[sdiy] Component leads

[Grant Richter]

Here's a bit of digression. I had a case of sub-toxic lead poisoning once.
>From wiping lead on my cigarette filters when I took them out of the pack.

I went to see a public health nurse who was equally concerned about the
cadmium plating used on the electronic hardware, and the gold plating used
on connectors. She had a lot of information on metal toxicity, and talked
quite a bit while drawing blood and waiting for test results. Here's what I
can recall. 

Apparently, from a health standpoint, we are all continuously "poisoned" to
some extent by carrying heavy metal toxins around in out blood stream. This
is not really much of a public health problem, compared to other things like
influenza.

(I refer to actual heavy metals like lead, gold, silver etc. although some
young rockers do have heavy metal music in their blood streams)

However we can not survive with out trace amounts of these elements to act
as catalysts for internal biological processes. So the definitions are
sub-toxic (the amount in your system which begins to show outward symptoms)
and toxic (real poisoning). But you are never completely free of some lead,
gold, silver (even radium) etc. atoms floating around in your blood stream.

The American founding fathers had a society where the ate "noble" metals,
such as gold, to acquire "noble" aspect to their character. I recall one of
them died of gold poisoning, perhaps Ben Franklin. They ate metal and metal
salts on a weekly basis for years before it killed them. So apparently, to
die from heavy metal poisoning, you have to work at it.

But lead in particular produces unpleasant symptoms at low levels (not
actually life threatening, but causing continuous nausea and dizziness).
Children are are specially vulnerable to lead poisoning, as it interferes
with normal physical development.

The idea is to keep your blood metal levels below where they produce any
symptoms. This includes all metals, even copper, gold, tin, lead, cadmium,
zinc, silver, antimony, any metal. There are even diseases caused by
excessive iron levels in blood and organs.

So wash you hands after handling ANY metal if you will be eating, handling
food or playing with children. All metals are toxic if the levels are high
enough in the blood stream.

> From: "Scott Evans, Gen Mgr" <esresource at earthlink.net>
> Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 18:50:44 -0700
> To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: [sdiy] Component leads
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I am very regimented about washing after a soldering session to remove
> any lead residue on my hands. I was just contemplating, while sorting
> some resistors today, that I really am not aware of the composition of
> the leads of these components. Is there any lead present or any other
> chemical in the material that makes up the leads to a resistor, or any
> other component for that matter?
> 
> Thanks, Scott
> 
> 
>