Today's Lead Free Crap Solder Stories ...

A succinct and nicely measured evaluation of the situation, Adrian

Arfa

The Romans used lead pipes to carry water, and some people believe this contributed to "the decline and fall". The Romans also used lead acetate to sweeten their wine, which might also have poisoned them.

One of the reasons tetraethyl lead was removed from gasoline, and lead oxide from paint, was that there was no question it was getting into people's systems. This, as far as I know, has not been show for lead from landfills.

On 5/23/2010 9:24 AM Arfa Daily spake thus:

I would feel very differently about this whole matter if there were proper recycling programs in place for "E-waste", *and* if those programs were actually used by the public. As it is, I see lots and lots of electronics going into the dumpster--literally, meaning the dumpster into which I put my trash, which regularly gets contributions of old cell phones, wireless routers, PC cards, etc., etc.

And this can't be blamed entirely on the great unwashed masses: if things were set up fairly, then manufacturers would be forced to take responsibility for their "E-waste" and offer incentives for people to not throw stuff in the trash.

If that were the case, that we had functioning recycling programs that captured something like 80-90% of this waste stream, then maybe it might be a good idea to go back to good old lead solder.

--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

- Comment from an article on Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com)

On 5/23/2010 12:52 PM David Nebenzahl spake thus:

Forgot to add: Not to mention the energy and resource-recovery savings that could be realized by recycling. But this raises questions: how possible is it to recover materials from recycled electronics? It seems it might be worthwhile, especially if some of the more expensive and rare materials (like silver, platinum, tantalum, etc.) could be recovered. But how easy is this to do in the real world? Can you grind up old circuit boards and then try to extract stuff from the bits and pieces? Use strong chemical brews to extract metals? Does this require pulling components off by hand (cost-prohibitive except in impoverished overseas places)? How is this actually done?

--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

- Comment from an article on Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com)

whetted

end

things

there

the

Actually they said, 'Every TV has 27 pounds of lead'. Someone owes me at least a half ton, because I have a lot of 4" TVs and monitors that weigh less than 2 ponds, and the CRT is only a few ounces.

Typical Bureaucratic crap. They have to occasionally do something even though it's usually wrong. :(

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

Recycling is easy if you impose a fee on new equipment, and only refund it when old equipment is turned in.

They can, and do grind up old PC boards. Scrap fiberglass PC boards also yield reusable fiber that can be used to make small boat hulls, bathtubs and hot tubs.

The boards are ground to small pieces, then soaked in hot acid to remove all the metals. The fiberglass is mechanically separated from the plastic & ceramic scrap. The metals are recovered from the acid, and refined like raw ore. A Japanese company holds the early patents

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

Old landfills are being mined for recyclables in some places.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

On 5/23/2010 3:03 PM Michael A. Terrell spake thus:

Maybe we're not so far apart on this issue after all. The goal shouldn't be to just mindlessly ban things, but to set up a system to keep dangerous and toxic things from hurting us. As is already done with a lot of other materials. So if a reliable and widely-used recycling system can be set up, that would solve the problem nicely.

--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

- Comment from an article on Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com)

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in news:htbsee$fkm$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

of course running water,possibly acidic,could dissolve lead into the water. But landfills don't have running water,the buried refuse should not even be immersed in water,and other materials could neutralize or diminish any acidity.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

It's called "rain".

You may not have any kind of mandated regulations in your part of the world, but we do over here in the UK and the rest of Europe. Implementation is a little patchy so far, and some countries are acting more on the WEEE directive than others, but the ultimate goal is to make all manufacturers responsible for the collection of their goods at end of life, and to then handle either the safe disposal or dismantling and recycling of them. Electronic recycling companies are springing up all over the UK, and handling this work under contract. All municipal garbage disposal sites are now charged with recycling the items that the public brings to them, and have bins divided by the type of garbage that they are for. There is always one now for electronic equipment.

Instead of the ludicrous scheme of replacing leaded solder with a less than satisfactory alternative, a bit of joined up thinking, divorced from the "remove lead from everything" hysteria, could have resulted in a proper recycling scheme being introduced much quicker, and without all of the short and long term problems that the whole RoHS mess has produced for manufacturers and service organisations alike.

They managed it for automotive batteries without any fuss, because there

*was* no alternative that was remotely suitable for the job. As I said before, these are now silently and unobtrusively spirited away, and 100% recycled.

Arfa

Yes indeedy. You're beginning to see the bigger (and better) picture, now that you're starting to stop and think about the faulty eco-hysteria that brought about the change in the first place ... :-)

Arfa

to

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might

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are

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short

So what exactly can be recycled from electronic scrap, ie the circuit boards not plastic casing and metal chassis. Gold from edge connectors if 1970s boards but not anything since has been economic to process legitimately in the UK. The rest is mixed plastic and glass fibre and processed sand. As 50 percent of shipping containers leave the UK empty (recent UK BBC4 doc on "boxes"), the shipping fees for sending scrap boards to be "processed" in India costs next to nothing , little more than admin costs.

Well, if nothing else, I'm sure that the bulk of the solder could be fairly easily removed, but as someone else commented - Michael I think it was - boards *are* ground up, and the various materials separated and recovered, including the fibreglass itself, which is then used for boat hulls and bath tubs, I think he said. Perhaps Michael knows of some reference on the 'net to this ??

Arfa

fairly

bath

You cannot recover the solder by a process like mechanically stripping plastic insulation off copper wire , legal in the UK if plastic is recycled, burning off illegal. So container loads of it ends up in India to be set fire to and the glass matting ends up in their dumps and the water courses etc as no economic value even in India, as far too contaminated and messy

You guys should've seen our shooting range... One 7.62mm bullet probably has more lead than an average CD player or whatever had in it when it was not lead-free. I usually spend at least 200 rounds every time I visit the range. And I'm not the only one shooting there :)

There are some guys that come something like twice a year to mine for that lead...

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On 5/24/2010 2:35 AM N_Cook spake thus:

You're not reading, or not paying attention: Michael Terrell explained how materials are recovered from ground-up circuit boards, and it doesn't involve any burning like you speculated. Not that this isn't done in places like India, but that's not the way it's *supposed* to be done.

I can't vouch for the veracity of what Terrell wrote, just reporting what he said. I'd like some references too, but for now we have to take him at his word. Which is that the materials in circuit boards *are* recoverable using presumably environmentally-safe methods.

--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

- Comment from an article on Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com)

One of the landfills in our area (Ohio USA) has been burning from inside lately and releasing all sorts of smells and gases. Aluminum waste reacting with acids or detergent residues can generate hydrogen and lots of heat. If you mix in some old lead based circuit boards the runoff could get toxic pretty fast.

Landfills are not controlled storage facilities and putting anything in one even potentially toxic is a real bad idea.

--
They can have my command prompt when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.