To me, this says that we still put lead in too many things. Lead is still used for flashing in roofs. It's still used as a mould release when making plastics. It's still used in making dishware. It's still used in bullets.
It's still used for all kinds of things which will one day end up in the environment and someone's drinking water.
As for lead in plastic manufacturing or dishware, that's mostly a matter of buying wisely. As it tends to be used in less developed markets.
Where do you live? I have never shot a gun indoors. Every range I have been to is open air. Multiple states, including California.
It’s hard to have an outdoor gun range in an urban environment!
Lead batteries contain not just lead, but the H2SO4 needed to dissolve large amounts of it and transport it through watercourses when the plastic case inevitably cracks.
Too bad they use lead, because it would be too good to be true otherwise. You have to treat lithium batteries like a spoiled child in comparison.
You can overcome most of these issues, but it comes at a significant cost. I think it could be worth it, especially when you factor in that the lithium ion battery could theoretically pay for itself in longer lifespan, but most buyers would prefer the cheap, familiar, reliable option.
Why? I would posit that lithium batteries do way more damage to the environment than lead-acid batteries. Recycling of lead-acid batteries is very prevalent because it is economically worth it.
> Despite the smaller supply of lithium, a study earlier this year in the Journal of the Indian Institute of Science found that less than 1 percent of Lithium-ion batteries get recycled in the US and EU compared to 99 percent of lead-acid batteries, which are most often used in gas vehicles and power grids.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/lithium-costs-a-lot-...
Whenever I buy a lead-acid battery, I always have a core charge and it is a non-trivial percentage of the total cost of the battery. I get that core charge back when I return the old battery.
Lithium batteries have nothing comparable.
AFAIK soldering is not hot enough to vaporize lead.
Because if that, many people consider the ban of industrial lead solder to be over-zealous. But that ban is in place to stop consumers being contaminated if they somehow touch the board. Also to minimise lead entering the water table once it is discarded.
The problem isn't vaporizing, or the first consumers direct exposure. The problem is taking a pound of lead and distrubuting it all over the environment in the form of spatter, shavings, assembled pcbs, connections, etc. Probably less than half of the solder winds up in a product or project, and that is just a short delay on it's trip to the envirnment when the project is discarded. 100% of it ends there, and not in a nice solid lump but practically aresolized.
It's the same as just taking that same pound of lead and directly grinding it into a fine powder and just sprinkling it everywhere, where it becomes part of the soil more or less and leeches into everything and can't be removed.
And 100,000 or a million or many millions of other people all doing the same thing, every day, for generations. Yess millions. There are 300million just in the US alone, and there are more than one person in every 300 that solders at least some times.
If your iron can hold it's temperature worth a darn, the lead-free solder is fine. If it can't, you're going to struggle no matter what you use.
Pure tin (or Sn99.3Cu0.7 alloy) is garbage, the silver helps a bunch.
For demanding applications there's apparently some even more performant alloys available today, eg. Innolot [1].
Yeah, about that.
This aged wildly poorly.
TL;DR: RFK has cut health programs including the division that deals with lead poisoning.
The first link is about that choice's fallout on school children exposed to lead.
Yay blanket federal cuts.
I don't know if this was something he pushed for, but let's assume it was. Could there still be a reasonable cause to cut that department?
A lot of people assume if you oppose the Do Good Things act, that you must be a bad person. Was this department getting results? It was spending roughly 750k per full time employee per year (based on the 150M for 200 full timers from the article). Was it working? It could have been, it also could not have been.
Maybe this was an actually bad decision made by an actually bad man. But previous coverage of him has taught me to take anything reported about him with a very large grain of salt.
All the new parts are designed based on a lead free process anyways, so you might as well get used to working with lead-free solder to begin with.
Especially with hard water (of which the water in Rome is VERY hard[1] today, and if similar sources are used, it stands to reason it was very hard way back when) it forms a scale that drastically reduces the amount that leeches into the water.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-water-hardness-of...
He is being dishonest.
> It is now universally accepted that utilization of lead for domestic purposes and water distribution presents a major health hazard. The ancient Roman world was unaware of these risks. How far the gigantic network of lead pipes used in ancient Rome compromised public health in the city is unknown...[Lead isotopes in sediments from the harbor of Imperial Rome] demonstrate that the lead pipes of the water distribution system increased [lead] contents in drinking water of the capital city by up to two orders of magnitude over the natural background. The [lead] isotope record shows that the discontinuities in the pollution of the Tiber by lead are intimately entwined with the major issues affecting Late Antique Rome and its water distribution system.
There's a weird trend on here of karma chasers playing "gotcha" by posting rebuttals to things that literally nobody is claiming and hoping that we don't notice. It's fucking pathetic man. What would it take for you to reevaluate your life.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160617070827/https://news.ycom...
The ancient romans added lead acetate Pb(CH3COO)2 to their foods and wine. I can't understate just how much 'lead sugar' was being consumed.
By the way, in my later years, I did make a voluntary choice to taste it, and then rinse my mouth out. And yes, it was the closest we have to table sugar Ive ever tasted. Before anyone naysays me, I did this knowing full well the risks.
Also fast forward 1700 years,and we see the same reaction. In the 1950s USA, you could buy lead-rimmed coffee cups. The interaction between the coffee, the lead, and your mouth created the sensation of sweetness, likely also lead acetate.