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Commentary: Note to European Union—Repeal RoHS!
-- Electronic Business, 7/25/2006
By Joseph Fjelstad, CEO and founder, SiliconPipe
The European Union instituted its Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) mandate, in presumed good faith, to eliminate naturally occurring but potentially hazardous elements and certain organic flame retardants from electronic products.
The primary target appears to be metallic lead, which has been widely vilified in the press as a toxin that, because of some apparently inadequate research, is presumed by many people to preferentially target children. Lead can, in fact, cause illness in both children and adults if ingested. The forms that have been rightfully banned to date are lead in gasoline and lead in paint.
However, there is zero evidence of harm from lead in electronic solder. While the EU has enacted this legislation with plausible good intent, much harm appears to be on the way instead. Interestingly, it appears that the EU legislators, in an effort to appear "green," ignored their scientific council's recommendation to wait for the facts before enacting the legislation.
A quick check of the facts reveals the following:
- Lead in electronic solders accounts for less than 0.5% of all lead used globally.
- There has never been identified a single individual harmed by lead in electronic solder from normal use.
- Lead from electronic solders that does end up in landfills does not leach into ground water, even with years of legacy lead from many other sources such as batteries and lead painted structures.
- Lead-free solders contain substantial percentages of more expensive silver (~ 3 to 4%), which pose a risk to beneficial microbial life and fish larva.
- The conversion cost, it has been calculated, will likely run into the tens of billions of dollars and could top $100 billion with no identifiable benefit.
- Lead-free solders typically require significantly higher temperatures to solder, meaning that more energy is required and will be consumed on a continuing basis.
- The reliability of lead-free solders is still a big uncertainty as there are numerous effects (voiding, tin whiskers, etc.,) whose causes are neither well understood nor predictable. Some early converted products are reportedly already running return rates 3% higher than products that were not lead-free.
- Research from both academia (Niels Warburg of the University of Stuttgart presented a paper at IPC APEX 2003; http://leadfree.ipc.org/files/RoHS_15.pdf) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA report: "Solders in Electronics: A Life-Cycle Assessment") indicate that lead-free electronics appear to be much less environmentally friendly.
- Traditional tin-lead solders will continue to be used by military and aerospace manufacturers who must have the highest levels of reliability, resulting in a dual path which will create ongoing logistical headaches.
- Innovation will continue to be delayed as engineers are diverted from solving real technological problems to solving a "problem" that never actually existed in the opinion of many informed scientists and engineers.
- Tin resources are significantly lower than those of lead, meaning that new tin mining may be required. Unfortunately, some of the richest tin mines are in rain forests, which must be clear-cut to get to the tin deposits.
- The provisions of WEEE mandate the recycling of electronic products, making all of the concerns of lead in electronics completely moot.
Lead now stands at the center of some of the best and some of the worst environmental legislation ever enacted. The best was the removal of lead from gasoline and paint. The worst is the European Union's mandate against lead in electronic solder.
RoHS is a bad piece of legislation for both the environment and the electronics industry. It needs to be repealed. It is never too late to get things right.
