Engineering360: "Consumer Goods Contaminated by Recycled Electrical Equipment"

Here we are about a century into the Electronic Age and we are now beginning to realize that these devices contain poisonous materials that make them difficult to recycle safely.

I got involved in electronics in 1972 and still do it as a hobby. I still use lead-tin solder in my work, as it's cheaper and easier to use. But of course the list of risky materials only begins with lead.

I see the problem of using electronic devices in a biological world as an ethical problem, basically. If we can learn to handle this technology in an ethical manner, then we can probably coexist with it for quite a long time. And so we walk out of the realm of engineering and into the realm of social life and all its responsibilities.