snip


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


Maybe do a search on lead procurement in general - find out where its going
now, it may be possible to queer the eco-warriors pitch by extending the
campaign to even more ridiculous extremes.

It could be there's some use for lead that the legislators who pass this
crap can't do without!