Gord Paynter has asked about compliance verification for RoHS. The best treatment of this subject that I have seen is a report by ERA Technology Ltd., commissioned by  the UK Department of Trade and Industry, that was announced in a posting to this forum on May 6 (see copy below - my thanks to Dr. Robertson for bringing it to our attention). I recommend it to anyone who will have to prove compliance. It is 89 pages, with a good executive summary. 

It has a useful table (p.22) showing the various uses for the banned substances and whether each use is permitted or not. (It does miss a few, such as cadmium plating, which is used on, for example, connector shells and high-strength fasteners. The way that I read RoHS, cadmium plating is permitted for certain kinds of products - you have to check the Dangerous Substances Directive, 76/769/EEC.)

The Compliance Approaches report takes a fairly optimistic stance that enforcement will be reasonable. Here are some examples:

As the aim of this Directive is to protect the environment and human health, the amount of effort should be sufficient to achieve this aim. The effort required to avoid inadvertently including a banned substance should be proportional to its likely impact on the environment and human health. (p. 15   4 Discussion of the RoHS Directive ¶2)

Under circumstances where the accidental inclusion of a non-compliant component does not pose a threat to the environment or human health or if taking the product off the market poses a greater threat than allowing the producer to sell the products, then alternative, more proportionate action [than forcing the product from the market] may be considered by the enforcement authority. (p. 24   5.1 Self-declaration overview, ¶3)

Clearly an approach [to compliance verification] is required that protects the environment but can be achieved at reasonable cost, is reliable and has the buy in of all parties. (p. 13, 1 Context, ¶3)

If manufacturers were to take seriously the notion that effort to avoid inadvertently including a banned substance should be proportional to environmental impact, then they would of course need to make no effort at all. And the evirocops' interpretation of compliance verification is the law, with or without buy-in by the manufacturers. 

The report also offers an explanation for why the RoHS directive isn't clearer on what it takes to comply: the legislators figured if they came out and told you exactly what you had to do, that's all you'd do. Be being deliberately vague, they are able to frighten you (and you hope, your competitors as well) into doing much more. (That's my paraphrase.)

Will the enforcement authorities be reasonable? More importantly, how reasonable will the most unreasonable enforcer be? And why should enforcers be reasonable when the people who wrote the legislation they are enforcing are not reasonable? I foresee that during the summer of 2006, shipments of electronic products will be identified as nonconforming by zealous enforcers, who will issue penalties that are "effective, proportionate, and dissuasive." What are the chances that manufacturers would be willing to risk additional adverse publicity by challenging findings or the penalties? Also, affected hardware would be impounded awaiting resolution in court. By the time the court announced its decision, even if it found for the defendant, most of the value of the impounded products would have vanished. Justice delayed is justice denied, and who believes that the courts would issue their
findings promptly? Who believes that a court finding for the defendant would be "effective, proportionate, and dissuasive" in curbing enforcer zeal?

Quite apart from overzealous enforcement, true nonconformances will be common. Here's why: space agencies have for a long time had bans on pure tin in hardware destined for orbit. Purchase orders, drawings, certificates of compliance, etc., have all acknowledged the ban. Yet every time a satellite has been torn down for an audit, pure tin plating has been found. The reason is simply the complexity of the hardware and the huge number of opportunities for human error. 

Now imagine the opportunities for, say, lead in wire insulation, or cadmium in a switch contact, or chromate coating on a piece of aluminum, to escape notice during manufacture of electronic hardware. Or just imagine an auditor checking your product for a forbidden flame retardant. Using X-ray fluorescence he finds bromine, and demands that you prove to his satisfaction that none of the brominated flame retardants in the various plastic items are a PBB or PBDE.

Outside of the scope of the ERA-DTI report is coverage, so I'm hoping that someone will offer some insight on this question: The categories of equipment to which RoHS applies are stated in Annex IA to WEEE. Annex IA is supplemented by examples in Annex IB. Included with the examples for Category 3 is language that is breathtaking in its breadth:  

other products and equipment for the collection, storage, processing, presentation or communication of information by electronic means, other products or equipment of transmitting sound, images or other information by telecommunications

This "gotcha" language could be interpreted to cover just about anything that an enforcer might decide it covers. The WEEE document does have two exclusions: hardware that goes into equipment not covered by WEEE (which I think would include airplanes), and military hardware. However, these exclusions do not appear in RoHS, so a zealous enforcer could decide that the legislators only intended to restrict the scope of what had to be recycled, not what could be sold. (Although they haven't said, this may be the reason that Airbus decided that civil avionics are covered by RoHS.) 

Gordon Davy
Baltimore, MD
[log in to unmask]
410-993-7399



  _____  

Dear Gordon
 
We have recently completed a study on possible routes to compliance with the RoHS Directive for the UK's Department of Trade and Industry. The report deals with issues such as the definition of "homogeneous materials", self declaration, reporting formats and analysis protocols. You can download this report for free from the DTI's website at http://www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/index.htm#Latest_Information <http://www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/index.htm#Latest_Information> .
I hope this is of some help
 
Chris
 
Dr Chris Robertson
Reliability and Failure Analysis, ERA Technology Ltd
Cleeve Road, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 7SA, UK
http://www.era.co.uk/rfa.htm
Tel: +44 (0)1372 36 7204
Fax: +44 (0)1372 36 7134


 


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