Thanks for the message and link, Michael. Interesting (sobering?) reading. The annual cost numbers cited are likely to rise, I would be willing to bet. Sounds like Harvey Miller's year 2000 prediction in his monograph "Lead-free, Why?) of a price tag of 80 to 100 billion might be near the mark at the end of the day. And then, of course, there will be the ongoing higher costs for the extra energy for baking and reflow and higher temperature laminates and warranty pay outs (which by the way are on the rise, as I understand according to a friend with a son who is an actuary in the insurance industry) Sadly WEEE makes RoHS (i.e., lead-free) unnecessary. The justification that it makes electronics recycling safer is self-serving in my opinion. The data does not support the claim. Poor recycling practices for RoHS compliant products will be no less hazardous than for those containing less than 0.5% lead. Wish there really was some environmental benefit to it all to justify the cost. (or that I had at least purchase a boat load of tin metal futures...;-) Nothing quite like legislated market demand... I looked out the window. The sun is shining. It is going to be a good day Thanks agian Best regards, Joe In a message dated 4/19/2008 6:33:44 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: Well FINALLY the results of the survey we (along with Technology Forecasters...I actually brought the project to them to be the lead on since market research at this scale is their forte, not ours) did for the Consumer Electronics Association last fall have been published. See the article in Purchasing at http://www.purchasing.com/article/CA6552729.html. Just to add a bit to this report that's missing, we determined that annual maintenance is a little above 10% of of the initial cost to comply (which is the $32.7B number). So to date it's cost the industry around $40B. And that's just EU RoHS...not China RoHS, Korea RoHS, Californy RoHS, or any other of your favorite regulations. They're all incremental, of course. So if you're working on REACH, track your hours and keep those receipts...I'm sure we'll be coming around again to ascertain the cost to industry of that in a couple years. 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - **************Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car listings at AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851) --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 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/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------