Lead free solder

[Michaelgl1]

I'm going to build my first effect pedal. My wife does not want to use 60/40 leaded solder in the house. What are people' opinions on lead free solder?

[R.G.]

I'm going to build my first effect pedal. My wife does not want to use 60/40 leaded solder in the house. What are people' opinions on lead free solder?

Your wife has committed the serious intellectual sin of listening to politicians.

The reason lead solders have been outlawed **in Europe** is that they are used in cheap, high volume, quickly obsolescent things like cell phones, personal computers, etc. Europe has little space for making good, non-leaching land fills, and incinerators release the lead (...mercury, cadmium, etc.) into the air where it's washed back down by rain.

There has never been a case of lead poisoning by lead solder used properly in a house. We had a a lab technician a few decades ago that used to chew solder instead of gum - dumb practice, but he didn't wind up with lead poisoning that I ever heard. The lead oxides on the surface of solder are not the biologically active ones. The lead acetates and other versions of lead oxides in lead paints are very biologically active, and are a bad idea indeed.

If you use your solder properly, don't bake cakes with it, and wash up after using it, lead solder in your house is no more dangerous that the electronics you've had in your house before RoHS economically outlawed lead solder.

There is no reason supported in facts for your wife's stance . It may be she's making a political statement in support of the environment or something, but the facts don't support it. It is sad if she's one of those who simply believe what they're told without doing the research.

The whole class of ideas like ISO900x standards, RoHS and California's electrical efficiency standards is a form of economic extortion for political purposes. The extorter determines something is Bad To Do and determines to fix it so no one can do it. So they make it illegal within their own economic sphere, reasoning that they are so large that businesses will not dare to simply give up the sales to them. Businesses are then forced by extortion to comply world wide, the costs being too high to maintain two different sets of standards.

[Mark Hammer]

1) The move towards use of lead-free solder has a lot more to do with the tens of thousands of tons of things like televisions and motherboards that become landfill on an annual basis because some folks can't stand to watch the Superbowl on a 27" screen or have a CRT monitor taking up space on their desk, and considerably less to do with the minute amounts of solder that stem from an individual's hobby activities. Look at one single motherboard, and ask yourself if you will use that much solder in a year. If there is concern about lead particles floating around, then I suggest your family abandon all use of pencils and pencil sharpeners, and recommend to your childrens' school to do so as well. I do not mean to pooh-pooh your wife's very legitimate concern, but when you consider the scale aspect, there is nothing to fear from hobby activities. She probably has more health hazards to be concerned about when you actually make stuff that works! Sometimes loud is more dangerous than lead.

2) Lead-free solder is fine. It requires a hotter iron, and some changes to your soldering technique to adjust to the hotter temperatures required, but there is nothing wrong with it. If you can find audible differences between products coming out of RoHS-compliant countries and identical products that came out before introduction of RoHS regulations, you're a better man than I,

[martin manning]

...If there is concern about lead particles floating around, then I suggest your family abandon all use of pencils and pencil sharpeners, and recommend to your childrens' school to do so as well.

Pencil lead is graphite and clay, and not dangerous.

MPM

[J Martin]

I solder almost every day and I am only mildly crazy. When I was young my house had mostly lead pipes in it. Just wash your hands after soldering. Its mostly a disposal problem as mentioned before. I still have the same TV I bought in 1983.

[Mark Hammer]

Pencil lead is graphite and clay, and not dangerous.

MPM

And neither is solder in hobbyist amounts.

[Paul P]

I'm more concerned with the fumes we breathe while soldering. I have a fan
to the outside in my shop but I don't always think to turn it on. I have no
idea what's in the fumes, or if lead is in any way present, but it probably isn't
the best for your health. I bought some lead-free solder but don't find it as
easy to use a lead/tin. One thing is that every joint looks like a cold solder
joint. How are you supposed to tell if you've done a good job or not ? I went
back to lead/tin.

Paul P

[d95err]

Leaded solder is not "outlawed" in europe, but it is not allowed in commercial products. It is still allowed a) for prototyping and hobby projects and b) *required* when repairing old equipment made with leaded solder. Mixing leaded and unleaded solder on the same board is illegal. So, leaded solder will be available for sale in Europe for all for many decades to come.

If you are worried about the solder fumes, I suggest getting a small table fan to blow the fumes away when soldering.

I know of several amp builders using lead-free solder to good effect. You need a proper temperature-regulated soldering station to make sure your iron gets the higher temperature needed for lead-free solder. If you do that, there should be no problem.

[Enzo]

The smoke and fumes from soldering are the flux inside it, not the lead. You may not want to breath it, but it is not full of lead vapor.

I asked my doctor is after 50 plus years of soldering I should have a metals test, and he told me that unless I eat the stuff, I needn't bother. Lead poisoning comes from injestion, not fumes.

Most household cleaners are far more dangerous - to you and the environment - than the solder you will use.

[David Schwab]

Things like brass facets will put more lead in your drinking water than solder will give you by handling it!

Currently my "lab" is in the corner of our kitchen. My wife asked if the solder was safe since we have a 3 year old. I told her unless she eats some of it.. and I would think it would have to be a lot, there's no dangers involved.

Also, I've been breathing in flux flumes for the past 30+ years.

[Steve Conner]

Same here, I've used leaded solder for years and am only mildly crazy In my old job I could do a couple of hundred solder joints per day when I had to assemble PCBs, occasionally over 500 if it was a big backplane stuffed with 64-way connectors. I used fume extraction for this and had no trouble at all. The flux fumes are probably the most dangerous thing.

We still use the lead stuff at work for prototyping, though we're really supposed to use lead-free for anything we're going to sell! I use it for all my home projects too, even though Europe went lead-free. My "lab" is in the corner of the kitchen too, though on a bad day it can look like the kitchen is in the corner of the lab

One real danger of soldering is getting a glob of molten solder in your eye. Sometimes wires can spring apart and fling the solder. You can lose an eye this way, so safety goggles or even ordinary glasses are recommended. I wear glasses for close-up work anyway.

[Sweetfinger]

My wife does not want to use 60/40 leaded solder in the house.

She's gonna be a bit unhappy when you take away EVERYTHING that plugs into the wall or runs on batteries that doesn't have a ROHS sticker on it. Computer, TV, Telephone, Microwave, alarm clock, EVERYTHING. She'll also probably not like it when you remove all the copper plumbing and brass bathroom fixtures. All of them... full o' that evil lead. Old oil paintings and magazines...gotta go. More than 30 year old house? Probably has lead paint. Bavarian crystal wine glasses, throw 'em out. Any ammunition, fishing sinkers, glazed pottery- can't have that.
Once you've got rid of those pesky lead containing items, you'll want to move on to other toxic metals like Cadmium and Mercury. Fluorescent lights - Adios The switches that used to turn on the lights? Might have mercury in 'em. The old refrigerator with metal shelves... well, you probably already got rid of that on the rampage against lead products. Now that you're living by lanternlight in a grass hut, .... oh, wait. the lantern? that thing's probably got some lead and other toxic stuff in it and the mantle is probably radioactive to boot.
basically, your solder is way, way, WAY down the list of things that might cause harm to you. ...unless she finds the taste irresistable and licks the roll of solder hundreds of times a day.

[kg]

The flux fumes are probably the most dangerous thing.

^^^^ +1

[JGundry]

I decided to use lead free solder for almost everything pretty early on. I also bought an $800.00 fume extractor right off the bat. In the long run it's cheap health insurance and you will just plain feel better if you do a fair amount of soldering.

Beyond a rehash of of why you don't want to mess with lead if you can avoid it here is my experience with both lead and tin solder. First any amount of smoke from the rosin that gets in my face will make my skin break out. Also if I am doing soldering all day with either lead or tin solder I have a distinct metallic taste in my mouth by the end of the day even with a fume extractor. I figured it must be absorbing through the skin on my finder tips. My solution is to wrap a folded post it note around the solder so my skin is not touching it directly and I don't get the metallic taste anymore.

I'm sure this probably seems like overkill to most any maybe just a bit eccentric. But here are a couple of other interesting tidbits that nobody ever mentions. Tin is randomly and naturally contaminated with a radioactive isotope that when absorbed increases a persons exposure to gamma radiation. Gamma radiation exposure is cumulative and the more you get the higher a person's risk of cancer. Secondly rosin used for violin bows is commonly hardened using lead as a catalyst. I don't know if lead is also used as a catalyst to harder the rosin in rosin core flux but I would bet it is. If they are not using lead there are likely using some other metal like cobalt that you would not want to breath the fumes of. Plus the smoking rosin is just not good to breath.

IMO if you are using either lead or tin solder your best bet is to have an expensive fume extractor. If you can't justify it for the amount of work you do then at the very least find a spot that is away from a common living area and is well ventilated with a fan to blow the fumes away from the work area.

The other approach would be just not to worry about it and just keep your face out of the smoke. And maybe that is a valid approach it's just not my approach.

[Regis]

Enzo has been soldering for fifty years??

Wasn't that when...

Eisenhower was president?

Cars had leaded gas and no catylitic converters?

You had to dial zero to get a human woman to help you call your mom long distance?

Vacuum tubes were used in warplanes and submarines?

I was like... 2 years old?