Electronics > Beginners
Life expectancy vs Lead exposure?
John B:
I always use disposable gloves. When cleaning out the brass wool, there's a lot of fine lead, almost powdered. I would imagine that poses the greatest risk, as it puts a lot of particles in the air, and they would dissolve the easiest.
Mr. Scram:
--- Quote from: John B on August 19, 2019, 10:19:25 pm ---I always use disposable gloves. When cleaning out the brass wool, there's a lot of fine lead, almost powdered. I would imagine that poses the greatest risk, as it puts a lot of particles in the air, and they would dissolve the easiest.
--- End quote ---
Gloves may very well be an ESD risk but I suppose that could be mitigated.
themadhippy:
Drink plenty of milk.One of my first jobs was in an oxide manufacturers , all the staff on the lead oxide plant were issued with a pint of milk a day.
Electro Detective:
cheap fan for the fumes, extract or push away mode, anything is better than breathing the crap in,
cheap thin glove to handle the solder, the other hand can be without, to better handle the soddering/soldering/sardurring iron (pick one :D)
and less fiddly parts placement etc.
cheap white mouth-nose protector with elastic thingie,
cheap clear or mild diopter magnifying glasses to see better > and catch any hot spatter and flying molten lead balls
before your eyes do. :o
Maybe $20 all up ? cheaper than life insurance that you won't collect, hospital, lung machine hire, earlier funeral,
and worst of all, not being able to solder stuff anymore. :-\
FWIW: if you think lead solder may be a problem, welders will giggle ;D and tell you what real problems are :scared:
Nominal Animal:
As others have well said, lead is only dangerous if ingested or inhaled in vapour form.
As a lay person, it is difficult to get a good intuitive grasp of the actual risks of different materials.
For example, when one talks about uranium, "radiation!" is what pops into peoples minds, immediately. Yet, uranium is just like lead in that it is a heavy metal that is chemically toxic to animal life, including humans. Over 99% of uranium in nature is 238U. Although radioactive (half-life is four and a half billion years), it is its chemical toxicity that is deadly, just like lead and mercury. In fact, the dose that is 50% likely to kill you via radiation when ingested, is about 2x to 4x the amount that has already killed you due to its chemical toxicity. So, unless you intend to wear it like clothes every day for decades, you can forget about the radiation when talking about 238U; it is its chemical toxicity that will kill you before you need to worry about any effects from its radiation. And, exactly like with lead and mercury, it is in its fine particulate or vapour form that is the deadliest. (As welders will tell you, metal vapours/fumes are deadly anyway.)
Uranium is actually even worse, because when vaporized, it reforms into tiny little particulates that may be even more dangerous (by mass, chemically) than the vapour, because of how they are better retained by biological organisms, causing even more damage.
Which makes claims about depleted uranium weaponry being safe utterly ridiculous, by the way. They're worse than dum-dum bullets, with a droplet of mercury encased in the slug, as the resulting tiny little particulates after hitting any target remain chemically dangerous for decades.
(Your depressing fact for the week brought to you by Nominal Animal. You're welcome. I'm off to eat some 50-50 solder, just to see how it tastes.)
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