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.

wrote in message
ups.com...
Tournifreak wrote:
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.

Please, please; tell me that you have not written of your concerns to
'two-jags'!

--

Brian

Tournifreak wrote:
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.

the concensus in the tron industry is that its bs, and the newer
solders are in fact more toxic, not less. Just one more case of idiots
nannying.


NT

Brian Sharrock wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...
Tournifreak wrote:
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.

Please, please; tell me that you have not written of your concerns to
'two-jags'!

Don't worry Brian. I won't tell if you don't.

Jon.

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...

There are also concerns over "tin whiskers" due to lead not being used
in tin plating - there was a story on slashdot a year or so ago.

More info he http://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/background/index.htm

wrote:
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...

There are also concerns over "tin whiskers" due to lead not being used
in tin plating - there was a story on slashdot a year or so ago.

More info he http://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/background/index.htm

Interesting link!

On 20 Apr 2006 05:56:52 -0700, "Tournifreak"
wrote:


wrote:
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...

There are also concerns over "tin whiskers" due to lead not being used
in tin plating - there was a story on slashdot a year or so ago.

More info he http://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/background/index.htm

Oh indeed. There are many reasons for using lead solder. Lead-free
processes are inherently more difficult to make reliable.

Jon.


There is an exemption from ROHSS for telecommunication infrastructure
and management equipment plus anything classed as a server.

If you thought that this was a game led by idiots, take a look at the
WEEE Directive. The government is in total disarray on that one.


--

..andy

"Tournifreak" wrote in message
oups.com...
.....
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...

A few years ago, some scientists ran tests on the Holland and Holland
shooting ground - an area that has been peppered with lead for a couple of
centuries or so. They found that the lead had no significant effect on the
toxicity of the soil, although the amount of lead shot made recovering it an
economic proposition.

Colin Bignell

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

nightjar wrote:
A few years ago, some scientists ran tests on the Holland and Holland
shooting ground - an area that has been peppered with lead for a couple of
centuries or so. They found that the lead had no significant effect on the
toxicity of the soil, although the amount of lead shot made recovering it an
economic proposition.

Humph. Lead is very occasionally found "native". Other metals
similarly found are silver, copper, mercury, gold, etc. IIRC.

Steven Briggs wrote:
Tournifreak writes
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)

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

If specifications are made, presumably everyone providing goods
has to comply. That should put competition on an even level.

In message , Chris Bacon
writes
Steven Briggs wrote:
Tournifreak writes
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)

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

If specifications are made, presumably everyone providing goods
has to comply. That should put competition on an even level.

If only it were that simple.
There's a lot of exemptions from RoHS (e.g. anything automotive), and
also a lot of stuff that comes in from China under the distributors own
brand names can be very time consuming to confirm the paper chase. 5% of
the parts on a particular product can easily take 95% of the time to
sort.

--
steve

The problem is that current medical thinking is that there is no
non-hazardous level of lead in the bloodstream. The following on-line
American set of articles explains the situation quite well:

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HEC/CSEM/lead/index.html

"Blood lead levels once considered safe are now considered hazardous,
with no known threshold."

RoHS makes exceptions for uses where there are no viable alternatives -
whether building materials get through for flashing, for example, I
don't know. How shotgun pellets make it, I don't know.

The article says also:

"Because lead is spread so widely throughout the environment, it can
now be found in everyone's bodies; most people have lead levels that
are orders of magnitude greater than that of ancient times (Flegal and
Smith 1992, 1995) and within an order of magnitude of levels that have
resulted in adverse health effects (Budd et al., 1998)."

Major environmental sources of lead have been dramatically reduced: no
more lead in petrol; substantial removal of lead from paint; no lead
solder in food cans; no new lead water pipes, which has had a good
effect -

"...the amount of lead in Americans' diets has declined
substantially.In the early 1980s, adults ingested approximately 56
µg/day of lead in food; estimates from the early 1990s ranged from 1.8
to 4.2 µg/day (ATSDR 1999)."

Most of the easy gains have been made, so it now falls to make more
difficult reductions in the use of lead, hence RoHS. Without it (and
WEEE), the amount of lead in landfill (and incineration) would simply
gradually increase, increasing the environmental burden.

I haven't seen a economic cost/risk evaluation, but I'll presume the
projected amount spent on RoHS and WEEE will gain (across the
population at large) extended, more healthy lives, and the dismal
science of economics tells us this is a good thing, and is cost
effective.

Regards,

Sid

Chris Bacon wrote:
Steven Briggs wrote:
Tournifreak writes

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)

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

If specifications are made, presumably everyone providing goods
has to comply. That should put competition on an even level.

there might be some truth to that is everyone did what they 'should',
but consumer electronics, primarily imported asian goods, routinely
flouts basic legal requirements. So it will make us significantly less
competitive, and thus as a society less well off, and thus in the
longer run less able to implement safety improvements where theyre
really needed.

Its strange to see all this faffing about over trivia when 25% of the
population dies from easily prevented causes. Denial seems to be
popular today.


NT

meow2222 wrote:
Chris Bacon wrote:
Steven Briggs wrote:
Tournifreak writes
So is there really any good reason for removing lead from electronic
components and PCBs

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

If specifications are made, presumably everyone providing goods
has to comply. That should put competition on an even level.

there might be some truth to that is everyone did what they 'should',
but consumer electronics, primarily imported asian goods, routinely
flouts basic legal requirements.

So why aren't the people importing them prosecuted? Why isn't the
stock impounded?

On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 21:44:43 +0100, Chris Bacon
wrote:

Steven Briggs wrote:
Tournifreak writes
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)

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

If specifications are made, presumably everyone providing goods
has to comply. That should put competition on an even level.


Who would you imagine will police that?


--

..andy

Chris Bacon wrote:
meow2222 wrote:
Chris Bacon wrote:
Tournifreak writes

So is there really any good reason for removing lead from electronic
components and PCBs

If specifications are made, presumably everyone providing goods
has to comply. That should put competition on an even level.

there might be some truth to that is everyone did what they 'should',
but consumer electronics, primarily imported asian goods, routinely
flouts basic legal requirements.

So why aren't the people importing them prosecuted? Why isn't the
stock impounded?

I dont know, I suppose no-one cares enough to do it.


NT

"Chris Bacon" wrote in message
...
meow2222 wrote:
Chris Bacon wrote:
Steven Briggs wrote:
Tournifreak writes
snip

So why aren't the people importing them prosecuted? Why isn't the
stock impounded?

Because is only illegal and a prosecutable offence after July 2006. You can
do what you like, sell what you like until then.

In message , Andy Hall
writes
On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 21:44:43 +0100, Chris Bacon
wrote:

Steven Briggs wrote:
Tournifreak writes
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)

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

If specifications are made, presumably everyone providing goods
has to comply. That should put competition on an even level.


Who would you imagine will police that?


Absolutely. It'll be a bit like when the EMC directive was introduced,
what, 10 years ago. Supposedly enforced by trading standards, but they
have neither the skills or the funding. In the early days a couple of
TSOs scrapped together funds to drum up a couple of prosecutions (PC
assemblers and the famous hair-dryer importer), then, AFAIK, little has
happened since. I'm know there's stacks of stuff from this county on the
market that hasn't got EMC certification, never mind the shed loads of
****e that gets imported from China.

I better go and take my medication now.


--
steve