Dear All,

I find myself using the soldering iron more frequently these days. I am concerned about the impact of solder fumes on my health.

Being short sighted means I can see things in more detail closeup than normal sighted people (without specs). When I solder the fumes immeditaly go up me nose. :-<.

What choices are avaiable for the hobbyist?, any homemade solutions?

Cheers!

 

Use PC power supply fan or even a vacuum cleaner to suck the fumes away from you.

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You can buy fume extractors, even ones which actually fit on your soldering iron. However, your concerns are probably completely groundless?.

I was part of a government study a couple of years ago, into this very issue.

The only concern was the flux used (which has now been changed for one that's nowhere near as good!) - apparently there was a suspicion that there was a VERY slight possibility that the flux fumes may trigger asthma attacks in a VERY tiny percentage of asthma sufferers. The tests I was involved in were for service engineers, who solder on a daily basis, but not continually like on a production line.

The outcome was that fume extraction should be used in a production environment (soldering 8 hours a day), but there was no need for any such precautions in a service environment.

However, I don't even believe there was any conclusive evidence that it caused any problems in the first place, even for production workers.

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Nigel has been inhaling solder fumes for many many years and he turned out ok didnt he???? maybe its made him a bit grumpy but that could just be old age.

lol :-)

on a more serious note i solder almost everyday at work and we have bench fume extractors specifically for soldering. Although ive inhaled my fair share of fumes i dont think it will cause too much harm if your using approved solder.

Andy

 

I don't know whether they're any long term heath effects though breathing flux fumes is uncomfortable and they do seem to irritate my chest so I'd rather not breath them if I can help it.

__________________
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Screen name: Aloone_Jonez

 

the fumes will come at you just because you are breathing in. I usually just slowly exhale while soldering a joint. It works. And also open up a window to get a slight breeze.