IS old electronic hardware poison?

[Scotophor]

Some of the old solder fluxes are really nasty, too. I notice when salvaging components that rosin flux on modern boards doesn't bother me at all, but I have to take some of the old boards outdoors to work on them.

 

[b.james]

Very often these scares are fake, dreamed up by some get rich quick skeem to dispose of old light bulbs that contain micro small amounts of less mercury than are found in the fish we eat.

For the past 15 years people have been getting rich from the FAKE global warming scare. Before that it was the fake, el Nino Scare. Before that is was lead paint scare and the asbestos scare.

The real problem is, no one can be trusted. People will lie to make $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

They won't accept that , they have been conditioned now.

I started smoking at 11 and at 18 was smoking 50 a day at least from then on - Marlboro ( can't even remember how to spell it now ) so I stopped smoking at 50 .

I used to drink heavily , started at about 14 and probably got through the equivalent of 3 bottles (750ml ) a week at least. Would down 22 odd middies on a Saturday afternoon playing pool. Had a great time . Stopped drinking at 50 too.

I built a boat from Ferralite which needed fluffed up grey asbestos which I did by rubbing big chunks of asbestos against wire netting to get smaller fibres to mix into the resin sand mix. Always used a mask but if anyone was going to get asbestosis I was . I investigated this much later and it was the blue asbestos that was the bad stuff and it was workers in the asbestos mining process that generally got the asbestosis.

Same as Silicosis with inhalers of silica products.

Both are just stuff the body cannot easily get rid of because it hooks in.
The asbestos in old cement sheet products like Hardy fibro is only exposed when the sheet is smashed and even then is of very little danger. They go to ridiculous lengths now and there is always someone to promote the cause when they are set up to reap the reward .

So my message would be take reasonable precautions when someone says its bad for you but don't be the fool that panics .

I'm still alive and healthy at 70 and I'll see it to 100 I am quite sure .my father is still fit and well at 92.

 

[ronsimpson]

Agree,

don't be the fool that panics

There were some people that stopped smoking, drinking and asbestosis at 50 for a different reason.

 

[shortbus=]

4pyros,where I retired from they made car wiring and electrical parts. The lines that made the individual wires that go into a harness had 'solder pots', like a slow cooker full of melted solder, that the stripped wire ends were dipped in before the terminals were crimped on them. The only safety related thing required was a furnace pipe going up to a blower in the ceiling, that blew the fumes out in the whole shop. This was required by OSHA, before OSHA there was no pipe.

They melted and injection molded battery cable ends onto the cables too. That required the blower to vent out the roof.

With old solder/leaded joints the bigger problem is the oxides on the lead. The white powdery stuff.

 

[4pyros]

4pyros,where I retired from they made car wiring and electrical parts. The lines that made the individual wires that go into a harness had 'solder pots', like a slow cooker full of melted solder, that the stripped wire ends were dipped in before the terminals were crimped on them. The only safety related thing required was a furnace pipe going up to a blower in the ceiling, that blew the fumes out in the whole shop. This was required by OSHA, before OSHA there was no pipe.

They melted and injection molded battery cable ends onto the cables too. That required the blower to vent out the roof.

With old solder/leaded joints the bigger problem is the oxides on the lead. The white powdery stuff.

I know where you are coming from. When I was still in Highschool I rebuilt and ran a wave solder machine for the company I worked for after school. the bus would drop me off there. It was in a trailer with one blower, on nice days we could open the doors. Any guess as to what we used to get the flux of the boards?

 

[b.james]

Sulphuric Acid? I'd like to know

 

[shortbus=]

Baking soda/water mix? With an asbestos pad?

 

[Honduras]

Lead production started 3000 years ago. The Romans used it in plumbing (plumbum, Latin) also as a additive to wine. It did not help the Romans think clearly.

Only one thing I'd like to mention. I am pretty sure that they didn't use it as an additive. From what I have heard, craftsmen used lead to create ornate drinking vessels, and pitchers. Really easy to work with.

Unfortunately, wine contains a significant amount of acid. The acid in the wine dissolves some of the lead.

The poor people couldn't afford the ornate lead drinking vessels, so they had the perfect seat to watch the upper classes go insane from lead poisoning.

 

[Paul_L]

I wonder if the flux is good on toast?

 

[Honduras]

Do NOT eat anything you find in old electronics equipment.

 

[shortbus=]

Only one thing I'd like to mention. I am pretty sure that they didn't use it as an additive.

You might want to read this, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html
From that, "Certainly, the Romans knew lead to be dangerous, even if they did not associate it with their lead cooking vessels. Pliny speaks of the "noxious and deadly vapour" (sulfur dioxide) of the lead furnace (XXXIV.167; there was a four-fold increase in atmospheric Pb pollution during the Greco-Roman period); white lead (cerussa) as a deadly poison (XXXIV.176), even though it was widely used as a medicine and cosmetic; and the power of sapa (and onion) to induce an abortion (XXIII.30). Dioscorides cautions against taking white lead internally, as it is deadly (Material Medica, V.103). Soranus in his Gynecology (I.19.61) recommends that the mouth of the uterus be smeared with white lead to prevent conception. Galen (De Antidotis, XIV.144) and Celsus (V.27.12b) both provide an antidote for poisoning by white lead, and Vitruvius remarks on the pernicious effects of water found near lead mines and its effect on the body (VIII.3.5, 6.11)."

Even in 'modern times' we didn't mind lead too much. Until they started making plastic toothpaste tubes, they were made of lead. "The original collapsible toothpaste tubes were made of lead", from https://www.google.com/search?q=lead+in+tooth+paste+tubes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 I can remember those from the 1950's early 1960's, cutting them up for fishing sinkers.

 

[Honduras]

You might want to read this, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html
From that, "Certainly, the Romans knew lead to be dangerous, even if they did not associate it with their lead cooking vessels. Pliny speaks of the "noxious and deadly vapour" (sulfur dioxide) of the lead furnace (XXXIV.167; there was a four-fold increase in atmospheric Pb pollution during the Greco-Roman period); white lead (cerussa) as a deadly poison (XXXIV.176), even though it was widely used as a medicine and cosmetic; and the power of sapa (and onion) to induce an abortion (XXIII.30). Dioscorides cautions against taking white lead internally, as it is deadly (Material Medica, V.103). Soranus in his Gynecology (I.19.61) recommends that the mouth of the uterus be smeared with white lead to prevent conception. Galen (De Antidotis, XIV.144) and Celsus (V.27.12b) both provide an antidote for poisoning by white lead, and Vitruvius remarks on the pernicious effects of water found near lead mines and its effect on the body (VIII.3.5, 6.11)."

Even in 'modern times' we didn't mind lead too much. Until they started making plastic toothpaste tubes, they were made of lead. "The original collapsible toothpaste tubes were made of lead", from https://www.google.com/search?q=lead+in+tooth+paste+tubes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 I can remember those from the 1950's early 1960's, cutting them up for fishing sinkers.

TYVM for the link. I will check it out.

Ooops. Error 404.

 

[Scotophor]

Lead remained in use for toothpaste tubes into the 1970s at least. I was born in late 1968 and I remember the change from lead to plastic during my childhood. From a usability standpoint I liked the lead ones better; when you rolled them up they stayed that way!

 

[4pyros]

Sulphuric Acid? I'd like to know

trichlorotrifluoroethane solvent: 1.1.1 Real nasty stuff.