"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
.com...
Arfa Daily spake thus:

"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
.com...

It's not so much a matter of the lead "escaping" (I'm guessing you're
visualizing it going off into the air somehow) as leaching into water in
a landfill, where it can form all kinds of lead-containing compounds that
can come back to poison us. So yes, it's a real problem, not just
something that some environmental bureaucrat dreamed up.

That's a matter of opinion ... There are many more much more serious
sources of environmental pollutants that represent a far greater risk to
health than lead in electronic waste.

Well, it's all relative, isn't it? My point was that lead pollution from
discarded electronics is a serious problem. If you live here in West
Oakland, then you're going to be more concerned about getting asthma from
all the trucks going in and out of the Port of Oakland.


You are correct that it is all relative, but unfortunately, the responses
are not relative pro rata, which was my point. No one would disagree that if
you get lead into your body in sufficient quantity, it's not gonna do you a
lot of good. The point is that it is actually quite difficult to get lead
into your body in sufficient quantity to do damage. Lead in gasoline was a
good way. Lead in solder or CRT glass faceplates, is not. Tin / lead solder
is a stable substance. No matter how much you run water over solder, the
lead ain't gonna leach out of it in sufficient concentration to be a
problem. Even if you factor in acid rain - and there's a lot less of that
now that there are laws against noxious airborne waste discharges of nasty
stuff like sulphur dioxide - you still have a hard job washing lead out of
solder into the water table.

Europe is renowned for having committes and workgroups and think-tanks who
come up with hysterical reactions to non-problems. Lead in solder is a good
example. Don't get me wrong. I am not against recycling per se, but for the
right reasons. Whilst on the surface, any actions that genuinely contribute
to " saving the planet " are laudable, and indeed desirable, you also have
to look at the other side of the coin which is often forgotten, and that is
the energy budget to carry out the recycling.

By the time you have collected your goods, sorted them in a heated and
well-lit worker-friendly warehouse that you had to custom build, dismantled
them, recovered any reusable materials, repurified them, remanufactured
them, and finally disposed of whatever is left, you may well have used more
energy, and contributed more to pollution, than if you had not bothered.
Just looking at lead free solder. I wonder how much additional energy is now
being used worldwide, to heat all of those solder baths up another 40
degrees, heat up all those rework stations another 40 degrees, heat up all
those millions of hand soldering irons another 40 degrees ? How much
additional transport energy to get goods suffering from lead-free bad joints
back to a repair centre, and then back to the customer ? Quite a lot I would
wager, and certainly more than a few wind turbines can make up ...

Arfa