Roland,

There certainly are concerns about halogens and toxicity/ecotoxicity in
various stages of the lifecycle. Are they the most important things to worry
about in this area? I'm not sure anyone has yet done a pareto analysis to
say (though that is what Oko Institut should be doing for their evaluation
of whether and which additional substances should be restricted in electronics).

Regardless, environmental NGOs place them very high on the list and are the
driving force behind the move to replace them - note the US EPA and iNEMI
activities to analyze the properties of alternative, non-bromine-based flame
retardants in PCB laminates. And again, whether the replacements are
environmentally any better is a subject for further research.

Regarding TBBPA, the NGOs, despite this "proof" (I don't think the
technology and capabilities exist yet to "prove" that TBBPA or any chemical
is hazardous to humans or the environment; the National Academies came up
with a long term plan recently to improve toxicology testing capabilities. I
have not seen the final EU report but note that tests of human blood serum
from many parts of the world show it, along with a whole host of other
man-made chemicals, at some low levels - a university researcher I was
talking with a couple weeks ago said "let's not even talk about toxicity;
what's it doing there in the first place?"), don't seem to be too interested
in giving up. It was listed in their recommendations of substances to
restrict in RoHS last month and I would expect it to be listed in their
REACH "shadow" SVHC candidate list.

Michael Kirschner
President
Design Chain Associates, LLC
415.904.8330
--
Design Chain Associates, LLC - Design Chain Solutions for Competitive Advantage 

www.DesignChainAssociates.com
www.ChinaRoHS.com
www.KoreaRoHS.com

NEW Korea RoHS/WEEE/ELV Webinar - now archived! Visit
www.KoreaRoHS.com/webinar.html for more information

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:57:26 +1300, Roland Sommer
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Thank you to everyone who has contributed both on-line and off-line to this
>enlightening discussion.
>
>I believe there are 5 elements that are classified as Halogens. These are
>fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine. Of these only the first 3
>are used in any quantity in our industry. Of those 3, the EEE industry is a
>major user of bromine only, and this is as a flame retardant, primarily in
>TBBPA, in a reactive use, which has been proven not to be a health or
>environmental issue. Is this another storm in tea cup or is there validity
>to concerns with halogen use in electronics?
>
>kind regards
>Roland Sommer
>Managing Director
>RoHS-International
>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Leadfee Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d
To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in
the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Leadfree
To temporarily stop/(start) delivery of Leadree for vacation breaks send: SET Leadfree NOMAIL/(MAIL)
Search previous postings at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives
Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------