Arfa Daily wrote in message
...

"Didi" wrote in message
...
Arfa Daily wrote:

I don't think that I would say that it has been done out of "sheer
stupidity" - more out of misinformed madness. My feeling is that once lead
had been determined to be a potential health hazard, as it probably was
when
lead compounds were added to petrol as anti-knock agents, then all uses of
the material became automatically 'demonised', irrespective of whether any
threat from them was real, or imagined. The eco******** that I have
referred
to elsewhere in this thread, has reached the point of unjustified hysteria
amongst both the politicos and, worryingly, the scientific establishment,
who should know better.

Governments rely heavily on so-called scientific advisors, but it seems to
me that many of these are receiving commercial grants from government, and
will tell them whatever they want to hear. Much of the current ecohysteria
that is reported in the press, is based on very dubious science, that in
my
day, would have been thrown out of school for poor methodology. I, and
most
others in the electronic service industry, simply do not believe that lead
in solder represents any threat to health, or the environment at all, and
I
personally have seen no persuasive evidence from any quarter to convince
me
otherwise.

I think that lead based solder is just an unfortunate victim of someone's
over-enthusiastic approach to anything containing lead, and the whole RoHS
thing has just swept it along with itself, without those who caused it in
the first place, understanding the full implications of just what they've
done. Apart from anything else, just consider how much extra power is
being
used every day world wide, to run all of the production solder baths and
hand soldering tools, 30 or 40 degrees hotter than was needed for
lead-based
solder ... Eco-friendly, or what ...?

Arfa



I recently went to a lecture by Jim Thurston, Medical Engineering and
Physics, King's College Hospital, London; mainly about hormesis and
background to the polonium murder of Litvinenko in London.

But at the end I asked for an explanation of something that has always
evaded me. Why some incinerator plants are licensed to incinerate low level
radioactive waste , as it gives the impression that you can rid radioactive
material be incineration, compared to landfill.

The answer, from that government scientific advisor, was along the lines
that a lot of it is for the purpose of incinerating biological hazard
material that is also radioctive.
Then it is a matter of distributing the plume of radioctive outfall , from
the smoke/gases, over as wide an area as possible, of adjascent
communnities.
It is some sort of ststistical exercise. Too much radiation per Kg then it
cannot be allowed to be dumped but if the radioctive component from that Kg
is distributed over some (unspecified) large area of land surface then that
is permitted.

--
Diverse Devices, Southampton, England
electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
http://home.graffiti.net/diverse:graffiti.net/