Aren’t most companies using lead free solder anyway? I assume thats what they are talking about when it comes to lead in cell phones.. Obviously Nokia would be since the EU has mandated that consumer devices be made with lead free solder. Hell, even my damn xbox is lead free solder..
I think whoever made this graphic has no idea wtf they are talking about.. I know the electric meters my old company makes all went to lead free solder 8-9 years ago, and we had to re-test everything with the new solder… If a damn electric meter has no solder in it I can’t believe a cell phone would.
Lead is in the ground in the form lead sulfide as the mineral galena. its been there millions of years already. Lead metal, and lead sulfide is not readily soluable in water, so unless you eat a sizeable amount of lead-bearing soil, it isnt gonna hurt you. And just for the sake of disclosure, I work at a lead smelter, so I am kinda knowledgable about such things.
the ignorance is that you can take a few buzzwords and loaded phrases, slap them in big letters and bold colors on a poster, and a signifigant chunck of our population will consider it gospel without further regard.
Coupled with that is the ignorance that most cell phone manufactuers comply with the RoHS (restriction of hazardous substances) directive endorsed by the EU and adopted by almost every developed country. This means that they do not use Lead, Murcury, Cadmium, Hexavalent Chromium, and other such materials in their products. So the poster is not factual in any case.
But please, by all means, go on and belive a catchy poster, instead of actual data and facts. It makes life so much easier.
Haha…I charge my cell phone in my big truck while I’m burning gasoline anyway. I love the one that wants us to charge the phones half as often. Wouldn’t it have to be charged for a longer period then? My cell phone has saved me countless hundreds of gallons of fuel over the past 15 years or so that I used to burn driving away from jobsites several times a day to find pay phones, most of which were out-of-order, which meant driving some more. The 2nd quote up from the bottom is meaningless and stupid…why should we imagine every cell phone on earth being charged every day?…I use around 1000 minutes @ month, but only charge it about every 5 or 6 days. I know people who only charge it twice @ month. I keep my phones for 2 years and I’ve recycled every phone my family has ever owned to an organization that reprograms them with emergency numbers and furnishes them to shelters for abused women and children. It’s sad that some people read this and swallow it hook line and sinker. I wonder if they’ll cancel their cell service?
Even if there is still lead in phones, or if computers still use lead (although mostly your CRT monitors and TVs that are slowly disappearing have leaded glass, and lots of it…), it sounds about as dangerous as mercury in the compact fluorescent lightbulbs that “environmentalists” are touting so religiously. I feel like it’s a bad idea, but the threat may not really be there. In any case, I love how cell phones are supposed to emit carbon dioxide. Wow. I mean, not everyone gets their power from coal plants, and I wonder if those numbers refer to the people breathing while they talk… I doubt it, because they’d be breathing regardless of whether or not they were on the phone, so it’s not a valid figure.
That being said, recycling is an economically helpful technique, regardless of environmental impact. It creates jobs and saves space, although some people might object to the lower demand for resources that they are in charge of providing…
I believe the lead in question is actually a part of the circuit boards, not the solder. Circuit boards there are a plenty, especially with the continual rise of smart phone use.
More importantly, the purpose of the poster is to encourage mindful use of resources. It’s not asking consumers to discontinue using cell phones, to give them up, or anything of the sort. Instead it suggest that we should be mindful of the resources we consume. Perhaps that’s difficult as we live in a privileged country whose electronic waste is shipped overseas and to become toxic heaps. Maybe it’s fine that the cell phone you throw away goes into a hazardous pile of glass and plastic that poisons African tribes. In fact, I suppose as long as it isn’t in your back yard, it doesn’t matter.
Let’s not talk about oil, or energy… let’s not talk about being conscientious consumers. No, no no… let’s just spend all of our resources and then wonder why other countries consider us piggish and rude. Let’s exploit the world, because we can, until the debt catches up to us. The hell with it, it doesn’t affect my life, so why bother?
I can’t understand why something that saves individuals money (like unplugging a cell phone, or only charging half as often), and is FREE (as many e-wast services are) could inspire such rage and hatred. But then again, that’s what we American’s are good at… being loud and angry. God Bless us, every one.
That’s right, screw the environment. The truth probably lies somewhere between what the picture implies, and the complete denial that nothing man does harms the planet. How much can it hurt for all of us to take some kind of effort to not simply trash everything?
@ DJ: glad you made it home safely, how was the trip to Norlfolk?
How about a poster about the lives saved by cell phones…the calls made from vehicles reporting a drunken driver on the road…the calls to 911 made by passing motorists reporting a house on fire, a highway accident, a pedestrian injured or having a heart attack, power lines down, even a traffic light out? Calls from inside hostage situations like bank robberies, home invasions, school shootings? Lost or injured hikers, boaters in distress, the stupid ice fishermen adrift on the Great Lakes every spring? Women stranded at night with dead battery or flat tire or stuck in snow? When power goes out to our house, the land lines die, but the cell phones work, and I get a lot of peace of mind knowing that when my son is out at night, we’re both able to reach each other in an emergency. It’s one of the trade-offs of living in the modern world. At least there’s no horse crap in the city streets.
P in B – Thanks…it was great. We dodged the rains that Georgia is getting now. If you ever get a chance to get there and tour the battleship USS Wisconsin, do it. My Dad served aboard it in the Pacific in WWII, and he would have loved to see it now…that is one incredible experience. From there we spent an afternoon and a warm clear evening visiting the monuments in Washington DC, and ended up the next morning at the new Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum at Washington/Dulles Int’l Airport. We both had a great time every step of the way.
“The average cell phone user will use their phone for less than a year.”
Wohoo, we are above average! My wife and I have had the same cell phones for over two years now. To get hers, my wife, “traded in” her 6 year-old phone (actually, it is sitting in our house until we get around to donating it).
I wonder what orifice the poster maker used to get these facts. And who cares about carbon dioxide? Isn’t it important to have that so plants can make oxygen? Besides, the air is only about 0.00003% carbon dioxide, so it is no big deal.
My cell phone is now seven years old and still makes and receives calls just fine, thank you. I only use it maybe twice a month for long distant calls and recharge it about every 6-8 weeks. I use a pay-as-you-go that runs me $15.00 per month. The thing is perfect for those of us who don’t want to be reachable.
You’re right, I am in the industry almost everything is switched over now. I have a lifetime supply of the good stuff saved away. The new stuff doesnt work as well, smells terrible, and can give you cancer. Yet, another great advancement of environmentalism they found a way to increase my chance of cancer.
You know what does bother me though, the people who purposely wreck their phones so they can get a new one from their provider because their current one has a few scratches on the back…
Well, lessee… 140,000 cel phones have 80,000lbs of lead in them? Golly, that’s more than a half-pound of lead per phone! How did they ever manage to get over 8oz. of lead into a 4oz. phone? It’s magic!
I guess the person who made this poster doesn’t have the first clue of where lead actually comes from…
Tim
thats why they are called enviro MENTAL ist ,bunch of dumb@sses
god how I hate environmentalism.
no one cares..
until it affects you personally..
then we ask the government to fix it!
Aren’t most companies using lead free solder anyway? I assume thats what they are talking about when it comes to lead in cell phones.. Obviously Nokia would be since the EU has mandated that consumer devices be made with lead free solder. Hell, even my damn xbox is lead free solder..
I think whoever made this graphic has no idea wtf they are talking about.. I know the electric meters my old company makes all went to lead free solder 8-9 years ago, and we had to re-test everything with the new solder… If a damn electric meter has no solder in it I can’t believe a cell phone would.
A lot of ignorance going around I see.
I won’t even bother…
CellPhonesForSoldiers.com! Download free shipping label and send them your phones. (Big quantities accepted! Organize an office drive)
They reload the phones and give them to soldiers so they can call home free.
Super program.
I will bother, reader.
Lead is in the ground in the form lead sulfide as the mineral galena. its been there millions of years already. Lead metal, and lead sulfide is not readily soluable in water, so unless you eat a sizeable amount of lead-bearing soil, it isnt gonna hurt you. And just for the sake of disclosure, I work at a lead smelter, so I am kinda knowledgable about such things.
the ignorance is that you can take a few buzzwords and loaded phrases, slap them in big letters and bold colors on a poster, and a signifigant chunck of our population will consider it gospel without further regard.
Coupled with that is the ignorance that most cell phone manufactuers comply with the RoHS (restriction of hazardous substances) directive endorsed by the EU and adopted by almost every developed country. This means that they do not use Lead, Murcury, Cadmium, Hexavalent Chromium, and other such materials in their products. So the poster is not factual in any case.
But please, by all means, go on and belive a catchy poster, instead of actual data and facts. It makes life so much easier.
tim
I wasn’t even talking about the poster.
Haha…I charge my cell phone in my big truck while I’m burning gasoline anyway. I love the one that wants us to charge the phones half as often. Wouldn’t it have to be charged for a longer period then? My cell phone has saved me countless hundreds of gallons of fuel over the past 15 years or so that I used to burn driving away from jobsites several times a day to find pay phones, most of which were out-of-order, which meant driving some more. The 2nd quote up from the bottom is meaningless and stupid…why should we imagine every cell phone on earth being charged every day?…I use around 1000 minutes @ month, but only charge it about every 5 or 6 days. I know people who only charge it twice @ month. I keep my phones for 2 years and I’ve recycled every phone my family has ever owned to an organization that reprograms them with emergency numbers and furnishes them to shelters for abused women and children. It’s sad that some people read this and swallow it hook line and sinker. I wonder if they’ll cancel their cell service?
Even if there is still lead in phones, or if computers still use lead (although mostly your CRT monitors and TVs that are slowly disappearing have leaded glass, and lots of it…), it sounds about as dangerous as mercury in the compact fluorescent lightbulbs that “environmentalists” are touting so religiously. I feel like it’s a bad idea, but the threat may not really be there. In any case, I love how cell phones are supposed to emit carbon dioxide. Wow. I mean, not everyone gets their power from coal plants, and I wonder if those numbers refer to the people breathing while they talk… I doubt it, because they’d be breathing regardless of whether or not they were on the phone, so it’s not a valid figure.
That being said, recycling is an economically helpful technique, regardless of environmental impact. It creates jobs and saves space, although some people might object to the lower demand for resources that they are in charge of providing…
Cowracer, do you work at Doe Run?
Actually waiting for the battery to drain is supposedly a way to prolong battery life. It balances out in the end
I believe the lead in question is actually a part of the circuit boards, not the solder. Circuit boards there are a plenty, especially with the continual rise of smart phone use.
More importantly, the purpose of the poster is to encourage mindful use of resources. It’s not asking consumers to discontinue using cell phones, to give them up, or anything of the sort. Instead it suggest that we should be mindful of the resources we consume. Perhaps that’s difficult as we live in a privileged country whose electronic waste is shipped overseas and to become toxic heaps. Maybe it’s fine that the cell phone you throw away goes into a hazardous pile of glass and plastic that poisons African tribes. In fact, I suppose as long as it isn’t in your back yard, it doesn’t matter.
Let’s not talk about oil, or energy… let’s not talk about being conscientious consumers. No, no no… let’s just spend all of our resources and then wonder why other countries consider us piggish and rude. Let’s exploit the world, because we can, until the debt catches up to us. The hell with it, it doesn’t affect my life, so why bother?
I can’t understand why something that saves individuals money (like unplugging a cell phone, or only charging half as often), and is FREE (as many e-wast services are) could inspire such rage and hatred. But then again, that’s what we American’s are good at… being loud and angry. God Bless us, every one.
That’s right, screw the environment. The truth probably lies somewhere between what the picture implies, and the complete denial that nothing man does harms the planet. How much can it hurt for all of us to take some kind of effort to not simply trash everything?
@ DJ: glad you made it home safely, how was the trip to Norlfolk?
I do indeed, Klaw.
tim
How about a poster about the lives saved by cell phones…the calls made from vehicles reporting a drunken driver on the road…the calls to 911 made by passing motorists reporting a house on fire, a highway accident, a pedestrian injured or having a heart attack, power lines down, even a traffic light out? Calls from inside hostage situations like bank robberies, home invasions, school shootings? Lost or injured hikers, boaters in distress, the stupid ice fishermen adrift on the Great Lakes every spring? Women stranded at night with dead battery or flat tire or stuck in snow? When power goes out to our house, the land lines die, but the cell phones work, and I get a lot of peace of mind knowing that when my son is out at night, we’re both able to reach each other in an emergency. It’s one of the trade-offs of living in the modern world. At least there’s no horse crap in the city streets.
P in B – Thanks…it was great. We dodged the rains that Georgia is getting now. If you ever get a chance to get there and tour the battleship USS Wisconsin, do it. My Dad served aboard it in the Pacific in WWII, and he would have loved to see it now…that is one incredible experience. From there we spent an afternoon and a warm clear evening visiting the monuments in Washington DC, and ended up the next morning at the new Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum at Washington/Dulles Int’l Airport. We both had a great time every step of the way.
“The average cell phone user will use their phone for less than a year.”
Wohoo, we are above average! My wife and I have had the same cell phones for over two years now. To get hers, my wife, “traded in” her 6 year-old phone (actually, it is sitting in our house until we get around to donating it).
I wonder what orifice the poster maker used to get these facts. And who cares about carbon dioxide? Isn’t it important to have that so plants can make oxygen? Besides, the air is only about 0.00003% carbon dioxide, so it is no big deal.
My cell phone is now seven years old and still makes and receives calls just fine, thank you. I only use it maybe twice a month for long distant calls and recharge it about every 6-8 weeks. I use a pay-as-you-go that runs me $15.00 per month. The thing is perfect for those of us who don’t want to be reachable.
@Big Ben
You’re right, I am in the industry almost everything is switched over now. I have a lifetime supply of the good stuff saved away. The new stuff doesnt work as well, smells terrible, and can give you cancer. Yet, another great advancement of environmentalism they found a way to increase my chance of cancer.
You know what does bother me though, the people who purposely wreck their phones so they can get a new one from their provider because their current one has a few scratches on the back…
I have to agree with Tim…
Well, lessee… 140,000 cel phones have 80,000lbs of lead in them? Golly, that’s more than a half-pound of lead per phone! How did they ever manage to get over 8oz. of lead into a 4oz. phone? It’s magic!
Does anybody remember basic arithmetic? …sheesh
I sure don’t. Not before coffee, anyway. Still bogus.
I love looking at the comments on this blog. It’s a nice way to confirm my world view that the stupid are the majority.
Half of the american population is not the majority of the world.