Ditto. I'd love to know about any laws banning leaded solder in the USA so I can get a jump on starting my new multimillion-dollar recycled home- electronics business.
-- B. Hussein Obama won't wear an American flag on his lapel, or put his hand over his heart during the national anthem, but prominently displayed in his Houston campaign office are TWO Cuban flags, each with a picture of Che Guevara superimposed on it.
I saw an article the other day that said that Arnie had personally blocked some lead-restrictive potential legislation in his capacity as governor of ca. Ah I've just found it. Don't know if it will make it through the newsgroup server system, but here it is copied below ...
California vetoes ROHS-expansion bill Edited by Suzanne Deffree -- EDN, 1/10/2008 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed an assembly bill that would have more closely aligned California?s ROHS (restriction-of-hazardous-substances) law and regulations with the EU (European Union) ROHS directive. The bill, AB 48, would have expanded California ROHS to include all electrical and electronic equipment, as opposed to its current requirements for ?covered electronic devices,? which include nine video-display devices that the state?s Department of Toxic Substances Control regulations list. The bill also aimed to require that all electrical and electronic equipment that manufacturers sell in California as of Jan 1, 2010, comply with EU ROHS stipulations for lead, mercury, cadmium, and hexavalent cadmium.
Schwarzenegger sent the bill back to the California legislature in the fall, stating in a memo that the bill?s approach ?is largely unworkable and instead of the benefits it seeks to accomplish, could ultimately result in unintended and potentially more harmful consequences.?
The governor noted the exemption language for spare parts and refurbished products, claiming that, as written, the bill would make many electronic products prematurely obsolete and force their retirement years earlier than necessary. The California legislature is expected to try to pass this or a similar bill again in 2008.
Arfa
Showing that Arnold is not just another pretty face. Implementing RoHS as mandated by the EU for solders may actually cause the release of greater amounts of toxins into the environment than use of traditional lead-tin alloys. There have been studies that address this issue, and the "benefit" of EU-style RoHS is far from clear and certainly not unalloyed (pun intentional).
So EU-style RoHS regulation for solder:
1) results in poorer quality products 2) may actually worsen the environment relative to what would be with use of lead-tin Sounds like typical politco-think. Jump too soon on some bandwagon because it sounds good, then refuse to even look publically at the evidence that perhaps it was a mistake. Just quietly grant exemptions to pressure groups with enough lobbying clout or soft money ...Politicians, Bah Humbug. (And, yes, I vote; not just complain.)
Arfa Daily wrote:
intentional).
lead-tin
sounds
a mistake.
soft
Agree completely with the above. IMM, the problem is not lead content of equipment in use, but what happens to it after useful life. I assume the original intent of the legislation was the same, although I've not followed either the issue or the thread till now.
In that vein, the greater issue is that there are so many things being disposed of, and disposed of irresponsibly.
Were it the case, that consumer electronics were not so 'disposable', the problem would be much less dire (if indeed it is so, even now). How many of us here--who have sniffing solder fumes daily for 40 or more years--have any significant amount of it in our systems? I would guess, little more than the population as a whole.
If things were made to last and be repairable and/or upgradeable...and finally *responsibly* disposable/recyclable; we wouldn't be in this pickle.
jak
here
red
For residential plumbing, lead solder has been illegal in the US since
1988 or so.Tim.
Ah, but thats not how the world thinks these days.. Especailly in America. People want new stuff all the time. Look at cell phones and TVs. I hear in parts of the country people throw away perfectly good CRT TVs because they are not thin and flat!?!? I wish I could get my hands on a nice 32-36" CRT TV that someone is upgrading. I don't like these new display types because they are almost all Wide screen and therefore distort the picture or have huge bars on each side of the screen. The picture quality increase of HDTV is neglible from a sutiable viewing distance unless of course you are using it as a computer monitor.
Mike
Well there is lead solder in my house and I drink the water. No lead poisoning yet..
Mike
Agree about HD quality. In any case, it's only as good as the source, and my cable system introduces some pretty serious artifacts and noise into the analog line. Digital might be better if I had it. IMO, everyday HD, when I've seen it, has been distinctly underwhelming. I've seen some HD monitors, connected directly to the source--which were almost stunning.
Check your local Craigslist for CRT monitors and TV's. I see them every day...especially the big ones. Take along a couple of friends if you find one, however. They are HEAVY!
jak
How can you tell? FWIW, I think the ban on lead in plumbing makes a lot of sense. Still, I'd think that there is very little--if any--lead in actual contact with the water in a properly sweated joint.
jak
Nor does the lead dissolve in water - lead pipes were in use for hundreds of years. Of course it may depend on the type of water. Hard water coats the insides of the pipes.
--
*He's not dead - he's electroencephalographically challenged
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Actually, it's been posited that the use of lead plumbing was one of the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire. That's just a story I've heard, and upon what I based my opinion. The truth of it, and the chemical reaction involved is beyond my experience.
jak
Look up lead solubility in water and you will find some interesting papers. The type of chlorination has a big effect on the solubility of lead. There are other factors about what is in the pipes and water. Your best hope is that the scale stays Pb++ and that the lead get covered.
Lead from the pipes showed up as a problem for the Romans.
On a recent trip to Vegas, I called into the Sony shop in Caesar's mall, to have a look at the latest offerings and see if they were any different your side of the pond. There was a huge - 42 maybe even bigger - LCD screen running HD from a Blu Ray DVD player, and for the very first time with any flat screen that I've seen, I have to say that it was absolutely stunning. It was like looking at the very best quality cinema display. It was actually showing a clip from Pirates 3. But the problem is that whilst these digitally created and displayed pictures are lovely at native resolution, when you try to watch 'normal' broadcast TV on them, they look perfectly dreadful. I don't know about over there, but here, at the moment, there is little 'broadcast' HD, so if you want to see such a TV working at its best, then it's got to be, for the most part, from an HD video source. For mainly this reason, I am currently sticking with my 34" CRT Tosh, which gives a pretty much faultless display on any content. I am looking forward to SED screens becoming commercially available, as I have read that these give the best of both worlds, with an extremely 'CRT-like' picture.
Arfa
Many old houses over here still have lead pipework feeding them with water. Certainly, the house that I lived in and drank the water in for many years as a kid, had lead pipes. Leaded solder was banned here some years ago for 'open' pipework systems, but as far as I know, there was no such restriction for 'closed' systems such as central heating. Lead is not soluble in water anyway, so I see no reason that water passing through lead pipes, let alone just moving past leaded solder joints, should become contaminated. I have a friend who is a plumber, and he told me that it is very much harder to get a guaranteed good joint first time, with lead-free solder, due to the very odd melting and re-solidifying characteristics that it has.
Arfa
Absolutely correct. You can actually legally rework a lead-free board using standard leaded solder, if the item was placed on the market before July
2006, although some experts warn specifically against this practice, claiming that mixing unleaded and leaded solder leads to an even more potentially unreliable joint, than lead-free alone ...Arfa
It is a good thing that lead was removed from pipes being that I have experienced lead soldered joints (Poss not sweated properly too) dissolving and leaking and usually in easy inaccessible places, I have also experienced lead soldered copper pipes in refrigerators where the solder has totally "Dissolved" to just a paste (It were used in older refrigerators to act as a heat exchanger for the gas to and from the evaporator to improve efficiency) so I am sure it can and often does leak into the water system. That as well as the availability of cheaper higher temp brazing equipment and cheaper silver solder (Often without flux required) available providing better and more permanent joints is a better and safer alternative. Justy
"Arfa Daily" wrote in news:x8Luj.2093$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe1-win.ntli.net:
....
Some other interesting info in the above cited article.
-- bz 73 de N5BZ k please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an infinite set. bz+ser@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap
It wasn't lead pipes, it was 'Lead Acetate', a toxic sweetener made from lead:
-- Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to prove it. Member of DAV #85. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
Wasn't there also a problem with lead-based face makeup both in Rome and also until modern times?
Michael
What about lead water pipes?
I've seen an ad from the '20s, from the Lead Institute (or something like that), proclaiming how wonderful it was that the Roman Empire distributed water through lead pipes!
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.