Tell you what - I live in Serbia where we have an increase of cancer diseases of around 400% after the bombing. And the same “developed world” claims that uranium is actually healthy for us.
Well, not really, not like that, but their claim is that depleted uranium is dangerous only if inhaled - and the only opportunity to inhale uranium molecules is immediately after, and in a vicinity of explosion.
The thing is, they used uranium to destroy TV retransmission antennas, hospitals, graveyard in Pristina - where there was absolutely no need for armour piercing ammo. Only later, years later, the science actually found out that uranium when exploding creates an aerosol - binding with air elements and staying airborne for decades, despite how heavy the molecule is.
Btw, those molecules will become lead one day, after many millenniums. So, you can imagine how concerned we are about some lead on waste yards.
To answer your comment (finally), yes, it’s nasty job - when you work with lead-based body solder and need to sand something. It’s always preferred to melt, but sometimes you have to sand.
But - there’s no such thing as “lead fumes”. Soldering is a job in which metals are melted, no one is working with temperature high enough to vaporise lead. Or tin, copper, silver, any metal ingredient. Missiles exploding might vaporise lead, but not irons or butane torches.
Lead is, ofc, hazardous. There are many instances where using lead-free alloys is justified. For example, you might want to solder some low power LEDs as backlight and you don’t want something your kids can touch to be lead based.
Same logic as lead based paint, right? It’s not that it’s hazardous just for being lead based, it’s hazardous because a 3 yo kid might want to try how pieces of paint falling of in some old house taste. And - it’s not like we can’t do without lead when it comes to paint.
Interesting fact about lead - no amount is tolerable/acceptable.
But, do we absolutely need lead when it comes to soft soldering, for example - in our smartphones?
I don’t know, maybe we don’t. But, the fact is - many countries banned it, created problem in industry, and after few decades, we still don’t have any good solutions.
SAC305 alloy (the one we talked about here - Sn96.5 Ag3 Cu0.5) is about 3x more expensive (which is irrelevant, really), is probably the most favoured lead-free alloy. Most companies that can afford it use it for wave soldering and most repair shops that use lead-free for whatever reason praise it as the best lead-free solution.
However, it’s melting point is higher than 60/40, 63/37, and it doesn’t solve the abovementioned problem with tin whiskers.
I am not disputing that “lead’s bad for you”, that would be just stupid, the only thing I’m saying is that we should take a look at cost/benefit ratio when making some decisions, such as - national legislation, for example.
Lead is “bad for you”, but it prevents whiskers that will cause shorts in 1 out of 100 smartphones. If it’s something you use for more than few years, number will be ofc higher.
On the other side - what exactly is the way you could introduce all this lead from inside your phone into your body? 3 year old kids can’t really open a phone. You need a bunch of pretty special, small screwdriver bits. Around 40-50 very very small screws need to be removed. And then, what? Even when this kid, or any other kind of irresponsible or insane person gets to these solder joints made out of 1/3 lead - what then? How do they ingest it, how do they atomise it to breathe it in?
There are many easier ways to cause harm to your body without so many obstacles and tech knowledge necessary.
To my mind, that whole thing with lead ban for solder don’t make sense. When the whole thing started, when they were still searching for alternatives, two possibilities proposed were Sn42Bi58 and Sn99.5Cu0.5 or something like that. The first had a very low melting point (138), not really high quality joints and was problematic for rework because, when mixed with lead based solders, it would drop the melting point to below 100C. The other option had all the problems that were known for century - whisker growth and, again, not very high quality joints. Also, wetting was very poor, new fluxes were invented to fix the issue to some degree. But, whoever knows soldering, also knows how annoying these Sn99 alloys are. Some jobs are simply impossible to do with Sn99.3Cu0.7, that much I can say with 20 years of experience behind it.
Nevertheless, this second option won. This “305” solder is a side effect of Sn95+ option winning. And it won just because something had to.
Pure Sn solutions were used after the WW2. We already had one anti-lead revolution. That’s how and why we started using Sn/Pb alloys and made them perfect.
Now, we’re just 70 years back. For no good reason. Lead is hazardous. So what? We’re not talking about food packaging or drinking water pipes, we’re talking about electrical connections inside devices - and this legislation is simply against the common interest.
I’m actually really interested - what is your opinion on this:
What exactly is the mechanism on how can one introduce lead from electronic devices into their system unintentionally, do you see any pathway from some TV or pc or smartphone, anything, to human body, that could be understandable and justify these kinds of bills?
(Btw, I think only those “apple certified” repair shops, which are not really repair shops, use lead-free. As long as the real repair shops are permitted to use lead, they will use it. Probably a bit longer, if we’re being honest. There are several good reasons for it. I’m not living in a no-lead state, but I am subscribed to many yt channels of this type. Lead ban didn’t make US and EU electronics guys less competent, it just made their lives more complicated)
Sorry for the long reply, I type fast and tend to forget myself.
Cheers!
