Lead safety

[Will Vale]

Hi all,

 

I've been building some lamps in brass today and yesterday, which is a new thing for me. I'm using fairly ordinary multicore electronics solder with lead in it. This doesn't worry me in terms of handling the solder for wiring - I don't expect there to be any transfer and I wash my hands afterwards. But for the lamps I've filled some seams with solder and then filed it flat, and I'm looking at the small quantity of solder filings on my workbench and on my thumb where it's been holding the work, and wondering whether there any good habits to get into?

 

At the moment I'm wiping the bench up with a damp paper towel and throwing it away, which gets most of it and doesn't make a mess, plus the usual hand-washing. I haven't done anything to clean the tools since I'm not sure what'd work - presumably I just need to be aware what they've been used for?

 

Is there anything else that's a good idea, or am I worrying about nothing? I'm usually a plastics person, all this scary metal stuff is big boys' territory

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[craigwelsh]

Like all chemists, get out of a habit of licking your fingers..

 

Extraction when soldering is always a good idea even if its just an open window with a breeze through the area.

[meple]

Hi all,

 

I've been building some lamps in brass today and yesterday, which is a new thing for me. I'm using fairly ordinary multicore electronics solder with lead in it. This doesn't worry me in terms of handling the solder for wiring - I don't expect there to be any transfer and I wash my hands afterwards. But for the lamps I've filled some seams with solder and then filed it flat, and I'm looking at the small quantity of solder filings on my workbench and on my thumb where it's been holding the work, and wondering whether there any good habits to get into?

 

At the moment I'm wiping the bench up with a damp paper towel and throwing it away, which gets most of it and doesn't make a mess, plus the usual hand-washing. I haven't done anything to clean the tools since I'm not sure what'd work - presumably I just need to be aware what they've been used for?

 

Is there anything else that's a good idea, or am I worrying about nothing? I'm usually a plastics person, all this scary metal stuff is big boys' territory

 

Cheers,

 

Will

 

What makes you think that the heavy metals in Lead free solder are less harmful?

 

By the way I hope you are not selling those lamps as you can't use lead solder in items for sale.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

The big thing to be aware of is that all your tools and workbench are now heavy metal contaminated areas. So you always wash your hands thoroughly when finished using the tools and/or working in the bench; and also when planning to handle or consume any foodstuffs, which should not be placed in the working area. Children below the age of sensible behaviour (variable) have to be watched over should they ever be around the tools or this workplace, as the likelihood of accidental ingestion is rather higher That's a little OTT for the quantity of lead left lying around from use of multicore solder in small quantity; but will keep you the right side of the line for your own and others' health.

[Simon G]

Will,

 

I fully agree with the earlier respondents. If you need expert assistance on the use of lead, the Health and Safety Executive website is a very good source. They have a dedicated lead section - link below:

 

http://www.hse.gov.uk/lead/index.htm

 

This gives general advice on lead, and specifically using lead-based solders. It is possibly a bit OTT for small scale work, but is useful nonetheless.

 

Simon

[Will Vale]

Cheers folks, some useful advice there!

Like all chemists, get out of a habit of licking your fingers..

Also true for monks - see Name of the Rose

 

What makes you think that the heavy metals in Lead free solder are less harmful?

Nothing at all - I don't know much about it. I was only asking about lead-bearing solder since that's what's in my toolbox.

 

By the way I hope you are not selling those lamps as you can't use lead solder in items for sale.

I'm not sure if we have the same law in NZ yet, but no, these are for my own layout. I wouldn't be selling something I'd only just learned how to make in any case - wouldn't be fair really!

 

The big thing to be aware of is that all your tools and workbench are now heavy metal contaminated areas.

Thanks, that sounds in line with the kind of thing that I'm thinking. The only problem is I don't have a dedicated work area, but perhaps I can designate one work board for this kind of activity and be pretty scrupulous about cleaning up after myself.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Arthur]

I'd really like to know just how many occaisional hobby solderers have managed to give themselves lead poisoning. 

 

Will, take the simple, sensible, precautions which you are already taking, and something else will kill you LONG before the lead gets to you!

 

This from GP health advice site;

 

 

Epidemiology

 

Incidence

 

Lead poisoning is a lot less common than it used to be with less use in petrol, paints or cosmetics and generally improved housing. One English review which looked at hospital admissions over 15 years, 3 years' worth of mortality statistics and reports to the Health and Safety Executive found one death and 83 hospital admissions. The authors concluded that lead poisoning was rare, but when it did occur, it was associated with considerable morbidity.

[Follower]

Having carried out quite a bit of DIY involving the rubbing-down/removal of lead based paints, wash everything in a solution of dishwasher powder. They still contain high levels of phosphates which readily bind with the lead leaving it in a non-absorbable form.

 

Simon.

[coachmann]

Good god, it's a wonder you guys set foot outside your homes! Seriously though, the greeny gobsh*tes and Health & Safety muppets have got young people running scared of their own shadows! You must wonder how old age pensioners survived wartime and post-war malnutrician, outdoor lavatories, newspaper bogrolls, asbestos ironing boards, coal dust in the home, arsenic covered fly-paper, and lead water pipes.... Fear not! Your biggest enemies around the home are lack of excercise, fatty foods, too much sitting around and believing everything you hear on the idiot-box.....

[PhilH]

Good god, it's a wonder you guys set foot outside your homes! Seriously though, the greeny gobsh*tes and Health & Safety muppets have got young people running scared of their own shadows! You must wonder how old age pensioners survived wartime and post-war malnutrician, outdoor lavatories, newspaper bogrolls, asbestos ironing boards, coal dust in the home, arsenic covered fly-paper, and lead water pipes.... Fear not! Your biggest enemies around the home are lack of excercise, fatty foods, too much sitting around and believing everything you hear on the idiot-box.....

 

Having had a very good friend die from asbestosis, which wasn't the most pleasant of ways to go, I now feel sure that he would have wished for someone to point out that particular danger before it was too late for him.

 

Ignorance is not always bliss.

[Penlan]

Coachman,

 

I'm right with you there, struth, my father who lived well into his 90's and died a natural death, used to lick his lead based pencils all the time prior to marking out the timbers etc., I know somebody will perk up and say there's no lead in pencils - not now. And as for sucking petrol up a tube to transfer between cars, etc..... If your also into pre-war or even Veteren or Vintage cars, like I am, then you have respect for materials and fluids, but I suppose we had a different base for our science lessons leading up to the School Certificate (and later, 'O' levels), more hands on.

 

Of course you wash your hands etc, but....... I will say no more.

[JeremyC]

What makes you think that the heavy metals in Lead free solder are less harmful?

 

By the way I hope you are not selling those lamps as you can't use lead solder in items for sale.

 

As I understand it the regulations [RoHS & WEEE] banning the use of lead solders only apply to electronic / electrical items and they would not apply to [for example] brass kits assembled using lead solder. In the case of brass lamps it might apply to the electrical parts.

Jeremy

[Dagworth]

What makes you think that the heavy metals in Lead free solder are less harmful?

 

 

The more aggressive fluxes needed for lead free working will do you more harm than the lead would.

 

Andi

[Forester]

Good god, it's a wonder you guys set foot outside your homes! Seriously though, the greeny gobsh*tes and Health & Safety muppets have got young people running scared of their own shadows! You must wonder how old age pensioners survived wartime and post-war malnutrician, outdoor lavatories, newspaper bogrolls, asbestos ironing boards, coal dust in the home, arsenic covered fly-paper, and lead water pipes.... Fear not! Your biggest enemies around the home are lack of excercise, fatty foods, too much sitting around and believing everything you hear on the idiot-box.....

 

Too true!

And remember: 'Elf and Safety is always a generation too late. It won't be lead poisoning that will get you but one of the new chemicals or materials we now chuck around with abandon, which no-one has properly checked out........ because 'Elf and Safety are too busy dreaming up laws to prevent you using lead solder which has done no harm to anyone for a century or two.

 

I do take the point about asbestos, though, which is truly nasty. But we'd have known about that much sooner if the producers hadn't criminally hidden the evidence.

[meple]

lick his lead based pencils all the time prior to marking out the timbers etc.,

 

 

Lead pencils have graphite not lead.

[Bigboy]

 

I know somebody will perk up and say there's no lead in pencils - not now.

 

Of course you wash your hands etc, but....... I will say no more.

 

 

See http://www.pencils.com/unleaded-pencil

 

Alex

[DerekEm8]

What makes you think that the heavy metals in Lead free solder are less harmful?

 

By the way I hope you are not selling those lamps as you can't use lead solder in items for sale.

 

I don't think the OP is making them in industrial quantities for sale. :unsure:

 

Good god, it's a wonder you guys set foot outside your homes! Seriously though, the greeny gobsh*tes and Health & Safety muppets have got young people running scared of their own shadows! You must wonder how old age pensioners survived wartime and post-war malnutrician, outdoor lavatories, newspaper bogrolls, asbestos ironing boards, coal dust in the home, arsenic covered fly-paper, and lead water pipes.... Fear not! Your biggest enemies around the home are lack of excercise, fatty foods, too much sitting around and believing everything you hear on the idiot-box.....

 

Larry totally agree with you. After over 40 years in the electrical/ electronics industry surrounded by lead based solder/mass produced printed circuits with solder baths/ wave soldering machines and an apprenticeship breathing such nice things as carbon tetrachloride (used for cleaning instruments and clocks -now totally banned) and other such nasty vapours. We all survived the environment we lived and worked in. Like you on the railway we ate where we worked. I'm not saying the old ways were all right and 'Elfin safety' obvously has its place BUT the important thing that is missing today is - common sense.

[Il Grifone]

 

I do take the point about asbestos, though, which is truly nasty. But we'd have known about that much sooner if the producers hadn't criminally hidden the evidence.

 

Somewhere I read a piece dated 1909 stating asbestos to be carcenogenic.

[Will Vale]

Good god, it's a wonder you guys set foot outside your homes! Seriously though, the greeny gobsh*tes and Health & Safety muppets have got young people running scared of their own shadows!

I did wonder if my question might attract a H&S rant, but that was brilliant - thanks for cheering up my day! I know one of my dad's favourite childhood memories is smelting lead from old cables on a paraffin stove and casting it into ingots in matchbox trays, but he remains a sharp stick. On your other hazards, one of the good things about moving to NZ is that we more-or-less gave up car ownership (except for the Spitfire, which is for treats only ) and the TV is awful, so we're safe on both the exercise and idiot-box counts!

 

 

BUT the important thing that is missing today is - common sense.

The problem for those of us who haven't had the right kind of jobs is that we haven't been exposed to the source of common sense - bosses, coworkers etc. familiar with the materials in question. I have no issue with using lead solder - I know that metallic lead isn't absorbed through the skin, I usually open a window for the rosin fumes, and I wash my hands afterwards. Simple. It's really just the filings I wasn't sure about, since they're harder to contain and clean up and they get ground into tools and work surfaces.

 

Cheers and thanks again all for the advice.

 

Will

[PhilH]

I've read all the '40 years' etc. posts and, of course, to a large extent agree with them. Playing devil's advocate though it's possible that those who could testify about the other side of the coin, ie the ill effects, are no longer with us.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

While I am firmly in the 'keep things in perspective' camp, there are major flaws in the 'it never did me any harm' argument. Two easily appreciated factors make this so: our physiology varies significantly from individual to individual, and the potentials that now exist for novel compounds and exposures.

 

By definition, anyone who can say 'a working lifetime of exposure to X vapours or substances never did me any harm', is a survivor, those few who are peculiarly sensitive don't get to vote; most will have taken early evasive action voluntarily or involuntarily, on the effect being noticed. Some very few are left permanently injured or have died as a consequence.

 

As for novel compounds and exposures, there are well known examples of compounds with long dormancy before the serious impact is fully known. Look up Vinyl Chloride Monomer for a well documented case. Materials that are supposedly safe, may well not be so good if you happen to be a developing foetus: remember thalidomide. Now that women are allowed anywhere in the workforce, instead of just the typing pool, it has to be assumed that unknown conceptions are being exposed at all times.

 

Stew all that knowledge together and inevitably a very risk averse position emerges: vastly over-protective of the large majority, in order to reduce the risk to those who are most vulnerable. That is one measure of real civilisation in my view; those who don't need so much protection accept and conform with the inconvenience of extra regulation, in order to protect the weakest and voiceless from harm.

[Forester]

Playing devil's advocate though it's possible that those who could testify about the other side of the coin, ie the ill effects, are no longer with us.

 

My bro. used to keep a thimble full of mercury in his "toy" drawer which we used to play with as kids.

We're both still around 60 years on.

 

Not saying I recommend it, you understand!

[Bernard Lamb]

In Germany they used to play a game on New Years Eve that involved lead. For some reason it seems to have fallen out of fashion. You would melt a small quantity of lead in a spoon over a gas ring and when it was liquid you would pour it into a tall glass of very cold water. The lead would solidify into some very strange shapes. Some body would then tell your fortune for the coming year by reading the shapes. A more dangerous alternative to reading tea leaves. Before playing this game you had of course to have consumed a sufficient amount of strong beverage.

Bernard

[Forester]

That is one measure of real civilisation in my view; those who don't need so much protection accept and conform with the inconvenience of extra regulation, in order to protect the weakest and voiceless from harm.

 

I'll rise to that one.

 

It will be the end of "real civilisation" if the regulation to protect the "weakest and voiceless" prevent the strongest and adventurous from taking an occasional calculated risk.

 

Civilisation arose through the efforts of risk-takers, not law-makers.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

There is nothing to prevent the risk-taker going ahead, once he or she has ensured the safety of the vulnerable: typically by going places or doing things where and when they are not present or to some practical extent excluded. This working principle has been reasonably well understood for some time. Fencing off the railway and controlling access was quite a good application of the principle.

 

I would also argue that the pioneering law-makers should be included in the risk-takers group. There is evidence of significant resistance to the earliest impositions of rules, whereby civilised life might reasonably be conducted.