This posting has no relevance to circuit boards or assemblies, but given the amount of discussion on this forum on the drive to eliminate brominated flame retardants in PWB materials and the fondness of some regulars for the Dew, I think it's relevant. The other day, I noticed one of my co-workers drinking a liquid that was unnaturally bright red. I queried him on exactly what this liquid was. He replied Mountain Dew Code Red. This led to a discussion of what exactly was Code Red. A scan of the ingredients revealed the expected red dye but surprisingly, it also contained brominated vegetable oil. I immediately asked why the makers of this product felt it necessary to add an apparent flame retardant to their product. My co-worker (incidentally a chemist who really should no better but claims that he somehow manages to compartmentalize all this stuff) had no idea. I just thought this whole thing is very ironic. Most of us work in an industry that is spending millions of dollars trying to remove bromine from one of the constituents while at the same time you have a "food" product to which intentionally is added a brominated hydrocarbon. Does anybody know what purpose the brominated vegetable oil serves? It also turns out the some component is in regular Dew as well as diet red dew but not diet regular Dew. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.... Mike McMaster RF Product Engineer Merix Corporation 503-992-4263 --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 -----------------------------------------------------