Where is the Electrical Advantage with RoHS?

First, I am most likely not what would be called a "green". That being said, the real reason behind the Rohs push is not the hazard while the item (what ever the item is) is being used, but what happens after the item is disgarded. Most of these electronic items wind up in a land fill unfortunately and the bad stuff such as lead, PCPs, and other toxic stuff winds up getting into our environment including the ground water. This is a very bad thing. If the electronic equipment were reclaimed and stripped (a very costly endeavor to be sure) then there would be less of a problem. The solution is to move to some form of standard such as Rohs and try not to put the bad stuff in to start with.

I don't have the data handy but I'm sure that I have read that the chances of lead leaching into the ground water and soil from discarded circuit boards/electronic components, is pretty slim.

Does anybody have information on [ppm] levels recorded in any study done?

It seems to me that our environmental policy is being lead by Chicken Little. What ever happened to the little catch phrase "within reason"?

Exactly we are not talking about heavy metals like Mercury, a little lead is fine (or at least it was until RoHS).

Hello Jim,

I suppose we do tend to fill up the land fills with stuff we no longer want. But there is a lot more contribution to the land fill due to early or a higher failure rate due to solder joint failures. Pre-mature failure and assembly failures increase dramatically with the complexity of pc boards. Factoring in the higher temperature solders and the overall lack of flow and bonding characteristics makes for a big step backwards. Consequently, we have more higher cost junk going into the landfills. Could this really be counted as progress?

And for those of you that are concerned about mercury....drink lots of beer. That did more to reduce mercury contamination in the blood than any other treatment available for the exposed workers in the fluorescent lamp plant in which I used to work. Oh, and stay away from volcanoes and places that consume fossil fuels. Those two sources of mercury completely overwhelms anything else that that humans do.

Hi Joe,

Great topic, and one that often rubs me the wrong way.

First, I guess I am becoming MORE green as time passes ... meaning, I do want a safer planet for my grandkids and further ... and I DO think we need to become much more conscious of what we are doing with our resources.

All that said, however, it seems all the 'right' ideas are being horribly dictated. The stuff that does end up in the landfill is often bad, and we do need to improve our standards, but it seems the regulations only benefit the regulators and litigators, and has spawned a whole new level of testing agencies and laboratories ... but, I'm not sure if all these regulations and standards have or will really benefit the planet. To be sure, there are many more 'offending exemptions' from the laws than there are those things controlled. It's quite a game, and an expensive one.

But RoHS is OLD NEWS ... now we're on to other regulations such as REACH and CARB, and they are much more stringent and much more expensive to implement than was RoHS. More regulations are still to come, and as my tag line implies that when you know the answers the questions change ... well, it completely exemplifies the current level of 'regulation writing'.

Yes sir, Joe, common sense in all these would be wonderful, but I'm not holding my breath. All we can do is keep up or fold up. Those to whom I owe my mortgage payments hope it is not the latter.

Kind regards ...

Just in my field (pwb mfg), lets not forget to mention the benefits to raw laminate (epoxy/fiberglass substrates) suppliers that needed to completely re-formulate new high temp (Tg & Td) materials, which of course, are much more expensive. RoHS compliant/compatible components too. The use of Immersion Ag and ENIG (gold) as RoHS finish replacements are more costly than SnPb and can cause a miriad of headaches for the assembler as well as (someone else mentioned) potentially poor solder joints which affect reliability. I'm thankful that our MIL-SPEC customers with aerospace programs are still sold on using eutetic solder for electronics that fly....

I believe that the RoHS initiative was not carried entirely by the "greenies" but also by greedy lobbyists, etc, who saw a way to make money off of a legitimate idea. There are RoHS articles EVERYWHERE but not much when you try to find what the trade offs have been i.e. increase of chemistry useage necessary to comply.

Although such isn't directly my expertise, I do know it has had a huge impact on the entire process. Wave solder machines had to be rebuild or replaced for the higher temps required. Some PCBA's had to be re-designed because the density of the components on the layout were somehow 'not good' for the higher temperature process (really not my expertise). You mentioned some of the substrates were required to change, and that makes sense.

What many don't realize as well, other than just the tangible material impacts, were (all past now) the level of management, labor, coordination, and PAPERWORK it took. In the beginning, warehouses needed to be divided because there were RoHS and non-RoHS components. But the 'most fun' was the huge amount of 'profit taking' from nearly all the vendors, just to certify their parts were RoHS compliant.

My field is somewhat electro-mechanical, and the RoHS (more so with the new coming regulations) impact EVERY PART from screws, paper, packaging ... every piece and part. In the beginning (for example) we played hell (can I say that here ) convincing that things like chrome-6 and lead could also be in parts that weren't metal ... folks would look at a part and just discount the need to certify because it 'didn't look like it had any of that'. Bottom line, pick your BOM, and get an expensive certificate for everything on the list.

BTW if you're not aware, the new regs that MAY come require a complete chemical content analysis of every 'homogeneous' part in any project. I mean EVERYTHING, listed by weight so that in the end, you (assuming you want to know) can have a complete list of what's in your toaster.

The issue is deep, growing deeper, and expensive ... and, as the original post asks, where is the tangible benefit?

Kind regards ...

None, sometimes even worse than before (solder) but it is meant to create less dangerous waste in the world(Europe), just more challenges for "us" engineers to find a good substitute.

As worthy as RoHS was marketed to be, it was an attempt by the European Union to keep at bay the influx of Japanese and Chinese goods into their economy. Unfortunately for the EU the Japanese were on top of the requirements 6 months before the EU companies came close to being able to comply.

That said, it creates many more problems than it (purportedly) resolves. As for any manufacturer of electronic goods in the Class 2 and 3 range of goods its a headache we could have done without. As for consumer class 1 or Class 1C (Chinese origin) goods they only have to function 2 minutes past the warranty, (maybe work out of the box if its a 1C device). Note the Chinese use it as a import trade barrier par excellence, but are very happy to export anything, and I mean anything to anybody.

RoHS got hijacked by the deep greens, subsequently us people in the real world have to find real world solutions. Mine is to stock pile the "good" solder for my repairs at home.

As a answer to the posed question? None, Nothing, Nada, Zip, only grief.

Good topic - I've thought for a long time that RoHS was really designed to increase the turnover in electronic manufacturing industries, help protectionism in certain developed countries and provide jobs/bandwaggons for the otherwise unemployable. If you look at the average house you will see masses of lead flashing edging the tiles and carrying the water away to the drains. Lead has been used for this purpose for centuries and I've never heard anyone argue that the lead flashing should be ripped off and replaced! In the UK there has recently been a surge in thieving of lead from church roofs to supply the demands in Asia so somebody over there must be using masses of lead to make something? Lead is also a natural element in the ground so any leaching into aquifers must already be a normal and well established contaminant.

The tiny traces of lead in solder and electronic materials must be very small and most electronic scrap is recycled to recover valuable elements anyway so never gets near landfill.

While I agree that we should limit and control the more dangerous elements such as Mercury could this not be done by selective recycling rather than this scatter gun approach which is causing major reliabilty problems in electronic equipment.

Hey NOTURAVERAGEJOE,

I feel your pain, I was on a committee last year to replace every product we make internal components with Rohs approved equal. My company manufactures power conditioners and ups equipment. To answer your question - there is no electrical benefit in terms of performance. It is strickly a green initiative, It started in Europe and North American companies followed. It purpose is to reduce toxic material so when at the end of life the disposal will not be as hard on the ecology.

RoHS requirements and repercussionsThe RoHS Directive mandates that manufacturers cannotexceed specified levels of the following substances:

Lead (Pb), Mercury (Hg), Cadmium (Cd),Hexavalent chromium (Cr+6)

Polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE)

Key industries affected by RoHS include:

Appliances, Consumer electronics, Information technology, Plastics

Telecommunications, Wire and cable

Each member state of the EU is responsible for enforcementof the Directive, so penalties for non-compliance may vary.Such penalties may include fines and/or removal of themanufacturer's product from the marketplace.

If you want to read more follow this link

http://www.rohsguide.com/rohs-faq.htm

What ever happened to the little catch phrase "within reason"?

I think thats a good question for the broader issue.

Who at Nike decided to dump a tanker full of export shoes to control prices a decade ago?

How could Sony justify its actions in Congo during its Coltan rush for the PS2?

When was it ok for a company to shutter a crippled and leaking power plant in the center of a city? (in New Orleans after Katrina)

Regulations wouldn't be needed in a perfect world... I prefer government bloat to capitalist plutocracy

Though the differences are slight.

And Regulations like RoHs do a lot to keep us further employed ;)

Hi DB,

And Regulations like RoHs do a lot to keep us further employed ;)

Well, I can't argue that ... it initially kept devotees from Purchasing, Engineering, and QC busy for about 12 months ... they had good opportunities to take LONG trips to vendors (I'm sure with lots of wining and dinning along the way), and got stronger from carrying and filing all those papers ... as the benefits of progress

I just hope it truly helps ... I've spent some time in truly 3rd-world environments where trash (not just banana peels ... really bad stuff) was dumped and became a 'playground' for kids ... horrible.

What ever happened to the little catch phrase "within reason"?

Ah, if within reason, then such must be debated in Government by Lobbyists ... hmmm, not my idea of finding reason

Okay, okay ... I'm a LITTLE negative ... just that it truly makes me sad when I see something that has real value being misused to the degree that it has no real impact in the ways we need it to.

(sorry for the blah, blah, blah ... just wish I / we could really do something to improve things instead of just pretending to improve things)