lead vapor

George Herold Inscribed thus:

Yes I would agree. The vapors from the fluxes can damage the olfactory sensors.

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Best Regards:
                     Baron.

I guess it's better safe than sorry. Would be nice to see some studies of long term effects of soldering.

f e

One man's pollutant is another man's perfume. Bring on the solder!

G=B2

Got a cite for that? Is it long term or short term damage?

Jon

From what I've read, you'll have more of a problem of lead getting into your system via it rubbing off on your fingers and then licking them, rather than inhaling it. It doesn't travel that way in this instance.

As far as the resins go, providing you're sticking to normal electronics solder, I've read the resins are inert, but I've worked with people who swear black and blue it irritates them.

Though the same ones say the simple filtered fans do quite nicely.

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com Inscribed thus:

I'm very protective of my olfactory sensors. ;-)

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Best Regards:
                     Baron.

Jon Danniken Inscribed thus:

Since you ask for a citation for "olfactory sensor" damage, I suspect you can't find one. :-)

To answer your second question, based on experience, I would say short term. The more intense the oder the longer it takes before you can detect a second similar one. Similar in essence to the way that a smoker looses their sense of smell.

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Best Regards:
                     Baron.

John Tserkezis Inscribed thus:

I'm one of those people. The oder seems to linger for quite a long time before it dissipates. Though its not just solder flux fumes. Almost any fairly strong smell, cheeses for instance or some perfumes seem to persist long after the source has gone. One smell that I find really irritating is the one you get from a catalytic converter warming up when a car starts from cold. That really gets up my nose... :-)

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Best Regards:
                     Baron.

Many years ago I knew a toxicologist who spent a year doing a research project in the lab where I worked at the time. The first time he saw me soldering, he mentioned the fumes problem. He had apparently done some work on this in the past, and (IIRC) he said it was the flux that caused the toxicity he had been seeing. Huh, I always kinda liked that fresh pine scent!

Anyway, I started using a fan to draw the smoke away from my face. No filter, just spread it around the room, but at least I figured I'd reduced my dose of whatever was bad, even if just the flux.

However, I now suspect the lead vapor may be a problem as well... and I wouldn't be too complacent about lead-free solder, either. There seems to have been a lot more awareness of heavy metal toxicity in the intervening decades.

Best regards,

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Okay then, I thought you were talking about a documented phenomenon.

Jon

Thanks you all for the responses. I was saddened to read (on perhaps wacko websites) that people shouldn=92t take up hobbies where they are exposed to lead soldering. It would be nice to know how much vapor soldering generates. (I=92m talking about hand soldering here and not wave or other batch processes.) Does more lead come off the 1 pound spool of solder at room temperature on my lab bench, or the little blob at 300 C at the end of my iron? (I wonder if I can find lead vapor pressure as a function of temperature?)

George H.

I think that's backwards. There's little unregulated use of hot metals (in the US, at least), so most healthcare folk never see a lead-poisoning case these days. Even aside from legal restrictions, health insurance coverage depends on compliance with good practices.

I've found that plot (it's 10**-11 torr at solder temperatures), but there's two reasons it doesn't matter. Firstly, solder is an alloy, and the vapor pressure of pure lead is higher than that of the mixture. Secondly, the air you breathe is NOT at molten-solder temperatures, and the 'vapor' becomes precipitate droplets or oxide dust before you have a chance to breathe it.

I think the plot was in an ASME Metals Handbook...