In message .com,
Tournifreak writes
Dear all - I work in the electronics industry and we are having to
remove cadmium and various other fairly nasty materials from our
products. Which I guess is fair enough. But we're also removing lead
from tin-lead solder. The reason that has been given for this is to
prevent environmental damage when the product is eventually disposed
of.

The thing I don't understand is - and I've been on training for this
subject and no-one has been able to answer the question - is why
doesn't it affect building materials?

I reckon my house has at least 2 square meters of lead on the roof.
(It's a complex design) Rainwater runs off this all the time and then
seeps into the ground and into lakes and rivers.

I still have a quantity of lead water pipes in my house (as do many,
many people).

So is there really any good reason for removing lead from electronic
components and PCBs when there's all this lead being sued in the
building industry? Or is it just another piece of do-gooder
thumb-twidling buraucratic EU nonsense? (With big fines)

Interested if anyone knows the answer...

Jon.

Yep, all complete and total ********. And the last thing that struggling
industry needs right now in the face of far east competition is a huge
wad of costs for new process plant and expensive engineering time to
trawl thought all the component inventory checking lead-free / RoHS
compatibility. If you're making huge volumes of a few products maybe its
not so bad, but many smaller manufacturers make a wide range of products
in small numbers, =big headache.

The nastier materials (cd, cr) being knocked on the head by RoHS I could
understand, really it affects a small number of component manu's.
But with the WEEE directive coming along, all the electronics has the
scope to be recycled and the lead reclaimed, so why bother removing it
in the first place? Lower product reliability may simply mean faster
replacement cycles and more WEEE churning through the consumer chain.
European Bureaucrats - shootings too good for them.

--
Steve