It would probably be best if people stopped thinking of "toxic" and "non-toxic" substances. Anything can have ill effects with bad enough overexposure. Yes, even oxygen, green freaks.
Keep in mind also how heavily lead was used before they realised its toxicity. Silver being a precious metal, it's understandable why it doesn't get as much bad press.
I feel that many things get this type of treatment where people overhype the negative aspects without fully understanding the differences. Some of these include air conditioning, fan heaters, and the Pentium 4. All of those fare poorly in generalised comparisons with the alternatives, but if assessed on their own merits, there's nothing truly wrong with them.
I think I may have the answer as to why they put lead on the RoHS list without thinking it through.
Stress.
It doesn't really need to be said again that stress is the #1 cause of mistakes. Ironically (but unfortunately too true), people often stress about mistakes.
I honestly think lead has earned too much of a reputation for being toxic, causing people to forget about those other toxic substances. That only two of the lead-free solders compared in the PDF (Sn99.3Cu0.7, which isn't especially reliable even compared to other lead-free solders, and Sn89Zn8Bi3 by a small margin) had lower human toxicity potential than Sn63Pb37...and every solder with silver was many times more toxic...if that's not an epic fail, I don't know what is. Some people just don't get it.
The analogy some people use by comparing it with petrol is, of course, completely ridiculous, as lead in solder stays in place for the life of the equipment, unlike tetraeythllead which is continually released straight into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, popular opinion is what makes the votes, no matter how ill-considered it may be.
Reading about that Toyota incident, I think the eco-freaks deserve to die. And it's scary how little voltage it takes to form a plasma arc. Five volts?!
Off topic: I see somebody besides me is using my smiley... cMon Topcat, add it! "" would be an appopriate code for it...
Reading about that Toyota incident, I think the eco-freaks deserve to die. And it's scary how little voltage it takes to form a plasma arc. Five volts?!
I find businesses with dimension 2350's still today, and they want to upgrade the ram with a P4 1.8 cpu hoping it would make thier computer super fast. Planned obsolescence is a good thing, but its usually too short or long
no, planned obsolence is a GOOD thing. it just needs to be changed to be extended from what most companies have it for. non ROHS would just stop the bga problems, but there would still be bad caps, bad mosfets, and other bad parts, to which having lead in your solder would not make much difference
but ROHS is stupid cause the amount of solder in a whole board is so small. Murcury from ccfls is more of an enviormental problem. But, all the pollution from factories in china is probably the worst enviormental problem, but as long as the products they import dont' have lead, the US looks the other way as long as what WE get dosen't contain lead, but the factories producing them are sweatshops, that pollute the globe at large
am I on a soapbox? hmm, I guess I somehow ended up on one and didn't even realize it
Also there's BeO as well. Used as insulating and thermal conductive for seminconductors. Powdered is poisious. Only seen in high power stuff like power line, industrial stuff. Not in consumer/computer stuff.
What about one that blew magic smoke released when GaAs semiconductors blows?
And in case you missed it, at least the EU bureaucrats does no like small companies. In fact they are doing anything they can do, to destroy small and mid size companies.
Sounds like when Bush was the president in the US.
here on safety from wiki but remember nothing is totally complete
Safety
The toxicological properties of gallium arsenide have not been thoroughly investigated. On one hand, due to its arsenic content, it is considered highly toxic and carcinogenic. On the other hand, the crystal is stable enough that ingested pieces may be passed with negligible absorption by the body. When ground into very fine particles, such as in wafer-polishing processes, the high surface area enables more reaction with water releasing some arsine and/or dissolved arsenic. The environment, health and safety aspects of gallium arsenide sources (such as trimethylgallium and arsine) and industrial hygiene monitoring studies of metalorganic precursors have been reported recently in a review.[6]
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