Greenpeace enforces EU ROHS

[Questioning_Climate]

EU prepares new ROHS and Greenpeace helps police it:

http://www.edn.com/article/509743-ROHS_r...lation.php

Quote:"These companies are acting they way they do because Greenpeace has a gun to their heads," said Fern Abrams, director of government relations and environmental policy at the Association Connecting Electronics Industries (IPC) in Bannockburn, Ill.

Some of the comments are worth a read too.

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Does this sound familiar?

Quote:In response to growing regulations, IPC has launched a campaign asking regulating bodies such as the European Parliament to make sure their regulations are based on actual science. Many in the electronics industry believe the regulations are politically based rather than based on improving the environment. "When you look at some of the proposed amendments, you begin to abandon hope that it will be scientific process," said IPC's Abrams. "Some of the amendments are quite disturbing to anyone who cares about science."

[Sunsettommy]

Quote:The Environment Committee took a pass on adding PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and BFRs (brominated flame retardants) to the original six banned substances. Instead, they asked for further study. The electronics industry, however, is expecting these substances will eventually be added. Given that assumption, an industry coalition voluntarily stopped using PVC and BFRs and it has asked the industry to follow suit in finding alternatives.

Ban PVC?

That is insane!

I use that everyday in my job,since that is what Irrigation pipe is made from.

I have parks that were built BEFORE PVC were used for pipe,and that means old rusting steel pipe.They are being replaced with PVC when we are forced to renovate the system.

What alternatives are as stable as PVC going to be available? Meantime back to steel and copper for replacement.

[Questioning_Climate]

There is little doubt they will find reason to not use steel and copper too. They both take a huge amount of energy and that virtually all comes from hydrocarbons and so by definition are evil too.

PVC is everywhere from water and gas pipes to electrical cabling, to packaging, to water proofing for houses. It is one of the most widely used polymers.

[strogoff]

This reminds me a lot of pesticides. If it seems nonsensical, it becomes outrageous when you read:

Renewables win exclusion from EU toxic law

Quote:"No environmental benefit has been identified, no specific environmental concern has been raised as a valid reason for such a significant change, and no impact assessment has been conducted to evaluate the costs and benefits of this proposed scope expansion," said Meglena Mihova, chair of the environment committee at AmCham EU.

From Q_C link:

Quote:"The idea of having technical documentation to defend your claim as ROHS compliant will difficult. Many companies don't have internal or external audit capabilities."

This way small and medium companies will get out of the market so that Greenpeace will be able to talk about those giant capitalist empires that pollute everything.

I am not sure, but PVC is not allowed in Spain except for irrigation, and irrigation PVC pipes must be buried. I managed a project of restoration of facades and all PVC drain pipes had to be substituted for aluminium ones (almost prefer not to remember).

[Questioning_Climate]

Strogoff,

That is an excellent observation.

Quote:This way small and medium companies will get out of the market so that Greenpeace will be able to talk about those giant capitalist empires that pollute everything.

It is strange that PVC is not suitable for electrical products but is allowed in contact with drinking water and in the ground. It is perhaps even more odd that most double glazed windows and doors in the UK are made from it.

Wiki has this to say:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride

Quote:The environmentalist group Greenpeace has advocated the global phase-out of PVC because they claim dioxin is produced as a byproduct of vinyl chloride manufacture and from incineration of waste PVC in domestic garbage.

So again we see Greenpeace at the centre of the scare. But what do we know about PVC and 'dioxin'? Wiki tells us that commercial production of PVC did not occur until after 1926 and we can also see from the dioxin page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychlorin...zodioxins) that dioxins are created naturally. I read a report a while ago that stated dioxin levels from natural processes have been grossly underestimated, but I can't find it at the moment. Anyway, it is not just that but the graph from a sediment core shows overall levels increasing prior to the widespread usage of PVC. Furthermore, there is no obvious correlation dioxins of any type, from that sample, and usage of PVC.

In absolute terms, how much dioxin is released from PVC manufacture?

Quote:The US EPA estimate of dioxin releases from the PVC industry was 13 grams TEQ in 1995, or less than 0.5% of the total dioxin emissions in the US; by 2002, PVC industry dioxin emissions had been further reduced by 23%.

13g is hardly a huge quantity unless you are an ant of course in which case it is a mountain.

Then there are the weasel words:

Quote:In February 2007, the Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee of the US Green Building Council (USGBC) released its report on a PVC avoidance related materials credit for the LEED Green Building Rating system. The report concludes that "no single material shows up as the best across all the human health and environmental impact categories, nor as the worst" but that the "risk of dioxin emissions puts PVC consistently among the worst materials for human health impacts."

So basically there is no strong evidence of any problem but there is a risk. These are the same arguments used for every human-centric scare story, notably AGW.

Even more perverse, is that the Olympic Games 2012 have a policy on PVC:
http://www.london2012.com/documents/impo...policy.pdf

On the other side of the debate we have:
http://www.pafa.org.uk/Environment/PVCBr...fault.aspx

I rather like this one:
http://www.pafa.org.uk/LinkClick.aspx?fi...nload=true

More seriously though, this one is quite relevant:
http://www.pafa.org.uk/LinkClick.aspx?fi...nload=true

What do we conclude?

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This report is worth reading too:
http://www.eurochlor.org/upload/document...ment64.pdf

[Sunsettommy]

I despise Greenpeace for that they are doing and that they are being callous and irrational in the process.

The Dioxin fears are all a bogeyman.Invented by ......... the mentally sick environmentalists.

Somehow we manage not to die like flies after decades of PVC use in many products.But they are not going to accept that in their drive to a "pure" world.

When are these haters of life going to deal with the well know toxic radioactive massive coal ash piles? They certainly worry about the small nuclear waste so darn much,despite that they are already heavily regulated and properly stored in special canisters.

They are an irrational bunch.

[strogoff]

Quote:They are an irrational bunch.

SST, I think that they know perfectly what they´re doing. And that is to make the most of any tiny uncertainty and transform it into a new scare. They´re blackmailing industry and politicians as a survival strategy, and they do it quite well. Maybe base proselites, trained to make the noise, don´t know what they´re doing, but the "thinking heads" know that their existence depends on abusing the cautionary principle into paralyzing extremes. If industry or politicians want to move on, they have to court them (money).

Q_C, many thanks for the interesting links. Nevertheless, the figure of 13 g TEQ for US PVC industry does not make sense. Even if a number of biological processes are driven by infinitesimal quantities of some substances (hormones, vitamins, coenzymes, catalysts, etc), 13 g for the US is just incredible . I´m looking for some other reliable sources to check it.

I found an interesting discussion at http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=56615 :

Quote:Well, I am a toxicologist and oddly enough I work with dioxin and related compounds, i.e., PCBs, PAHs, etc. First off Bystander mentioned a possible lucrative venture in selling dioxin, it's not really that expensive at $175 for 1 mg, sorry.
http://www.accustandard.com/SearchRe...anic+Standards
In my opinion the risk to a healthy adult male consuming a regular diet (as stated that is the main source of background levels of dioxin) is minimal. There are however specific "sensitive" populations which may incur a greater risk following exposure to dioxin, those being: groups of people who consume large amounts of certain aquatic organisms, especially whales and other large predatory species, and women of childbearing age and their progeny. The most interesting group for me being a developmental toxicologist would be the humans exposed during gestation and lactation. There are a lot of complex dynamic processes going on during development that simply don't tolerate insult from external sources, see examples such as thalidomide or retinoic acid overdose during pregnancy for extreme examples. Dioxin is not going to be so dramatic but it has been implicated by laboratory work and epidemiological studies as a developmental toxicant which may affect brain, endocrine and immune system function to name a few. Direct proof in humans of the effects of TCDD is lacking although there have been human exposures such as the industrial accident in Seveso, Italy and as a result of dioxin contamination of agent orange used in Vietnam. These populations are being studied and the results will hopefully shed more light on the risks associated with dioxin exposure in humans. The other thing to remember is that we are exposed to many different chemicals throughout our lives and it may be the cumulative effects of such exposures that lead to chemical interactions and other long-term processes that could eventually lead to an adverse health effect.
In terms of toxicology, the most toxic of the dioxins, 2,3,7,8-TCDD has a LD50 (concentration that will kill 50% of a group) value of about 2 micrograms/kg in a guinea pig. That pretty good, but in the hamster the LD50 is about 5,000 micrograms/kg. Toxicity is a relative terms and has involves numerous complex factors such as route of exposure, time, concentration, species, genetics, etc. It's really a fascinating subject, but I'm a little biased.

Doc

And a recent report of the European Food Safety Authority: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/scdocs/scdoc/1385.htm

As you can see in the tables, dioxins are expressed in pg TEQ/g food sample. I just had not the time to think about it and maybe it´s easier to find some better assessment at WHO or FAO websites.

[Questioning_Climate]

SST,
They (Greenpeace and other similar groups) are certainly dangerous to society.

Strogoff,
Thanks for the good info. It seems to me that most of the scare is based upon speculation and the precautionary principle, although there are definitely health problems at high exposure levels. That is typical for more or less any substance. Even something as apparently inert and fundamental as water can kill in sufficient quantities. The context is important here in as much as many biofuels will produce far more dioxin than gas or oil. Indeed it is likely that many African and other similarly poor people die from burning dune is enclosed spaces and some of that may be attributable to dioxins. But the main context here is PVC, and in that case, there is no known evidence, at normal exposure levels, of any problem at all. In the case of electronic components and assemblies, how many of them are in contact with food or ingested, and how much is out-gassed? At the end of life, most plastics (including PVC) in the UK are supposed to be recycled (it may be true elsewhere in the world) so how can dioxin from PVC be a problem? Even if it is not recycled the incinerators are meant to be fitted with extraction processes. It simply makes no sense.

Another example, one that I heard about years ago and have not checked references for, is that if a PTFE coated pan is over-heated in the presence of a parrot or similar, the bird is rapidly poisoned, but there is no noticeable effect on humans. Judging by Google, the example is likely correct: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=parrot+...=firefox-a

How many of us have had a Teflon frying pan at very high temperatures? Has anyone suffered health problems after over-heating a pan, that cannot be attributed to burning fat/oil/food? As far as I know PTFE is considered safe (ish) by our green 'friends'; or should that be 'fiends'?

The problem here is the scare not the material. No doubt we will hear more of this kind of thing as time goes by.

[Richard111]

Interesting and informative comment. Thanks Q_C.

I read some years ago that defunct electonic equipment tends not to go into landfill but is shipped to the Far East. There it is dismantled by hand and also burned to extract valuable metals. Should be evidence there for any effects from dioxins. Haven't heard of any restrictions being imposed on this traffic.