Steve:

I sit here with the same degree of helplessness waiting for this"Lead Free"
thing to kick in as I did when the EPA banned CFC's. I mean, there I was
with my 20 gallon Baron-Blakeslee degreaser with internal refrigerant to
keep solvent loss to an absolute minimum. I'll bet that I lost maybe 1 - 2
gallons /month with this system.  Heck, I was even able to reclaim my own
material in a reclamation unit. With a few more improvements, solvent losses
could have approached Zero. This solvent removed rosin flux residue and
circuit boards were very clean. Soldering and cleaning circuit boards was
easy.  We in electronics were not single handedly ruining the Ozone layer
with CFC's by using Vapor Degreasers.

In the meantime, Mt.Pinatubo (God only knows how many other volcanoes were
erupting at the time) was spewing out hundreds of tons of free chlorine
atoms thus ruining the ozone layer. Geez, I coulda dumped my degreaser in
the parking lot every day for 10 years and not do the damage that ol'
Pinatubo did in one hour. I forgot to mention that at the same time, there
was another guy in the parking lot adding another can of Freon to his
leaking auto air conditioning system. Why get the darn thing fixed when the
Freon costs 99 cents a can.

Your point is well taken. We can all agree that lead is harmful. But our
application of lead is a responsible one. It's hard to imagine that one of
my one pound solder bars is being chewed by some kid somewhere. Exposure and
ingestion of the lead in electronics requires a great deal of imagination. I
will certainly be able to follow any regulations that may be necessary to
keep scrap electronics from hitting landfills. But don't ban the stuff
across the board.

But as the old saying goes"One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel".
  Because other industries, as you indicated, use lead in a haphazard
manner, we'll solve the problem by not letting anyone use it. It doesn't
matter that we in electronics use lead responsibly. It doesn't matter that
other alloys for soldering are more dangerous than the lead alloys it
replaced. It doesn't matter that the electrical connection in the airplane
with 300+ people on board is less reliable than before. It doesn't matter.
It's because we need to have "feel good" legislation so that elected
officials can get enough votes for re-election because they "feel your
pain".

So instead of asking how we might be able to better control a problem, we'll
solve it by banning it altogether.

I remember the picnic I went through when CFC's were banned. This will be
another one. I'll bet that PVC is next on the list.

Bill Kasprzak
Moog Inc.

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