Arfa Daily wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Ian Field wrote
tm wrote
William Sommerwerck wrote

The ROHS rationale was to protect the health of folks doing
recycling.

That's only part of it. It's supposedly true that rain (and other
solvents)
leech lead from electronic equipment, and it winds up in drinking
water.

Therein lies an example of why we have the RoHS BS.

But lead was mined out of the ground in the first place!

But not much of the drinking water comes from where its mined.

Not that I think it makes any sense at all to ban lead in solder.

Much drinking water in the UK was, and continues to be, supplied via lead
pipes, and not all areas have 'hard' water supplies that coat the inside
of those pipes with a 'protective' limescale layer.

Yebbut, some have blamed the decline of the
roman empire on their use of lead plumbing pipes.

Maybe that's what happened to the british empire too ?

There has certainly been a move to lead free pewter for a reason.

The whole 'lead in the environment' argument makes little sense, apart
from in a few special cases like lead in gasoline and paint.

No argument there.

Certainly, lead in solder posed no threat at all,

Particularly when it makes more sense to just not dump
it in normal rubbish dumps than it ever does to ban it.

and removing it has, in my opinion, been a disastrous retrograde step for
the 'green' movement in general, and the electronics construction and
servicing industries in particular.

Yeah, particularly when it produces a lower lifed electronic device.

Using the stuff leads to increased production costs and energy budgets,
and often shorter product lives than would otherwise have been the case
when the mature and reliable technology of leaded solder was used.

Yeah, completely and utterly barking mad.

The most that might make some sense is to keep
dead electronics out of normal rubbish dumps instead.