Recognizing lead-free solder

Now I come to think back to my college theory days ( blimey, that was a long time ago ! ) I seem to recall that the x-ray emissions from a monochrome tube are barely detectable, and those from a colour tube, only fall into the weak and soft category, due to there only being around 25kV available for acceleration, and that the electron beam is not streamed directly onto a target anode. Indeed, the beam doesn't impact on a physical anode as such, at all, but requires a DC path for the spent electrons to return to the power supply, and that seems to ring distant bells in the cobweb-y recesses of my brain, as being the reason that lead doped glass is used for the faceplate ie to make it sufficiently conductive that it forms a high impedance return path back to ground via the rimband.

On the other hand, going back to the early days of colour television, when a GY501 HV rectifier and a PD500 shunt stabilizer were used, these two thermionic devices *did* produce significant x-radiation due to the electrons impinging on a genuine tungsten anode, hence the reason that if you were working on the HOP stage with the cage removed, you needed to put a lead glass shield around the shunt stabilizer tube, but if you were just working on the set in general, no such protection for your nuts from CRT x-radiation was required. Must've worked tho' as I've got three kids ...

I also seem to recall that in order for *useful* hard x-rays to be produced, a proper x-ray tube runs with 90kV + ??

Arfa

Sorry - aint gonna happen! Remember where lead came from in the first place?

Better to use it up into a stable corrosion resistant alloy that effectively removes it from the environment!

If you really feel that strongly about lead in the water table, maybe you'd better invest in a ground penetrating radar set and seek out all the abandoned lead pipes.

If you can find out that would be great - I thought I overheard somewhere that they merely coated the lead shot with bismuth.

Lead glass is widely used in decorative table glassware - but then the Romans used to eat off pewter plates which is pretty much solder by another name!!!

Those were hatefull sets to work on - I held onto my day job until the setmakers started to introduce designs with (non shunt) regulated EHT!

We have a substantial number of "environmental activists" that actively persue their agendas in the courts and the legislatures. I'm somewhat on the fence as to their motives and effectiveness. In most cases, they genuinely believe that what they're doing is saving the world or preventing some disaster. The problem is that I see as much environmental abuse by companies and manufactories, as I see abuse by environmental activists. It's a miserable way to achieve a workable compromise, but it's all we have.

The issue over lead testing is a marginal example of abuse on both sides. The environmentalists want to remove lead from just about everything on the grounds that it's lowering their own IQ. At the present time, something like 90 to 95% of all lead acid batteries are properly recycled. Using that as an indication of success, the environmental activists expanded the program to other uses for lead. However, unlike batteries, there's no positive financial incentive to recycle CRT's or circuit boards. So, they provide a negative incentive. In California, we pay a tax on CRT's, in advance, to pay for recycling. What's hillarious is that it also includes LCD panels with have almost no lead in them. Since this is revenue for the state, the politicians are all for it. The vendors don't care because they just pass the cost on to the consumer.

In effect, what the money had done is pre-pay the waste disposal charges. The county would previously charge $10 per monitor to accept it at the municipal dump. Now, it's just part of the usual handling fee (currently $8 per pickup truck load). The monitors are seperated and handled as hazardous waste.

Some photos of the pile. The older photos show computers, printers, and hi-fi's, which are no longer recycled along with the CRT's.

Also, not everyone believes the lead recycling figures:

Also, we tend to export our recycling to 3rd world countries with limited environmental regulations. These countries method of recycling the lead tends to be rather disgusting, such as building a big bon-fire, and collecting the melted solder or lead.

It's not the acid rain. It's the water leachate from the landfill that's fairly acidic. The local landfill uses a clay sealer to reduce water incursion into the landfill. Despite such efforts, acidic water found in a nearby creek requires treatment to prevent killing everything alive.

It doesn't get anywhere near PH=5 from acid rain. However, the use of such acidic water is part of the test because in some parts of the country, it is possible to have such an acidic runnoff due to minerals in the soil, industrial runoff, or previous pollution. Same with pulverizing the glass. The EPA tests for the worst case senario. I don't approve of this, but I suspect that nobody wanted to deal with regional testing variations.

I think the efforts are justified. What else could explain the lack of intelligent thinking currently epidemic in the US government?

Lead poisoning is apparently cumulative. If we project the current increased levels found in the environment, we are approaching concentrations which will be difficult to avoid much less remove from the environment. Better to get rid of the stuff while we can. I don't like the methods and rationalizations by the environmental activists, but the cause is justified.

Nope. Just CRT's. We'll get to electronics eventually.

Incidentally, I once obtained a large pile of NiCad AA cells from a volume user. It seems it was cheaper to just give me the batteries than to deal with the handling and paperwork of proper disposal. I recently also picked up a large pile of fairly good UPS gel-cell batteries for the same reason. I *LIKE* such laws.

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# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
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Jeff

I see all the same arguments regarding children's IQ and lead over here, but the figures don't seem to add up. When I was a kid, all water was delivered to houses in lead pipes - and yes, I know all the stuff about the insides of the pipes coating up with calcium - and all soldered joints on copper pipes were done with a traditional lead solder. All vehicle petrol ( gasoline ) contained lead for its anti-knock properties. This lead content, for the most part, went straight out of the cars' tailpipes, and either straight into our bodies through breathing, or into the eco system by way of settlement and rain washing. This *must* have resulted in *much* higher concentrations than we now have, since lead has been removed from petrol.

On this basis, our generation should be the peak of decline in lead-induced IQ poorness. But look around you. Would you honestly believe that to be so ? I would consider myself to be of probably a bit above average intelligence for my generation. I went to a Grammar School, where I neither shone, nor failed - I was an average kid at that type of school. Now, compared to those who go to the top schools that we have, I'm a bloody genius. So why are kids now so thick ? Our illustrious leader Blair, who you couldn't trust to give you info or figures that weren't covered in massage oil anyway, insists that kids are getting more and more intelligent by the year. Something ridiculous like 95% of them now pass their final exams with A or A* grades. Presumably, apart from his wonderful ( ha! ) education system, lack of lead in their brains is the reason for this - but wait ! They are actually, in general, THICK now compared to a couple of generations ago, when there was a lot more lead around. They manage to get these grades because they are not now taught the knowledge required to pass any exam on the subject, but the knowledge to pass the specific one that they are going to get ... I used to talk to a lot of my own kids' friends, and we see plenty on the TV, and I can't believe just how far down the toilet, intelligence has gone.

But it's nothing to do with lead in the eco system. It's a social issue. It's all about attitudes, and half-arsed new teaching methods, and having classroom assistants who are not qualified or sufficiently intelligent themselves, to be interacting with our kids. I know a latter-day teacher, who still doesn't know the difference between the words "bought" and "brought", so there's another generation of kids on the slippery slope.

If taking lead out of petrol, which when it was in, was by far the best way of getting pure lead into people, has not reversed this trend, then messing about removing lead that's locked up chemically in glass and solder, sure as hell isn't going to have any significant effect. As far as poor recycling methods in third world countries goes, that cannot be used as an excuse for not doing it, or saying that the process of recycling is dangerous to humans. It need not be, if it is carried out correctly.

I agree that efforts to control poisons and hormones and all the other nasty stuff that gets into our lives, are laudable, but it's a matter of degree. Some pollutants can never be practically removed, nor do they need to be on dubious eco-grounds. It is a fact of life that we will always have to endure some, if we want to carry on living the sorts of consumer-based lives that we do. You can't protect everybody against everything, and I think that lead in solder ( and CRTs ) is just one such example where the eco-warriors have gotten their teeth into something that sounds bad, with apparent tangible negative effects, and run with it to the point of introducing needless legislation that costs billions to implement worldwide, has negative effects on reliability, has already been taken care of with ( acceptable ) recycling legislation, and results in a worldwide increase in energy budget - with all that's known of the genuine negative eco effects from that - to implement use of lead-free solder.

If lead in the environment is really still going up, even though it has now been removed from petrol, the most pressing question should be " where is it really coming from ? " I'm willing to bet that they would have a hard time proving it was from either solder or CRTs ...

Arfa

On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 23:41:32 GMT, "Arfa Daily" put finger to keyboard and composed:

Here's an interesting case of lead poisoning:

"According to the Medical Journal of Australia, in 1995 an Australian man and his wife were lead poisoned by drinking non-alcoholic carbonated beverages from a pewter mug purchased 10 years previously in Malaysia. [Ref: Scarlett et al, MJA Vol 163 4/18 December 1995 p

589-590]"

- Franc Zabkar

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On 17 Jun 2006 00:04:15 GMT, Jim Yanik put finger to keyboard and composed:

According to this article, the majority of the lead is in the funnel and neck:

The same article has this to say about the leaching of lead into the water table:

"Akatiff says that even with tens of thousands of CRTs buried in his landfill, about 80 percent of the monitoring wells surrounding the facility show no evidence of lead. A few show trace amounts, he says, levels that have also been also been detected in other California landfills."

- Franc Zabkar

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Interesting reading. Do you set much store by what they say, or is it a case of another bunch of fanatics who make everything sound right for their cause ?

I'm not sure. Some of the cases cited do seem to have an element of the fantastic ( as in fantasy ) about them. I must admit that I am always a little sceptical about organisations that have to make up long involved names that can then have their initial letters made into an acronym that reflects their function like in this case " LEAD " and " GLASS " and " PAN ".

The cited case of the six farm workers that became " paralytic after drinking cider taken to them at harvest work etc " actually tells us nothing about the effects of glaze in the earthenwear pot, that can be taken as any kind of proof of lead poisoning. Indeed, lead poisoning is generally taken to be a long term cumulative affair, and I would be very surprised if that sort of illness could be brought on by one session of drinking from a flaggon with lead bearing glaze. Rather, I would suggest, becoming paralytic was more likely to be an effect of drinking the cider itself. Anyone who knows this local rough-fermented brew, which is normally known as "scrumpy", will tell you that it's looney-juice. One pint of the stuff is enough to put a big guy on his back, if he's not used to it. It's like drinking apple brandy ...

On the other hand, the case of the pair poisoned by the pewter mug over ten years, sounds reasonably possible, given that they were drinking some kind of ( unspecified ) fizzy reactive beverage from it, which if fruit based, may well have been quite acidic. Although we are told that they are poisoned over this 10 year period, there is no specific information on what exactly the symptoms of this poisoning were. Likewise, the guy who was awarded the large sum for getting lead poisoned in an English pub. I'd like to actually read that article, as this seems a very large sum for something that would be as difficult to prove as that would be.

None of this actually makes me any less sceptical about the danger claims of lead in solder, and CRTs, but it's all interesting stuff. Again, if anyone's getting fed up with it all as off-topic rambling, please say so, and I'll knock it on the head.

Arfa

"Arfa Daily" hath wroth:

I dig out my handy Exstik II PH meter and measure: Tap water : 6.7 Western Family Diet Lemon Lime: 4.1 Western Family Lemon Lime : 3.3 Coca Cola : 2.6 Ocean Spray Cramberry Cocktail: 3.5 Lemon Juice (added to tea) : 3.0

Oh, here's a PH table from the UK: |

Soda pop and fruit juices are sufficiently acidic to leach out the lead in pipes and drinking cups.

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

OK, thanks for that. Looking at some of those figures, no wonder these drinks rot your teeth away! It's like drinking schoolboy chem lab bench acids. I seem to recall that some of them weren't much lower ...

Still, that certainly confirms what I thought about the pewter mug case. We still don't know what the actual effects of this long term exposure was to these people, or exactly how much they ingested. I don't suppose that you have a bottle of beer to test the ph of, do you? It used to be very common over here for regulars in village pubs, to keep their own ( often pewter ) pint mug behinf the bar. In fact giving one of these as an 18th birthday gift ( legal drinking age here ) was at one time quite a tradition. My next door neighbour certainly used to take one with him every night to the local pub, but I don't know if he still does. I'll have to ask him.

Arfa

"Arfa Daily" hath wroth:

Sorry. No beer here. Various web sites suggest that a ph of 4.0 to 4.3 is typical.

-- Jeff Liebermann snipped-for-privacy@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us

150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060 Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

As well as coning instead of doming of leaded solder, greyness, clumping / pasty large blocks of such solder when melted. Just found another way of recognising. Having just found a bad joint on a 2005 "Vox AC30" and having to desolder interboard wires to get to the pre-amp board. I clear solder and board holes before resoldering by melting and piercing with a sewing needle mounted in wooden dowel. These needles are stainless steel and with Pb/Sn the solder around the pin , when cooled, easily comes off the needle with just finger nails. This lead free stuff, needs pliers to scrape off the needle.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on