesel" hasn't got to us yet ! But I feel sure that it will.

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