Poxy lead-free solder (again) ...

Succinct analysis ...

Arfa

Yes, it's a truly elegant example of self-fulfilling nonsense legislation, enacted by fools who have insufficient knowledge of the subject and the wider implications of the changes they cause ...

Arfa

but

volume

Its only marginal that any "recycling" can be currently done in a western economy (with E European or Mexican labour/labor rates) . If metals pricing goes down then even that section , which as far as electronics scrap is really only the metal casings of pcs , will go back in those thousands of otherwise empty shipping containers back to the east. The dodgey sell-on of containers of "nominally" working scrap electronics to Africa will continue though.

There was a documentary on TV about that something like a year ago - one or two of the "nominally working" items were TVs doctored by the investigating team to not qualify for that classification, and fitted with tracking radios to find out where they ended up - usualy W. Africa.

Car batteries which are allegedly recycled in accordance with the WEEE directive; end up in a big pile in India, which is set alight and street urchins (usually barefoot) shovel the molten lead into wheelbarrows as it runs out the bottom of the pile.

Ian Field wrote

But not much of the drinking water comes from where its mined.

Not that I think it makes any sense at all to ban lead in solder.

Isn't it lovely how we continue to give useful and worthwhile work to the ex-colonies ... :-)

Arfa

Much drinking water in the UK was, and continues to be, supplied via lead pipes, and not all areas have 'hard' water supplies that coat the inside of those pipes with a 'protective' limescale layer.

The whole 'lead in the environment' argument makes little sense, apart from in a few special cases like lead in gasoline and paint. Certainly, lead in solder posed no threat at all, and removing it has, in my opinion, been a disastrous retrograde step for the 'green' movement in general, and the electronics construction and servicing industries in particular. Using the stuff leads to increased production costs and energy budgets, and often shorter product lives than would otherwise have been the case when the mature and reliable technology of leaded solder was used.

Arfa

I find this hard to believe.

A charged lead-acid battery contains plates of both elemental lead and some oxidized form of lead. Burning the battery would presumably release only the former, a waste of the latter.

A discharged battery contains less elemental lead and more oxidized lead. Burning it will not reduce the oxidized lead to elemental lead.

Auto batteries have been recycled in the US for decades. The cell construction of a car battery makes recycling relatively straightforward. Burning the battery is just plain stupid.

Note the remark about the sometimes-high value of lead-acid batteries.

In short, I think this story is phony-baloney.

Compared to raw lead, lead/tin alloy is relatively stable, making solder was actually binding a hazardous substance and effectively isolating it from the environment.

Unfortunately the slum dwellers in India never got around to installing state of the art metal reclamation plant.

True. But the point is that there seems to be no point in doing a botched, inefficient job of reclaiming battery lead.

Nonetheless its a shitty job that the countries of origin don't want to dirty their hands with - so they dump them in a heap in an Indian slum district and let the street urchins get on with it.

Would you deny the slum dwellers and street urchins their miserable income by blocking or taxing such exports? It can be done, but it would create an "unemployment" problem at the bottom end.

Incidentally, India isn't exactly a "developing country":

I'm gratified to see that there are now 14 lead recycling plants in the USA.

That's up from about 5 plants about 10 years ago. However, digging through their various web piles, I find that some are either battery manufacturers, that can profit directly from the reclaimed lead, or collection points for smelters in Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Yes, quite. I think I made the point earlier that, as you say, tin and lead is a stable compound

Arfa

It poisons and sometimes maims the kids that are shoveling molten lead in their bare feet, and it pollutes large areas of ground & possibly groundwater.

They also had a "nice little earner" decommissioning scrap warships - which involved shoveling out literally tons of asbestos lagging.

Unless you think the slum dwellers should be euthanized because they're poor, they'd probably be better off without this hazard dumped on their doorstep.

Thick as they are, I doubt this is what the Brussells suits had in mind when they passed the WEEE directive.

There's still a few slightly slow people that need it drumming in!

I'm not sure that's correct. Tin and lead can form an alloy in any proportion. A compound has a specific ratio of elements. An alloy does not.

Arfa Daily wrote

Yebbut, some have blamed the decline of the roman empire on their use of lead plumbing pipes.

Maybe that's what happened to the british empire too ?

There has certainly been a move to lead free pewter for a reason.

No argument there.

Particularly when it makes more sense to just not dump it in normal rubbish dumps than it ever does to ban it.

Yeah, particularly when it produces a lower lifed electronic device.

Yeah, completely and utterly barking mad.

The most that might make some sense is to keep dead electronics out of normal rubbish dumps instead.

There is when there is no possibility of having the metal reclamation plant.