A little dilemma

I've been handling this stuff for decades and it's never caused me any problems.

I say it's never caused me any problems.
I say it's never caused me any problems.
I say it's never caused me any problems.
I say it's never caused me any problems.

Did I mention that it's never caused me any problems.

Oh I say, is that the time?

Don't eat it or get it in your body through a different channel. :zipper_mouth_face:
A little soldering won't get you lead poisoning, just don't lick your fingers all the time while handling solder.
Washing hands is always a good idea when handling electronics stuff, I've noticed a lot of components feel dusty when they come out of the packaging, my hands always feel strange when I've been messing around with electronics stuff.

Benji:
Don't eat it or get it in your body through a different channel. :zipper_mouth_face:
A little soldering won't get you lead poisoning, just don't lick your fingers all the time while handling solder.
Washing hands is always a good idea when handling electronics stuff, I've noticed a lot of components feel dusty when they come out of the packaging, my hands always feel strange when I've been messing around with electronics stuff.

I believe that's a dusting agent to help prevent moisture

Don't quote me on that, I'm probably wrong

There is an exception in RoHS for solder.
In some cases lead-free solder cannot be used or will not be reliable enough, so they made an exception in the directive.
Luckily, otherwise our products (at work that is) would not work as reliable as they do now.

Yes, there is, use lead-free solder only...

You'll need a little more heat which... can be tricky with sensitive components.

After having worked in PCB-assembly for two years I'd be far more worried about flux & rosin by the way.

Flux is a pretty aggressive dissolvant and I've seen loads.... of colleagues with related headaches.
Rosin solidifies again after it's heated and I haven't really seen health issues that proved to be related.
But looking at the amount of rosin that I collected daily cleaning the suction tool of my Iron, I guess smoking tobacco is just as healthy.

If you're really worried, wear gloves. Otherwise, my advise would just to be careful.
XD

retrolefty:
Oh did you mean LEAD and not LED? :smiley:

Lefty

I will not answer this question ]:smiley:

This is the 'bar sport' area after all.

Oh, by the way, I think you can avoid LED poisoning by using current limiting resistors

Current... yes I remember a joke...

"A friend of mine drowned in a bowl of muesli. He was drawn in by a strong currant."

Please forgive me for this one.

Simpson_Jr:
But looking at the amount of rosin that I collected daily cleaning the suction tool of my Iron, I guess smoking tobacco is just as healthy.

I don't know if you're a smoker, know one, or have paid attention to cigarette ads - but it used to be common to advertise cigarettes in terms of "contains low tar".

What is "tar"? Tar is a gooey (and generally foul smelling) substance left behind by incomplete combustion of organic matter. Typically, its a part of smoke; when organic matter (particularly resinous plant matter) is heated and burned, the hot smoke contains gases which, if cooled, leave behind this substance. In the case of cigarette smoke, the majority of cooling happens inside the mouth, throat and lungs. Knowing how gooey and ugly the substance is, that isn't a good thing. If you can cool the smoke or filter it in some manner (ahem - in a hookah or bong), a lot of the tar will be left behind, leaving you with a "smoother" smoke, and less irritation to the lungs.

So - what does this have to do with flux and resin?

Well - that stuff is usually made from plant materials (pine resin is common), then generally mixed with solvents and waxes to form the paste used. When it is heated in soldering, the fumes and smoke you get are composed of that resin being vaporized. If you could cool it off, you would then get back the "tar", similar to what is in cigarette smoke. So - I wouldn't advise breathing it, but it probably isn't going to kill you instantly or make you grow a third eye, either. You would have to inhale a lot over a long time to see significant detriments to your health (likely shortness of breath, coughing, congestion - things of that nature - which would clear up over time once you limited your exposure again).

A couple of other things - the stuff called "pitch" or "pitchblend", which was used for sealing wooden ships way-back-when, was typically pine tar (although other woods were used as well), made by burning wood, then condensing the smoke. Road tar is a byproduct of the petroleum industry, made by the cracking of petroleum (basically, heating raw crude until it boils and vaporises, then cooling those gases in a fracturing tower - essentially a really large distillation system - the lower down the tower, the thicker the product, with the tars on the bottom; the next level up is basically diesel and kerosene). There's also tar made from coal (coal tar is used in a variety of medicinal preparations - one of the more common being dandruff shampoos). Finally, the black substance that forms on the inside of meat smokers and barbeques is "tar" from the smoke (from the wood or charcoal) that condenses on the inside surfaces of the cooker.

So - all in all, the smoke from flux (which is made with rosin) shares quite a lot with the smoke from other sources; I wouldn't say its healthy to breathe, but I wouldn't fear it like death, either, unless you happen to be asthmatic, have pneumonia, or other breathing issues, of course...

:slight_smile:

As kids we always used to keep a few air rifle slugs in our mouths, made for faster reloads and a bit of spit "seemed" to lube the slug and give it a bit more "oomph"!

30 years on and all the children we've sired have to right number of limbs and digits.

It's lead oxides and sulphates that are really toxic.
It's why white paint uses titanium oxide these days.
And red lead, that's nasty! I'm pretty sure it's banned everywhere.

As kids we use to play with mercury, roll it in our hands, coat pennies in it, and other fun stuff. Don't recall ever eating it, but who knows. At least I've lasted to retirement age, so I guess I won't let those new energy saving light bulbs scare me. :wink:

Lefty

"the crystal is stable enough that ingested pieces may be passed with negligible absorption by the body"

I don't know what's scarier: thinking about how someone determined this, or thinking about the fact that they probably got a government grant to do it...

Recently I've been cynical enough to wonder about blaming all those "inner city lead poisoning" cases on paint, when at the time Automobiles were universally burning leaded gasoline and (consequently) spewing volatized lead compounds into the air where it would have relatively easy access to the blood stream...

I've heard woodworkers and artists etc complain quite a bit about how unleaded paints just aren't the same.
(but "titanium" sounds so much cooler, don't you think?"

LEDs frequently contain arsenic, BTW.

There is an exception in RoHS for solder

No there isn't.
Simple as that.

Grumpy_Mike:

There is an exception in RoHS for solder

No there isn't.
Simple as that.

Humor me then:
If lead containing solder is banned, because of RoHS, why can I go out to every hardware store and buy regular, lead containing solder?
Why can my company deliver products that are RoHS compliant (tested and tried by companies such as SGS and accepted by all major electronics suppliers on the market) but still use lead containing solder to get microcontrollers on PCB's?

Not all solder may contain lead, however, in some cases there is no feasible replacement.
There are actually quite some exemptions on RoHS.
http://www.rohs.gov.uk/Docs/All%20Current%20Exemptions%202011.pdf gives a list of all exemptions currently in effect.
See 7A and 7B for the solder exemptions in detail.

Grumpy_Mike:

There is an exception in RoHS for solder

No there isn't.
Simple as that.

You're (officially) allowed to use leaded solder when repairing a board which was originally soldered with leaded solder.

AdeV:

Grumpy_Mike:

There is an exception in RoHS for solder

No there isn't.
Simple as that.

You're (officially) allowed to use leaded solder when repairing a board which was originally soldered with leaded solder.

And for hobby stuff you can use whatever crap you like :smiley:
Leaded solder all the way (most of the time).

mowcius:
And for hobby stuff you can use whatever crap you like :smiley:
Leaded solder all the way (most of the time).

Absolutely. I did have a bit of fun trying to solder legs on a surface mount chip using leaded solder.... I think I should have used lead free on the chip & leaded on the legs, it might have worked a bit better