What Is The Impact Of RoHS?

Some of these chemical are so powerful that even small amounts can poision under ground water for years.

Or the chemical like Tulene that the drug dealers use to make Cocaine. They use it to wash the Kerosene out of the COCA Paste they create by stomping coca leaves into a mush with they feet in a vat of kerosene.

The drug dealers own tennis shoe companys that order the chemical legally to use as a thinner for the glue. But they oder 20 or 50 times more thinner than glue. The chemical companines can't sell it legally. But the same company in a forgien country opens a office and sells it to the drug dealers legally.

As pointed out in the referenced article, RoHS originally was meant to reduce risks from certain harzardous substances for the environment and peoples health. The rule is focussing at the time after electric and electronic equipment were used: what happens with the waste, what happens with recycling those products. To give an example: for the production of a controller board the electronic components will be soldered at the board in different steps. Not to melt the alredy produced solder point certain subsequent production steps have to be made with a solder of lower melting point. Those different solder features for instance are adjusted with the content of lead. But lead is a hazardous material and may contaminate the environment many years after a used board was put to the waste. RoHS is limiting the max. content of lead in solder material, in copper alloys, etc. (for instance).

But not only electric and electronic materials are affected by RoHS:
Our company is a maker of slide bearings, as they are common for the big electrical machines. Those bearings are free from any electric material (except a temperature sensor) and even the big motors and generators do not fell under the RoHS regulation because RoHS ends for electric/electronic at max. Voltage of 1000 V, and those elt. machines operating in range of several kilo-Volts.

However, the big makers of electrical machines do not want to make any difference in purchasing materials and components for their small machines (below 1000 V) and the bigger machines (out of RoHS). They therefore requesting ALL materials and products compatible with RoHS - including our bearings!

Our bearings are equipped with some hydraulic fittings for oil circulation, and of course a number of screws and bolts are required. These fittings and screws are corrosion protected with a yellow ("golden") shining galvanic coating. This very common protection (you will find it at srews from mp3-player to the biggest machine) up to now had been made from "Cr-VI" (Chromium-six). Again a harzardous stuff, forcing cancer. With RoHS the wide spreading effect from initial focus "electronic/electric" is, that the suspiciouse Cr-VI can't be sold in EU for ALL screws, ALL hydraulic fittings and pipes. Means, Cr-VI (also lead and the other banned or limited elements) can't be used longer in all kind of engineering and production: a company can't take care whether a tiny screw will be used for fastening an electronic board in a control system or just the tag-plate at a big tooling machine - the screw must be able to be used for both if the dimensions are identical. And this way more RoHS becomes effective for fields of applications the maker of this rule never were bearing in mind! But in this case the "impact" is a positive one.

One final word on comment #1: the writer is on the wrong pass - his comment fits with discussions about REACH and not RoHS.

It won't be the right question if there are existing more harzardous materials than the few elements handled by RoHS, but these few elements have a long-term risk potential and they are spread into the world in huge tonnages with the waste from elctric/electronic equipment (consumer articles from a sound-making greeting card to the biggest car, and of course most industrial goods) - and RoHS did cut a further developement in environment and lives contaminations.

I am involved in the manufacture of electronic components for the nuclear industry. The phasing out of non RoHs compliant components has caused concern due to the problems associated with growth of tin whiskers. The industry knows of the problem, but is still unsure how to control it. The reliability of items for use in nuclear power plant controls as well as for use in the space related designs require we take actions to mitigate the problem without fully understanding it. NASA as well as many other groups have conducted studies to identify the best preventive approach to the problem, but to my knowledge no cost effective solution has been found that is workable over the expected life cycle of 20 years or more. The throw away society where the phone, computer and other household electronics are disposed of every two to three years are generally not affected by tin whiskers, but are driving the corrective action without fully understanding the problem and interrelated issues. Recycling and reuse will help prevent adding to the landfills, but are only part of the solution.

Your problem is easy fix, insist the manufacturer of the PCB in question mounts the parts with standard tin lead solder... the amount of tin/copper solder on the parts(the manufacturer puts on the leads will only make a small portion of the soldered part ... hence when soldering the two will mix and only slightly change the tin/lead solder... Here in Australia I dont even bother if the parts are Rohs or not as we aren't exporting nor fall into the area of standards ... Stuff them, soon the only place on earth you will be able to get tin whisker free product will be here in OZ, assumming China has already fallen into line with EU standard... I like to see in about 5 yrs how much more consumer gear in ending up in land fill due to tin whiskers .. PS studies have shown extreme cold( ie about 0c and below accelerates the tin whiskers growth) so keep it warm ..

We are the maunfacturer of the units. We use 60/40 solder for all our work. Problem is outside of those areas. Tin whiskers have been found on leads that were not and can not be tinned and can short out IC's, small surface mount components on piggyback boards or sub boards. Some conformal coatings have shown to slow the process, but not stop it. That makes rework and/or repair more complex. The issue is going to get bigger before it is solved.

I absolutely agree, and tin whiskers is not the only problem, I used to work in the manufacture of personal transportation systems and the new regulation brought a buch of tech. issues: the elevated melt temperature of tin-silver solder and its undesirably quick solidification caused a highly suspicius cold solder point look; PCB tracks overheated or burnt out, etc. I believe that certain critical or safety related applications should be let alone meanwhile the gurus find an effective and secure transition to RoHS.

P.S. If it reaches avionics and it causes a disaster, the RoHS masterminds will feel really bad.

All good points.

Along the same lines as the screws mentioned above, in my experience Cad plated screws are also a 'no-no'. There are only a certain amount of options for dissimilar metal interface protection, so that whole area has opened up new ways of mating up mechanical only 'stuff'.

Generally, it seems that components are all moving to RoHS compliant versions, so typically our choice has been to go along with the change - allowing either the noncompliant OR compliant (usually in legacy type product).

Also, generally speaking, to use any non-RoHS compliant anything, we have had to seek special approvals from our (at a minimum) European customers.