To put the current effort to ban lead in electronic solders into another
perspective (especially with regard to the first category preceded by "0" below),
it is worth looking at another scare that has over the last ten years gotten a
lot of press, Mad Cow Disease.

Reproduced below is a listing of numbers that I came upon in reading a recent
article in Popular Science. Their sources for the data are reproduced below.

10,410 ......... pounds of US beef recalled on December 23, 2003

125,000,000.... pounds of beef imported by the US from countries known to
have cattle
                        infected with BSE (AKA mad cow disease)

450 .........Calves killed thus far because of ties to a BSE (bovine
spongiform ecephalopthy)

3 .............the number of hours to liquefy a BSE contaminated cow in
liquid lye

6 ..............the number of hours to destroy the BSE prions in liquid lye

0 ..............Epidemiological papers that show a causal link between BSE
and the human
                  form of the disease known as Creutzfelt-Jakob disease (vCJD)

153............ The total number of cases of vCJD world wide

93 .............. the percentage of vCJD cases were reported in the UK

40............... the estimated maximum incubation period of vCJD in years

14................ the median time to death in months from the onset of
symptoms

0.................. the number of cures for vCJD

Sources: US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the CJD foundation,
Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, US Dept of Agriculture, US Government
Accounting Office, Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory, World Health
Organization.


On another matter more directly related, I have been told recently that the
penetration of lead free in Japan has only reached 20% to date. Can anyone
confirm or deny this?  I will accept confidential responses off line because I
realize this is perhaps sensitive.

Kind regards,
Joe.

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