Yeah, but fluorescents are worse, sometimes much worse, and have mercury; compact fluorescent was never good, but was highly pushed. Incadescents have very poor efficiency, but nice light, and not much in the way of hazardous materials. High quality LED bulbs can be made with good light outputs, I'm not sure that's true of fluorescent.
Also LED bulbs are great – they're much more efficient, and much cheaper. They can be great for reading, you just need to get one of the correct brightness. You can even do things like https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens which would bankrupt you (figuratively) if you used tungsten filament bulbs. Obviously you want to get LEDs of the right hue, and LEDs tend to be a bit colder than tungsten by default. Of course the upper range of tungesten is higher but this is irrelevant for all practical purposes (unless you're staging a West End or Broadway production).
I thought 'horrible' was a suitable word choice for this part.
It was left out because it literally does not happen as you describe it. The state of California compels me to remind you that everything will give you cancer.
The risk is that these devices weren't being recycled properly, tossed in a landfill, and the effects were cumulative. Short of you smashing open the thermostat and drinking the mercury out of the bulb the risk posed to you, the user, was basically zero.
Yet we introduced mercury-containing CFLs as an environmentally-friendly alternative to incandescents.
What do you think is a more likely scenario? Being exposed to a blob of mercury sealed in a glass bulb inside a thermostat that is changed maybe once every 20 years or dropping a mercury containing CFL bulb on the floor?
I'm curious, when you set foot in an automobile are you worried about being poisoned by its lead-acid battery? You shouldn't, it's irrational.
Wow, is that really a thing? I would have assumed they'd use leaded solder if it made for more flexible/stable connections, and that technicians would just bear increased safety requirements (masks, ventilation, etc.). Once the craft launched into space the risk of the lead hurting anybody approaches zero. Even burning up due to a failed launch doesn't seem like it would cause any appreciable damage (at least not due to lead).
I figured spacecraft design demanded the best performance and reliability, regardless of possible human impacts (e.g. RTGs and their potential to rain down on people upon failed launch).
"The Consortium represents a membership of more than 90 legal entities involved in the mining, smelting, refining and recycling of lead, as well as manufacturers of lead compounds and producers of lead-based automotive and industrial batteries."
Aerospace was exempt from the lead solder ban for 12 years, ending in 2018.
This is one such example of a failure in space due to tin whiskers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_IV
(It's much better now - people know more and the solder is better, but 20 years ago this was a huge issue that sent many devices to landfill)
What I think the problem is and why they have banned lead in consumer electronics is about where all that lead solder ends up. Maybe some is recycled, but I guess most of it ends up in landfills, and a good fraction is just dumped in nature, possibly near drinking water supplies. A few boards won't do much harm, but millions of tons of e-waste will.
That's why I believe lead solder is still used in the aerospace industry, because it is only a small fraction of all the electronics. It is very critical, you really don't want tin whiskers to cause short circuits, a problem with lead-free solder. And if needed it is easier to impose rules regarding waste management in such a highly regulated field than in mass produced consumer goods.
Leaded solder reduces the risk of tin whisker growth which can over time cause shorts - catastrophic in any safety critical equipment.
i hope you agree it's good that e-waste isn't toxic.
Millions of units of e-waste.
Hardly a niche problem.
More recent studies have shown that all lead free solders will eventually develop tin whispers and fail.
For devices with a 2 or 3 year lifespan (e.g. cellphones), sure, fine, whatever.
For electronics that should last a long time, e.g. washing machines, dishwashers, thermostats, ovens, microwaves, lead free ensures e-waste.
Shininess? Who cares.
Now I know nothing about which is better in these regards but:
What would you look for in aerospace applications?
I would imagine things like:
Proneness to cold joints. Ease of detecting cold solder joints. Longevity (in general). Longevity under the stresses of aerospace realities. Etc.
Do you have data on that?
aerospace is a small part of what soldering is used for, globally. the majority is consumer electronics.
keeping lead out of people's homes is a valuable public-health move, not a needless "clusterfuck", as the comment I replied to said.
As a hobbyist I use lead free and I bet the rosin flux burning off if I make a boo boo is bad either way, lead or not. It's in both types.
About worker health in consumer electronics sure we can talk. But let's include the flux question in that too.
As for your hobbyist work, the flux used in lead-free solder is actually worse if you breathe it in:
It was widely believed that the move to lead-free soldering would create more environmentally-friendly conditions; however because of the higher temperatures required and extra flux used lead-free soldering smoke emissions actually contain more fine dust particles which are easier to breathe in. As Fig.1 shows, these penetrate further into the lungs than pollen or asbestos, reaching and blocking the alveoli.
https://uk.farnell.com/essential-considerations-for-managing...
Those who care about the quality of the solder joint. You need to get a shiny surface, because anything else is a strong indicator that the solder has been contaminated/oxidized, and if it is such at the surface level, it may well be on the contact points aswell. Im not saying its a 100% garantuee, but if you look at failed solder joints, ESPECIALLY handmade ones, nearly all of them are the ones that were not coming out shiny. If its not shiny, its a fail
You're taking the piss, and then bizarrely suggesting they should be kind to you.
Sure, dont inhale the smoke, dont eat it, wash your hands after handling the solder, you'll be fine. Want to do more for your health? chances are that getting a little more exercise is a hugely more impactful thing to do (and no, I do not know how much you exercise, but many people today are way too sedentary, myself included)
Oh come on dude. Those things are crap and if you somehow break it, you end up with mercury on the floor. I watched a mover do just this when I was a kid. They were too careless with the sofa and knocked the thermostat off the wall, breaking the mercury vial inside it. It was a stupid piece of crap that had an electromechanical timer that made a ton of noise anyway.
The electronic ones are incredibly simple. The one in my house is probably 30 years old and still works fine.
The in-between generation of wound metal that changes how it bends based on temperature, those were too fiddly and prone to losing calibration.
Repeatability is not so great, but mostly because the mechanisms are designed as cheaply as possible. But typically it's within a couple of degrees. It turns out to not be that big of an issue because you want a few degrees of hysteresis in a thermostat.
was it? https://www.consumerreports.org/media-room/press-releases/20... says that several phosphate-free formulations were "Very Good".
> LED bulbs have been associated with migraine symptoms, and are all around terrible for reading.
some cheap LED bulbs have issues, but they're generally better than fluorescent bulbs which contain the horrible chemicals.
> Let's not forget the clusterfuck that is lead-free solder and just ask yourself why it's banned from aircraft and space applications where reliability is of utmost importance.
is it? a Google search for "avionics lead solder" finds Boeing saying in 2005 that "consumer electronic industry trends will force aerospace to adapt to an evolving lead-free transition", a "US Tech" saying "The global aircraft and aerospace market is moving toward 100 percent lead-free solder", an "AIM Solder" which "offers many tin-lead & lead-free RMA products suitable for the military & aerospace sector", and one source saying "Tin-lead alloy solder [...] has been used to assemble the avionics of every aircraft currently flying", by... "Lead Matters".
while environmentally-friendly replacements sometimes have downsides, categorically painting them as a lot/infinitely/terribly/clusterfuck worse is just "gubmint takin away our freedoms". yes, lead-free gasoline did require some engine design improvements, but it would be insane and downright inhumane to keep using it for a small increase in octane rating.
Survivor bias plays a huge role as well. No one remembers the dishwasher that broke after 6 months 30 years ago when they were 5. Everyone remembers the one that kept on chugging for 40 years at grandma’s.
> like cars,
OTOH modern cars are much more robust and their engines last much longer with lower maintenance. It’s infuriating when there is an electronic issue and we need to change the computer, but overall integration has its benefits.
> audio gear,
CAD improved a lot. We can now have better speakers much smaller than what we used to have. Much cheaper as well, because through computer design we can make much more complex parts with better properties. It’s the same thing with photography. Modern lenses are insane if you ask someone who’s done it since the 1970s. They have more than 10 optical elements, have insane reach (hand holding a 300mm was very impractical except in the brightest weather).
What we have in our phones is mind boggling if you think about it a little (both optics and speakers).
> plastics, furniture,
A lot of furniture was crap back then as well. It’s interesting because to me the epitome of rubbish furniture that disintegrates over time with horrible discoloured plastic is the 1979s and 1980s. Any random book case you can get now from Ikea is miles better.
> colours that don’t fade
We have loads of synthetic pigments that are much better than what we used to have, without arsenic, uranium, lead, or cadmium.
> Which kind of makes me sad for the future and sad for the past.
That’s normal, and there are a lot of things that are rubbish now. But let’s try to keep a clear view and some critical thinking: a lot of things are also much better.
Hard water can be dealt with easily with salt, 3-in-1 tablets, etc.
Are they? on the other hand they use less energy, last longer. They aren't exactly worse.
Cling film on the other hand. That's rubbish now.
For example, dishwasher soap used to be a lot more effective before they removed phosphates.
Mercury switch thermostats were infinitely more reliable than their successors and many are still working today 50 years later in older homes.
LED bulbs have been associated with migraine symptoms, and are all around terrible for reading.
Let's not forget the clusterfuck that is lead-free solder and just ask yourself why it's banned from aircraft and space applications where reliability is of utmost importance.