Lead Solder And Toxic Exposure At Work
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 พ.ค. 2024
- Part four of four, my answering questions from people on Patreon. Enjoy!
0:00 - Handling Lead Solder Safely
4:40 - Dealing with toxic exposure
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63/37 is not your " basic 60/40 solder"
That exact mix of 63/37 makes the solder eutectic meaning it does not have a melting range but a melting point and so consequently it also has a solidifying point in stead of a range.
In other words, when the solder cools down it solidifies all in one in stead of being malleable (past like) for a while before becoming completly hard.
That way it prevents a "cold joint" due to moving the joint while cooling down.
(*instead)
@@daveogarf thats ok, if you now make a post in dutch language without spelling errors 😂
@@daveogarf you can edit, you know.
@@daveogarf If you're going to point out "instead" being wrong, how did you miss "past" instead of "paste" a few words later? :-P
@@robber576 I haven't studied Dutch in over 20 years. I should pick it back up again. I never learned it fully, but I could understand basic conversations. I learned more Dutch than I learned Tagalog, but not as much as I learned Spanish and Russian. Languages are fun.
I'm almost 73 years old. I've been soldering with lead solder for 60 years. I'm also a gunsmith, licensed in the City of New York for many years. Needless to say, I have handled a lot of lead. My blood work has never had ANY concerns with lead levels of any kind.
I too, have used solder from my early teens till now, and still do, at 65. No lead problems with me either. My worries were from the flux, especially the zinc fluxes.
I've been soldering with real (lead/tin) solder for 47 years myself. No problems with lead in my blood, per the bloodwork results of last exam. Of course, I don't eat the stuff....
My brother had a vial of mercury from school. I used to play with it too. I've been using lead solder too for years. No issues so far.
Do you have numbers? I have found 3 studies from industrial solders that have conflicting results. Also for industry the action level is 25 ug/dl while what is being considered normal is being lowered to 2 ug/dl. I think that to be considered non hazard there should be no measurable increase from soldering. I can send the studies I have found to anyone who is interested.
Standard blood tests don't screen for lead and even if you were tested specifically for lead, it's not like all of the lead that has entered your body circulates in your blood forever. It primarily collects in your bones and brain. Unless you had a major lead exposure, lead isn't going to show in your blood even just a couple weeks after it entered your body.
I've been soldering for much of my life, dating back to the late 60s when I became an Amateur Radio operator. I'm 69 now, and starting to feel my age 🙂 During that time I've never used any fume extractors or any other special equipment when soldering, although nowadays I turn on a fan when I'm soldering to blow the flux fumes out of my face. And I don't eat when I'm soldering. Anyway, a couple of years ago I got to thinking about lead exposure (I have always used 60/40 solder) so I asked my Primary Care Physician to check my lead levels. The test came back at the bottom (almost undetectable), so I was relieved. Of course, that doesn't mean I haven't been exposed at a low level of lead all these years, and it's my understanding that lead doesn't leave the body very fast, especially in the case of bones and teeth. Spurred on by this video, even at this late stage in my life I'm now actually taking more precautions when soldering, and will be setting up a fume extractor soon.
they end up in bones and brains. not sure they always maintain trace in blood.
As a child I remember a kid trying to convince me his walls tasted sweet. I remember this HUGE gap where he had (over aeons) ate the paint of the wall. He didn’t do well in school, but being a child I never made the connection.
Many moons later and I’m an adult learning about the things you demonstrate here - someone mentioned kids get brain damage from lead paint because it tastes sweet.
Horrible flash into the time fog! I’m glad we have learned lessons and paint like that is avoided now - but I totally agree about the precautions with older wires etc in particular!
Old wallpaper often contained arsenic, which does indeed taste sweet. Takes a while to build up to toxic levels but could certainly damage a child's brain and nervous system.
I get tested about every two years. I'm on year 38 of soldering. A lot. So far I'm below detectable limits. Always wash hands afterwards! Don't eat or drink at the bench.
We used to get tested too. We used to wear a air monitor on us for about a working day and go for a blood test.
For years I used a hot-type machine called a Ludlow that cast lines of type for making rubber stamps. I still have some jeans with lead splatters on them. I never thought about the lead at all, though back then it was still in the gasoline. Probably shaved a few points off my I.Q., but I wasn't gonna be a genius anyway! You, on the other hand, need to take care. Love your ideas and adventures.
Contrary to common belief there is NO lead in leaded solder fumes, lead vaporizes at 1749 °C (3180 °F) , no soldering iron gets that hot, the only fumes are from the flux and generally the flux used for lead free solder is more harmful than the flux used for leaded solder I'm 52 have been soldering since my early teens and have never really taken any special precautions, my lead levels have been tested and are perfectly normal.
Every academic source I've googled seem to state the contrary but everyone on reddit seems to swear by lead solder. Vaporized lead seems unlikeky leaded solder but lead oxide fumes can still be produced according to papers I've read on MIT and Uni of Warwick (they're popular google hits).
@@kevin9642 The Uni of Warwick think isn't a scientific paper it's generic H&S information that repeated elsewhere. Lead oxide doesn't form unless you heat lead to 600 deg C way above normal soldering temperature.
"The Poisoners' Handbook" is a fascinating history book about the development of forensic medicine and the search for scientific methods to determine the cause of poisonings, whether accidentally or purposeful.
Lead/tin solder is just soo much better, especially for hand assembly, or repair/rework. I also like the Hakko 951 as the station, it's got better temp regulation, and the includes the option for a switch stand, that turns the iron off when it's in the stand, reducing fumes and increasing tip life.
Arsenic, which was once used to make dyes for wallpaper, also tastes sweet, and children would poison themselves by licking the wallpaper. Similar to kids eating sweet-tasting paint chips and getting lead poisoning. When we were were kids we used split-shot, small round BB-like lead weights with a slit in them that you could squeeze onto the fishing line; we were supposed to use pliers for this, but if we didn't have pliers, or the pliers had frozen solid with rust while sitting in the tackle box, we used our teeth! Nowadays, most fishing weights and lures aren't made with lead anymore.
I did the same with the fishing weights, I can never remember using a pliers!
@@SchrodingerDeeps , I was happier when Water Gremlin came out with "Rubber-Core" sinkers where the line fits into a groove in the sinker and you twist the rubber core to hold the weight on the line, without compressing or kinking the line and weakening it. I used to make my own sinkers, from 1 ounce to 12 ounce; and Diamond Jjgs for catching bluefish (still have the molds). I even made molds out of Plaster of Paris with which to make copies of favorite bucktail jigs and tin squids that weren't being made any more.
Arsenic made a green dye used for wallpaper. Bacteria could release the arsenic from the dye as arsine gas AsH3. One theory was that Napoleon was poisoned by arsine from wallpaper while he was in exile on St Helena.
@@6F6G , my wife lives in fear of my "arsine" gas!
Thank you for reminding me about the lead fishing weights. Never used a pliers on them, just my plain fingers to squeeze them. That and the lead soft-tip bbs I used to use hunting squirrels. Those too were handled directly by hand when put in the bb rifle.
Very informative! Thanks Fran. Cheers!
So true, thanks for the reminder.
Excelent topic Fran!
Really like this series of QAs! Nice rhythm, nice length. 😎
Very well done! We appreciate all your experience and comments. Best Regards!
The old timers, who worked on the dew line, and i learned electronics from used drums of carbon tetrachloride to wash equipment in. They seemed to be mostly ok. :)
Lab 3.0 is coming along quite nicely!
We had a barrel of Freon with a loose pump in the hole on top. This we would put into ~1 L bottles (and all over the floor). These were used to brush the Freon onto cards to remove flux. Always fun to send the newbies into the Freon room with a styrophone cup, which would dissolve instantly on contact with Freon. When asked how to dispose of contaminated Freon, my boss said, "Pour it on rocks out back. It will evaporate." I love to see people today always going for the PPE.
Thanks, Fran, nobody ever taught me soldering and while I've done it for years, I never have done it a lot. I didn't know about any of this!
During my time in the late 1970s as a radio maintenance tech in the USAF I took the NASA soldering course. They used Pace soldering stations and after a few hours the classroom was thick with fumes. Plus you cleaned boards and components with acetone and carbon tet.
Yes! A pragmatic approach to hazardous substances is the best, especially when working with vintage gear where lead, asbestos and PCBs are unavoidable. Understand the risks, and develop a personal protocol.
This vdieo should be one of those "required reading" videos. Thank you!
Except for mercury I use basically every chemical you mentioned, and will be much more careful!
Fran ! Love your channel, love you. I so much respect and admire your fine mind which is a gigantic library just choc full of such a wide variety of "knowing" ~ what, how, when, why. You are a truth teller, a myth debunker, an extraordinary explainer of things, a do-er (not just a "talker"), a scientist, an engineer, a designer, a developer, an entrepreneur, . . . an all-around competent, capable gal. Your curiosity, wit and humor abound. Wish you my physics prof in college. I look forward to each of your videos and hope you continue posting for a loooooooong time. Thank you. (I played with liquid mercury too as a kid -- from a broken thermometer -- YIKES!)
One of my slack time tasks that I was given as a Technician was to decommission a large number of Mercury manometers. I was worried when I was told of the task but reassured when I found that the next task after that was going to be to decommission the 'Mercury Room' that I didn't realise that the works had. It was a bit grubby but it had a downdraft bench and all the PPE to keep me safe. Oh and the first part of the task saw me being sent off site to a chemical company to undergo Mercury handling training course. One hit training, trained for the one job then never used the training since.
@@jhoughjr1 not when handled correctly. My biggest problem was that most of the manometers were broken and very fragile since they were not in any kind of chassis, just the soda glass tubes. I've worked with more hazardous things that definitely are dangerous (now). We used to have to dip sheep in an organophosphorus based insecticide once a year, by law, in the UK. That was nasty s**t and I know a few people who have suffered as a result of exposure to it. What a difference a year made: we went from Jeans and a tee shirt to fully face respirator, one piece water proof coverall and being hosted down after work in one year.
When I was young and stupid I used to light cigarettes right off the (tinned) tip of my Weller soldering gun. I'm now old and not quite as stupid, and no longer smoke. Luckily didn't poison myself, and wised up a good deal in the decades since.
Interesting to know. Thanks
I used to work a lot with solder. Sometimes I used a fume extractor. I never ate around my workstation. For an unrelated health issue I had my lead level tested in my blood. It came back low normal.
Never thought about acetone being transdermal. Some good stuff in this one.
And a story. When I was very young, we used to play with asbestos sheeting. Throw it in a fire and what for it to go pop. I even have a purchased rock collection with a good size chunk of asbestos straight from the ground. And at school the used to use asbestos based paints in the classrooms. Stipple the ceiling so plenty of small bit. Still kicking to :)
It is nice to see many commenters concerned about lead poisoning from soldering. I always use a small fan to
blow away fumes from soldering since I was a teen. You should actually be worried more about transdermal
liquids that are mostly still sold as solvents. They can damage organs and nerve endings.
When I studied chemistry ('72-7) we were wary of mercury vapour and benzene. However everyone had squeeze bottles of acetone. And so many exotic organic compounds... Some must have been deadly - still here I am😁
Same deal when I studied chemistry (‘05-9). Chemical squeeze bottles of flammable chemicals. And I’m still a chemist and the same applies (I also do have a small plastic tube of waste Hg as a fidget on desk). Also I really prefer Pb solder.
I find this an interesting discussion. One of my favorite memories as a small child was of the smell of soldering coming from my father's Ham Shack. As a Ham he built many many Heathkit radios, audio amplifiers, and other project kits if his own design. He worked as an engineer from the 40s thru the early 80s, and taught himself radio growing up in the 1930s. Here I am , now in my mid 60's, having also worked as an engineer, so I will be curious to see any negative impacts from that early exposure.
Let me guess... your Dad also used to smoke a pack of cigarettes every day, didn't he? ;-)
In the 80's Methylene Chloride was used in large amounts in circuit board manufacturing. Pretty much the entire plant had vats of it. They literally had it on tap so workers could fill their small pots with it and use it at their stations. I recall pretty elaborate health related paperwork in being hired, and supplemental to that too but wasn't around for too awful long. Long enough to have gotten MC on my fingers in small amounts regularly. You would use a cotton bud / q-tip dipped in MC to clear off any epoxy you had accidentally gotten on a pad while you were touching up where the silk screened epoxy was insufficient. It takes almost nothing but the slightest touch and MC will wick right into you.
In the silk screening process if a worker screwed up an entire important board, they could walk over and dip it into the large open vat of MC. Come out clean as a whistle, that is for dang sure. When I think of it now, I shudder a bit.
Chlorine and chlorine compounds are particularly dangerous to organic life. Chlorine is a strong oxidizer and its affinity for oxygen means that it will damage almost anything and everything. It's no surprise that chlorine and related gasses were once used in warfare. Nowadays we worry about exposure to things like PCB's which are chlorinated biphenyls, and solvents such as trichloroethylene and triflorochloroethane. Dioxin, which is the most carcinogenic organic substance known to man, is also a chlorine compound. For what it is worth, I almost never use chlorine bleach for cleaning anything. I've had excellent results, and so far no incidents of damaging anything, by using an oxygen bleach, such as oxyclean crystals in water which break down into sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and oxygen
MC was common in Aerospace and other Industrial processes up until around 1997 or so.
I've heard stories of a plant in El Salvador making bushings for (well known Aerospace company), pots of MC and the ladies at the (post turning process cleaning station) passing out (fainting) after so many hours (non PVA gloves vanish and they're hold the wet parts in barely covered hands)
A machine builder in the US where a few brave souls used MC to clean adhesive residue off their (bare hands). No thanks use lanolin instead, (not the gritty stuff, the smooth stinky version)
@@RetroCaptain , ah, Lanolin, it sounds so soft and lovely ---- but women in particular dont like to be informed that Lanolin is actually rendered fat from lambs and sheep!
@@goodun2974 Lanolin is the byproduct of raw wool scouring it used to earn a goodly sum for the city of Bradford in The West Riding of Yorkshire, they would get it from the sewer works and ship it to the cosmetics companys.
@@goodun2974 I think you mean Choline and Benzine but you're spot on with. PCB's they were supposed to be banned in the late 70's but they're in everything we use, our drugs, food (butter) everything. They're in our system as well, i think this is an important factor when dealing with gain of function research.
I continue to use lead solder for the reasons you mentioned, it works great. I actually like the smell of the flux, but then I'm not soldering all day. As you did I played with metallic mercury as a kid and dipped coins in it to make them shiny. Mercury switches were pretty common back then and I broke open a bunch and kept it in a small baby food jar. My understanding is that metallic mercury is not nearly as dangerous as vapor, so I guess I dogged a bullet growing up.
SN100C! (The Nihon stuff, Allied manufactures it, though Kester has a "K100" that is not as good.) I like the "FastCore" flux when I get flux-core wire, but there's choices. Which brings me to flux: You're right to bring it up. Flux fumes BAD, idle iron is just an unhealthy chemical candle.
I built my station lead-free from the start, which is kind of necessary, and have a separate station for taking apart vintage equipment. Btw, since you like your eutectic 63/37, SN100C is eutectic!
One last PSA about benzene, etc. Wonderful advice about volatiles. Minimize exposure, or wear throw-away gear and a P95 or better mask. Minimizing exposure being the easier option. Also benzene et al turns up in weird places, like 99% isopropyl alcohol; it has no health utility whatsoever, btw (the 70% stuff from the pharmacy is optimal for healthcare), but the industrial sizes and mixtures use "drying agents", hence the MSDS sheet you get with it. It preserves the proportions of the solvent, but it's extremely toxic; don't touch without gloves.
And great advice about military hardware; also applies to civilian firearms (sights) and _to hospital antiques_! It's too bad wide-spectrum detectors are so expensive, but they really are the price of admission for vintage gear. Got to have β, γ, and X-ray detection.
Long post, but there's a lot of stuff that you wouldn't expect to be dangerous, especially if you didn't buy it new with its safety literature. End PSA. Thanks for the great vid Fran.
Just to let you know that despite being subscribed with notifications on I haven't had a single notification for months. Don't you just love TH-cam.
Have you done a video on Tin Whiskers? Mercury vapor under UV light is also scary...
Thanks
Beryllium is another one to be aware of and Its probably the worst of them. (It causes berylliosis) Its was and still is common as HV insulator, and it was also used in old heatsink compounds. I.e. may be found in ceramic insulators, things like magnetrons. Id be cautious with old heatsink compound.
I already knew that beryllium was used in beryllium copper alloys which you will often see used for leaf springs and switch contacts and perhaps military grade tube sockets, but I wasn't aware that it was used in heatsink compound. As far as I knew that stuff was all silicone based.
It's beryllium oxide that is used in insulators not metallic beryllium. Beryllium oxide has excellent insulating and thermal transfer properties, second only to diamond. However, crushed beryllium oxide dust is carcinogenic when inhaled.
P.S. All of those chemicals you mentioned, we had on the carriers that I was on and used on aircraft a lot. Not to mention all of the munitions we had to hand load.
I use Ersin Multicore most of the time. I have it down to 0.0a5 inch.
The assembly workers at Microdyne were test for lead once a year, Some had been there for over 20 years and none ever had detectable lead.
But then, the most toxicity at work usually comes from..the people, not materials.
Lead can actually fix that.
You have to wonder about neural damage from various chemical exposure. I had a neighbor who worked for the USDA at the lab in Peoria, IL for 30+ years. He ended up with Alzheimers. He started work there in the 1950's prior to all the modern vent hoods and retired in the late 1980's. He worked with urea-formaldehide for some time creating corn based products for insulation and biodegradable plastics. AND he smoked unfiltered cigarettes for many years before he quit.
The old time radio station chief engineers often smoked. I recall one defying gravity with a long line of ash, sticking to his cigarette, and the ash hovering over a wired chassis. Rest in peace Don Holmes 580 AM CJFX Antigonish, Nova Scotia. They were I believe the second station in North America to use a 10.000 Watt Nautel AM transmitter.
Yes may of these things we know but sometimes we need to hear it.
For me, the biggest problem with solder is the solder dust and small chunks that build up in the soldering stand and brass tip cleaner. I was surprised you didn't address this...
That's very coarse material. You are unlikely to breathe any of that in. Having said that, absolutely nothing stops you from using lead-free solder these days. It doesn't look as pretty, but in my experience it's perfectly fine, even for hand soldering. I have both at hand. All my production is lead free, as required by law.
Oh, the joys when the mercury fever thermometer broke! 😄 And the lead vapors from soldering. The smells of the CCl4 cleaning solution in my dad's print shop... No wonder I sometimes think I am on the autism spectrum... 🤔
Solder for me is always in a tube, so that you are not holding it in your hand direct. Lots of tubes I have used, even the ones that were sold for that, but most are old fizzy tablet containers that got repurposed. Solder off a roll using a drill and a philips screwdriver as mandrel to wind up a large roll, and then slip into the tube, pop the end through the small hole in the lid and use it.
That way I minimise touching the solder, where oil off your fingers makes the outer surface dull and corroded, so no touch means longer life and better use of the flux. The sweet taste of lead is mostly from the organic acid products of lead being used, like lead acetate, used a lot to make sweet wine by the Romans, and then lead oxide, used to make white paint and as a white base in old lead paints. Both sweet, especially the lead oxide after it reacted with the linseed oil that was used to make the old paints, forming organic lead compounds that are water soluble.
Mercury is not terribly toxic as a pure metal, it is when it reacts with weak organic acids and becomes the ion that is the problem, and just skin contact alone will not be immediately fatal. Prolonged, as in years, exposure to mercury vapour, say from being a Zama Zama illegal gold miner, will kill you, as the vapour condenses in the lungs, and reacts with the body there, slowly killing you. Organic solvents unfortunately are really good as solvents, and when they dissolve DNA then you get problems.
Also some organic solvents (e.g. acetone and methylene chloride) will penetrate through nitrile gloves, so other material gloves are sometimes required when using these.
All of this reminds me of my dad's acquaintance of a guy that reloaded and manufactured all of his ammunition all throughout his life. It got to him and he died of some type of cancer specifically from that ammo process. He was a great marksman with many trophies. Both have long since gone now. No matter what it is, you have guidelines you must adhere to.
The ventilation is good, also washing hands. Also opening the windows, but in my case the moment I open the window the gases from cars passing in front of my window give me a headache, so I open the windows from the other side of the building or I check the wind direction. Sometimes I leave the room for refreshing the air for a half of an hour because I like the air with good oxygenation.
hearing about the precautions you take, i'm all the more convinced I'll be sticking with lead-free. no way I could keep up with that.
I was a leadman on a soldering/electronic assembly line and later a soldering instructor. Never heard of lead problems from soldering with tin/lead solders. Had a friend who was a welder and a welding instructor, developed brain cancer from welding fumes. That may be where tales of lead danger from soldering may have come from. Don't put solder in your mouth or eat while soldering, have a fan going for prolonged soldering work, (couldn't hurt). Unleaded solders and fluxes require higher heat and possible damage to plastic connector bodies and circuit boards, possible unreliable connections due to poor solder flow when used in hand soldering . Use 60/40 tin/lead rosin core solder for hand soldering and good technique in care and cleanliness of iron tips, "tinning" of wire ends, use of flux, quick heat transfer, watching solder flow, and practice. It's good to have a third hand, a helper, or holding devices.
7:17 used to play with mercury too, my grandfather had a vial of it taken from old pieces of equipment in his workshop. I used to take it into school and we would play with it in physics class, putting it in our palms and coating coins in it, was lots of fun. This wasn't like forever ago either, it was like 2002-2004 which admittedly does feel like "back in the day" now but still I think quite removed from the years when playing with mercury was a normal thing :D
my experience was, if you use bad lead free solder its a pain and you never touch it again. but we tried some with high silver at work and meanwhile i think its even better :)
The school chemistry lessons I had back in the '50s were interesting but would NEVER be allowed today!!
Recall a teacher getting a little carried away with the Sodium Metal. Cut a piece a little to big so when it hit the water bits went flying in all directions.
Fran you are very intelligent and thanks for sharing information to us!
Lead 60/40 is all I buy .Great video.
I misread the title and thought this video was going to be about co-workers making fun of people who like to paint lead soldiers.
This was very interesting and a bit scary; all the precautions needed to safely do a lot of soldering.
Love the hat! I used lead solder for 20 years with no hood. Safety was not a real thing until the late 90's. I would just blow on the solder to keep the fumes out of my face. I often wonder if my old habits will cause some sort of long term illness. She is right, Use common sense. Solder in well ventilated room , wash your hands when done handlining lead solder, don't eat and solder. clean your work station when you are done, wipe things down if you have pets.
Worked around TCE a lot years ago.
I've known a number of older Techs..only one died a bit early, but he was chain smoking and possibly eating at his bench, and worked very long hours kinda thing. The rest seemed to do well, though after listening, it brought back a memory of how my mentor (past Military service, in electronics) seemed to radically change, like mood swings, fast temper, as his age increased. Was it old age, or lead, carbon Tet etc exposure.
I knew a lot of ham radio operators who were spry and mentally able into their eighties. Whatever they were exposed to over the years, and it probably must have been considerable, it didn't seem to hurt them.
I use 60/40 and don't really care about poisoning since I don't put it in my mouth :)
Have worked as a typecaster, dealing with an alloy of lead, tin and antimony, most of it being the lead. Not worrying about the vapours too much though, as the metal is close to its melting point and the intermolecular bonds will keep it from evaporating. Haven't even smelled it.
The real deal is volatile organic components from decomposing machine oil on typecasting machines, or flux from the iron tip. That stuff can be cancerous if you inhale too much of it.
Smelled enough acetone, isopropyl alcohol, ammonia, toluene, cyclohexane etc. through my studies in chemical engineering. And I think I'm still rather smart, LOL.
Asbestos... yes, I remember your commentary on all these girls working in the vacuum tube manufacturing industry.
As long as it doesn't strip off forming fibres, it's relatively safe. I wonder if asbestos could be kept together with some spray paint that forms a rather thick and flexible layer, and penetrates the pores in the stuff.
"Mercury, lead, asbestos" is good, but "salt, asbestos, curtain" is certainly better :)
My old Boy Scout leader was an industrial plumber. He kept his coffee mug warm on his melting pot. He had multiple organ transplants, twice, ultimately leading to his death from lead poisoning.
All the testing spheres are made out of asbestos. Keeps out the rats.
We soldered with lead in school, and we were taught the fumes were bad to breathe in, but nothing really about washing our hands and such. While we had fume extractors the first year, we didn't the second year. I remember we used to have a lot of fun with melting big blobs of solder and push it over the edge so it would make a splat on the floor. Not at all what one should do, but our teachers didn't seem to care. I haven't soldered much since, but I have a small spool for the few occasions. I never tried non-lead solder, but I think it's long overdue to stop using lead solder also for hobbyists. It's just a really bad thing to get in your body, and you can't get rid of it once you do. Silver and copper is poisonous too, but it doesn't stick around.
Thank you Fran, I'm doing a home renovation and have just bough a wall exhaust fan and couple of meters of air conditioning tubing. Intend to build a flexible exhaust fixture can be moved over my desk. Let´s stay safe.
I can't even buy leaded solder for home use from my electronics supplier here in the UK, Rapid Electronics, so I went over to lead free solder. 99.5% tin, 0.5% copper and a trace of cobalt.
Granted, it feels different to work with after 35+ years of using 60/40, but after adjusting my soldering station to find that sweet spot over the first few days of using it, I don't notice much of a difference to the leaded solder I use at work now TBH.
Yes I have used lead free for many years now . I have seen 60/40 still available in uk . I use an air purifier with hepa filter .
Rapid's "Premium" lead-free solder (Sn 95.5%, Ag 3.9%, Cu 0.6%) seems to be a bit nicer than their regular lead-free solder (Sn 99.3%, Cu 0.7%), though unfortunately it's also more expensive (£29/100g). I just have a small 12g tube of the premium stuff (~~85-6610~~ (moved to 85-6869, £6)), which was only available in 1mm, but that size is a cheaper way to evaluate if the pricier stuff is worth it.
I don't notice _any difference whatsoever_ between their premium lead-free and their leaded solder. Mind you, I barely notice a difference with their _regular_ lead-free stuff 🤷♀️
Rapid also sell an even fancier (“Produced under license from Fuji”) alloy: Sn 96.43%, Ag 3.0%, Cu 0.5%, Ni 0.06%, Ge 0.01%. I'd love to try that, but they only sell it on 500g rolls for £140, which is a bit much for my limited use!
That's actually the same price as 500g of Premium Lead-Free, but that one is also sold on slightly more reasonable 100g spools...
I really don't understand people's complaints about lead-free solder 😕 I'm wondering if their only experience of lead-free solder was some crappy stuff decades ago before the composition was fine tuned - or just crappy stuff from eBay or something? I've received some absolutely terrible _leaded_ solder from eBay/AliExpress in the past, so terrible lead-free solder is probably floating around as well!
That whole "lead-free flux is bad for you/will eat your children!" thing seems to be nonsense as well. Most of the solder I see for sale - leaded and lead-free - is RMA, i.e. rosin, and if you check the datasheets/MSDSs, it's exactly the same 🤷♀️
Yes it's possible to get lead-free solder with nasty component-eating flux, but the same is true for leaded solder...
Bit off topic Fran but how is your sense of smell/taste now after Covid?
Large companies typically have a 'medical' member of staff responsible for 'employees health' and their job is more legal than medical. Primarily to ensure the company has safeguards in place to prevent them being sued for industrial disease. They will 'health screen' employees by searching for risk and then 'interview' the employee, invite the employee to recognise risk, identify measures to reduce the risk and then take a signed statement from the employee that they will wear thick gloves, facemask, rubber boots, rubber apron, etc. That way if ever a industrial injury claim ever goes to court the company can supply the evidence that absuelves them from responsibilty.
Lead boils at over 700ﾟF but but tin/lead solder is formulated to melt at far below those temperature, and so virtually no lead is actually outgassed when you are soldering. Some people find ordinary rosin flux fumes to be quite irritating. I don't, and I have found no evidence of rosin fumes actually carrying lead or being a major health hazard, but ideally I guess you should avoid breathing it if you can by using an exhaust fan. Lead-free solder fluxes, however, contain organic acids, and that stuff is nasty and harsh to breathe. Unlike rosin flux, lead free fluxes are also conductive and corrosive, and must be thoroughly cleaned from the circuit board or it will cause problems down the road. Lead free solder also breaks down, and crystallizes and degrades at extremes of temperature (both hot and cold; Google the phenomenon known as "tin pest"), And the higher temperatures required for lead free solder, in conjunction with the corrosive acidic fluxes, will beat the heck out of the tips of your soldering iron in short order. I use only leaded solder. BTW, I made my own fishing weights and lures from molten lead as a boy and have come through unscathed.
PS, Liquid Mercury actually sublimates and turns to a gas at room temperature and the vapors are more dangerous and more easily absorbed then the liquid metal is. Most of the environmental Mercury that builds up in the food chain and concentrates in larger predatory fishes actually originates from coal burning power plants. The exhaust is carried on prevailing winds to the coast and comes down with rain, where it is then acted upon by micro organisms and turned into Methyl Mercury which is highly neurotoxic and easily absorbed into fatty tissues.
There is strong epidemiological evidence that rosin flux causes asthma; that in the 80s and 90s, when this research was performed, almost half of the electronics workers had asthma symptoms, IN SPITE of air extraction and filtration - even exposure to minor trace amounts leads to respiratory disease over a long enough time. However, they did not find an increased incidence of any lead-related diseases.
This shouldn't be a surprise. "Colophony disease" was known anecdotally before.
No mechanism by which flux would cause asthma has been conclusively demonstrated, but keep in mind, plausible mechanisms are, more often than not, misleading. Just because something has been demonstrated step by step in a rodent doesn't mean things work the same in a human, and vice versa.
Uhmmmmmm what do you think rosin consists of though? Abietic acid, acetic acid. Organic acids. The whole "lead-free fluxes" diatribe is complete nonsense.
I know a guy who got throat cancer in his 50s, wasn't a smoker, physicians assumed it was because he worked every day with solder as he was an electronics guy.
@@SianaGearz , well, for what it's worth, I am 64 and not asthmatic. The difference between breathing rosin fumes and lead-free fluxes is quite obvious to anyone who has worked with both. I didn't say rosin fumes were harmless, but I'd rather be exposed to that than leadfree flux. The corrosive and electrically conductive properties of leadfree fluxes are also well known. It's a little like alcohol versus other solvents; I and many others might be blase' about handling isopropyl alcohol and breathing a little of the fumes, but MEK and Acetone are another story, and I use those only when I must, preferably outside if possible.
Leadfree solder is a scam, as far as I'm concerned, adopted industry-wide as an end-run around the possibility of manufacturers being forced to have a plan for responsibly collecting and recycling all of their products. Leadfree solder also works poorly and degrades, and the resulting broken connections shorten the lifespan of products, consigning them to the dumpster prematurely. Which is good for the manufacturer's financial bottom line, but bad for the environment. It's not as if removing lead from electronics manufacturing makes those discarded products "harmless" to the planet.
Are you sure? 🤔😅✌
Lead Solder is the best!
I try air quality meter, PM2.5, PM5.0, PM10, and i see how the fume from solder are rise the meter, is very sensitive and with or without fume filter, meter rise to the top!!!
Now i use fume extractor and push fume outside, the air quality meter rise just a little and return to near zero in 10 to 20minute, i alway clean the tip in tip cleaner wire before rest in stand.
I have also hepa air filter near me with good fan to recycle all air around me in the epa filter.
Air quality meter count between 0 to 6 without solder job, 10 to 35 with hot glue job and 200 to 999 (max read) if solder without fume extractor.
And then you go into your garage where you are storing 20 gallons of a carcinogenic chemical with very low boiling point... ;-)
@@lepidoptera9337 yes, gasoline!
@@Dieseleux Exactly. I don't know how many people realize that their cars run on and, unfortunately, still emit large clouds of organic carcinogens.
@@lepidoptera9337 yes, snowblower and lawn mower make nice combustion gaz...
@@Dieseleux Yep... one lawnmower has the emissions of 100 cars with catalytic converters. ;-)
Most of us of "a certain age" used carbon tetrachloride for contact cleaner. I was practically up to my armpits in the stuff for years....and as anyone can tell you, I'm perfectly normal!
Another consideration with unleaded solder / components: I've read that soldering lead-free components with leaded solder is fine, however, soldering components "tinned" with leaded solder (e.g. "vintage" components) basically requires that you use leaded solder, otherwise tin dendrite growth can occur, which could cause a short. IIRC, it has to do with the amount of lead in the joint - in the former case, there's an overwhelming amount of lead in the joint, whereas in the latter, there's a small percentage of the joint's mass that's lead, which apparently allows dendrite growth. So, you have a good reason to be using lead solder with vintage components.
Cyborg detected
a quick check to msds is a must before using any substance
There are loopholes to MSDS laws; as an example, Caig Labs will not tell you what the active ingredients in Deoxit and their other contact cleaning solutions are. Their advertising copy says it's proprietary.
Used to work in natural gas measurement. Some of the very old meters used mercury. We had to drain out the mercury, squeeze it thru a rag (by hand) and put it back into the meter, adding some to make up for any losses. My hands were silver colored after that and used kerosene to wash it off best as possible, followed by water. Still have about a pound of mercury stored in a cupboard. LoL .. Not aware of the dangers back then.
I'm only a hobbyist, and don't really do all that much soldering. But this is definitely food for thought, and even as a casual user it seems like some PPE is cheap insurance.
Old Linotype machines used an alloy of lead, antimony, and tin to make the hot metal slugs comprising a line of text for printing presses. Imagine working inches from a molten container of it for years at a time.
At least in Germany solder wire containing lead is (officially) no more available. However the substitute is not by any means working as good as as the "Fluitin" (American product?) LSN60. Therefore I try to obtain a LSN60 solder from China quite successfully. But in this solder the flux isn't so good.
The new solder has a wide temperature range with a "creamy" or half-solid consistency, which makes it difficult to produce solder connections with a nice, smooth and shiny surface.
Besides this I have been using this LSN60 solder for more than 50 years and "survived" this with obviously no damage.
I've always used 60/40 solder. I never have had a problem over the decades of electronics work. I a) never put anything in my mouth when soldering; b) always wash my hands, twice, when done. I've never used any air filters/gloves or eye protection. I'm still alive and have never had any symptoms of lead poisoning.
I'm just a hobbyist. Depends on the project, but generally I prefer not to use leaded solder anymore unless I'm working on a device where I suspect lead was used in the first place. I am acutely aware that it's dangerous and it just takes the fun out of it all. What does worry me is inhaling rosin flux and isopropyl alcohol... I generally solder outside but I think you still get plenty of those fumes...
Your 63/37 is eutectic and does not do cold joints compared to 60/40. I must say I have NEVER heard of anyone poisoning themselves with solder in electronics including people who always held solder in the mouth like Steve Wozniak, or worked at a PCB plant with solder wave equipment, and we never used fans or anything like that. And this is elemental lead. It is not soluble in water or fats. I hear of it from lead smelting but not lead mining. Same for mercury. You need a compound that is soluble. But I am probably out of date. I am much more concerned about solvents - and old paint with lead compounds, red or white. Nonetheless, thanks for the video.
What type of Geiger counter is suitable? Could you show us what you use please?
Its not just about the user its about the places and people where it comes from. Like Pitcher Oklahoma which is now uninhabitable
I like to think of ingesting small amounts of toxic stuff as entering a shit lottery. some people do it for years and see no negative side effects, while others aren't so lucky.
A real bad mix, is having exposure to lead, and at the same time having plenty of amalgam tooth fillings. This produces the combo of lead and mercury messing with your bodily functions, with the autoimmune system being hit the hardest.
I'm pretty sure the flux fumes are a way larger hazard than the lead in solder. I remember doing some big soldering projects with rather inadequate ventilation, and feeling pretty weird the days after.
What should we be doing with all the old used solder wick and extracted lead solder removed by a solder sucker, or vacuum powered solder remover? Putting it in the wastepaper basket can't be proper.
I ran an electronics manufacturing facility doing mostly hand soldered circuits and circuit boards. I hired a workplace safety company to come in and attach air sampling containers to capture the same air the employees were breathing when working. They attached to their neck and pulled in the air for 8 hours a day for 30 days. No measureable
Great video. As a Certified Industrial Hygienist, I am really happy you posted this.
I had no idea lead free solder had such problems. I've only ever used leaded because i had some free rolls that came with electronics. I guess the problems we've been having at work from solder joints breaking (besides the ridiculous heat stresses in this particular light) could be caused by lead free solder.
The doomsday predictions about lead free solder didn’t come to pass. Lead solder joints fail, too.
the ROHS compliant stuff yes.. Especially on BGA mounted chips. it just cracks too Easly.
@@CotyRiddle BGAs soldered with lead-free solder are EVERYWHERE these days, without widespread reliability problems. If they do occur, they’re in a specific chip in a specific product, which is indicative of a process failure in that product, not one with BGAs in general!
What is the name of the crank holodex at the video intro ? that will be a fun project to make with kids.
Back in the day, I used naphtha to clean parts, and that stuff used to make my hands hurt.
The problem with all those chemicals that cause slow neural damage is it can turn you into an Internet troll without your even realizing it.
Everything is hazardous if you manage it wrongly enough. But that's why they're the trolls. That said, thanks for the tip about the iron filter -- I'll have to pay closer attention to where that smoke goes next time.
There are all kinds of details about the tin/lead solder and soldering irons that deserve at leas some cursory comments. For the first, the 60/40 tin/lead mix may, but probably is not eutectic. Meaning it has a range of solidifying temperatures. That then means the "ready" joint is not as well defined and you can get some last second movement induced bad solder connections. Another issue is the required soldering iron tip temperature versus usual settings on peoples' benches. The lowest required temperature is on the eutectic 63/37% version, but most people use much higher temperature tips like 700 degrees F and if they have the modern lead-free solder, possibly even higher. The tin/silver/copper version does require higher temperature in theory and due to poorer wetting may promote further pushing of the temperature up. That of course may be ignored, as there then is no lead involved. Then there is the issue of lead vapor concentration in the air and the OSHA limit. With just ordinary ventilation at the eutectic point temperature the lead vapor concentration is something like 1% of the OSHA limit. Getting up to common 700 degrees (F) temperature with the iron lingering in its station you are much closer the limit and should take precautions. Then there is the story about tin whisker growth. As I have understood, NASA still specifies true eutectic (63/37 %) solders for this reason. The tin/silver/copper alloy is OK for most hobby and industrial use, but the spacecraft cannot take even the reduced risk of whisker growth.
I've used lead solder since I was a kid building projects! My dad was careful about teaching me safety - he was a plumber and regularly used lead to seal sewer pipes. He died just short of 90. Diabetes got him, not lead!
Yup, I worked for a plumber for a year, right out of high school; we sealed vertical cast-iron waste pipe stacks by tamping oakum (tar- impregnated stringy rope, also used for sealing wooden boat hulls) into the flared bell-ends where one pipe fit into another, and poured liquid lead into the flare, on top of the oakum. I still prefer lead solder for sweating pipes in my own house because its so much easier to work with, except perhaps for the pipe joints to the kitchen sink and the water hookup for the refrigerator.
Thank you Fran. I knew some of this stuff, but not most of what you shared. I will be more careful
Lead in it's metallic form isn't very dangerous, you could eat a piece without much exposure...but in it's salt form, lead sulphate, lead oxide, etc it is very dangerous. I've been using lead solder for over 40 yrs, holding it in my mouth at times, also used to hold pellets for my pellet gun when I was a teen in my mouth...
Fran, can you please make a presentation on American English irrational pronunciation? If the "l" in solder is not pronounced, perhaps it would be better to omit it altogether?
Also I would like to know whether US citizens get their kicks on *root 66* or *rowt 66* ?
I poisoned myself so much with lead when I was younger. From working with lead welding it whilst smoking and eating. Then when I got home i used to solder with no fumigation. I'm surprised I don't piss bullets
I believe that, back in the day, research chemists used to taste the new chemicals they created.