Welcome to Pushback

"The truth about RoHS and lead-free soldering"

Hi, my name is John Burke.  I have put this site on line at the prompting of a number of Colleagues. Who, like myself, cannot understand why the European Parliament has seen fit to effectively ban lead in electronic solders, forcing the industry to use a much less environmentally friendly alternative.

I did not believe it to be possible to stop the RoHS lead in solders ban, but having seen the application from SWATCH for a lead in solders exemption - I am feeling more confident that with individual indusrty support channelled through this site, that there is more opportunity for focussing the energy and spot lighting the issues raised in the exemption applications. For this reason I have supplied environmental evidence directly from RoHSUSA for 9 of the current exemption requests currently under review for the round 5 stakeholder consultations.

In any event, whatever the outcome of those decisions, I feel it would be negligent to let the protests of Engineers and Environmentalists everywhere, go unrecorded in the event that the truth of the environmental impact of this legislation becomes known OR in the event that the replacement has so many reliability issues that the legislation is in a position to be reversed.  In any event, the reason for the site being put up, is to get input from YOU to be able to lobby various organizations both political and engineering based.  Obviously, any lobby needs support, I hope you will provide yours by emailing your comments to me.

It is widely accepted in the Engineering community that the recent ban of lead in solders for use in electronics in Europe is not only erroneous, but will actually lead to a worsening situation on the environment with the replacements being in general use from July ’06 having a GREATER environmental impact.

My source? - The US Environmental protection agency. The EPA report on Solders in Electronics: A Life-Cycle Assessment (472 pages) published August 2005 has some very interesting data. It shows that the replacements for “leaded” solder generally referred to as “SAC alloy” has a higher impact than tin lead solder in a number of areas such as:

Non-renewable resource use
Energy use
Global warming
Ozone depletion
Water Quality

for Environmentalists and Engineers everywhere here is the link:  http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/dfe/pubs/solder/lca/index.htm

To refer to such solder replacements as “Green” is laughable given the much greater impact on non-renewable resources (NRR). Check out tables ES-4 and ES-5 in the report.  A quote from the report:

“The difference between SAC (the replacement solder) and SnPb (the leaded solder) is 453 kg of NRR per 1,000 cc of solder applied. If this were all automotive gasoline, this difference is equivalent to 162 gallons of gasoline. Assuming a driver consumes 20 gallons per week, this is also equivalent to approximately 8 weeks of driving"

 I have outlined below some bullet points on the lead in solders ban effective July 1st 2006 on imports to EEC member countries:

1.  Europe has initiated RoHS in isolation (unlike Kyoto or the Montreal protocol) and as such has impacted the global electronics market by an estimated 100 billion dollars. As a result of this legislation, electronics becomes very unreliable very quickly.  I believe that a collective of manufacturers could take the Euro parliament to court and win.

2.  Expert opinion says that reliability WILL be an issue and that the replacements for leaded solder are simply not as reliable as their leaded predecessors.  As this site grows,  I will be providing links and examples of failures if/as they occur.  If you have any examples, please email me.

3.  The environment is going to be negatively impacted by the changeover to lead free.  The numbers are available in the August 2005 EPA report.

4.  There is going to be wholesale destruction of non-replaceable forests and other resources as the tin industry continues to struggle to control unauthorized mining of the raw materials.

5.  There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the change was necessary or even desirable from an environmental, health, or engineering standpoint.

So to my point, if you feel strongly on these issues one way or the other, and want your views published on the site, please email me using the form below (and if you do NOT want it published - tell me in the message), or hit the blog button from the menu and sign up for an account on the blogs pages.

Kind regards,

John Burke

Santa Clara CA   May 2006

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