As an Electrical Engineer, I can say that RoHS is one of those feel-good directives (it is not actually legislation) that appears a good thing to those who don't have to interact with electronics on a daily basis.

I'm not going to mention the high retooling costs, the driving out of small operators, or any of the economic considerations. I also won't mention tin whiskers that form over time when using tin-based solder, creating shorts that are potentially dangerous. Those get set to the side since I don't want this to be a statement on the economy of RoHS, or the physical drawbacks over time with lead-free solder, but rather on the illusion of safety created by RoHS.

It is true that RoHS prohibits lead solder. Hooray, everyone says. Lead is bad if it gets in you, the boards made with lead solder ultimately end in landfills or trash depots, the lead can leach out, get into the environment, contamination ensues. I wear nitrile gloves every time I handle solder since the paste is particularly invasive.

But replacing lead-tin with silver-copper-tin solder doesn't change the fact that you're still using heavy metals that damage soft tissue if they get inside of you (copper, I'm looking at you). The replacement also doesn't address the various toxic chemicals that are a part of the board fabrication process, before solder even gets involved (Gallium Arsenide, for one). The fact is, the entire Printed Circuit Board fabrication process is toxic, from start to finish and on into obsolescence and junkyard status. For the EU to believe RoHS will make any substantive difference in the sum toxicity of PCB fabrication is to believe an umbrella will break one's fall from an airplane. It might, but not nearly enough.

"Nightmare? Or a beacon of sanity in an otherwise deranged world? You make the call."

OK. Beacon of sanity in a partially deranged world.

Cegerner's point is well taken about the need for the policy to make sense, that it should use good science.

But what's exciting to me is simply for their to be a mechanism for a group looking out for the interests of society to be able to put rules in place, rather than for industry - driven by too-narrow interests - to be blocking any such efforts.

You can fix the specific policy when it's being made by well-intentioned representatives of the public a lot easier than you can get a rule in place when the public is not represented, as is so often the case in the US now with 'pay to play' politics.

In that case, the industry pays for the right to do what it likes, and pays for the marketing budget to get the people to accept the politicians who play along.

cegerner-

Yes, heavy metals are universally toxic to humans and most animals whether ingested, inhaled or absorbed. All heavy metals are not, however, toxic to the same degree. Lead is highly toxic to humans at very low doses - copper is substantially less toxic at the same dose. Also, based on my reading, copper appears to be signifcantly less likely to leach out of the products containing it in solder. So, is copper solder a truly "green" solution? No. But, it is still considerably less toxic than lead and ,therefore, a real improvement.

Although ROHS has gotten all of the attention in the industry lately, its cousin WEEE is really the more important directive. The world can only support everyone getting new cell phones and laptops every six months if we reclaim the materials from end of life products and redirect it into back into the supply chain.

ROHS is just the last line of defense: if a product ends up in the waste stream we want to ensure that it doesn't include dangerous materials. REACH is similarly concerned with the effects of all kinds of materials on the environment, especially as waste. But ideally, products at the end of their useful life would be deconstructed and the materials reclaimed. You could use brand new, exotic materials in products as long as you could reclaim the materials at the end of the product's useful life and keep the exotic material from polluting the environment.

WEEE is the first step. This type of end-of-life legislation is far more critical than ROHS or REACH to making our consumer economy sustainable. We can't expect to be be able to rip virgin material from the earth forever to satisfy consumers' desire for the latest iPod. It seems like a better idea to build infrastructure to efficiently and effectively reclaim and reuse material so that we can all have the latest and greatest technology and still have a healthy environment to pass on to future generations.

in an otherwise deranged world.

And what more, really, is there to say?

I agree with hh above that it is really WEEE that we should be most thankful for. Anything that gets producers to think about what's going to happen to (and pay for) their products when they are discarded is a good thing for the consumer and the environmentalist.

For the consumer, it discourages companies from producing throw-away electronics because they will have to pay for it downstream.

For the environmentalist, fewer things go in the landfill including packaging and toxic electronics.

As an Electrical engineer based in the USA, I've been working with the RoHS directive for 18 months or so. In the case of RoHS, USA companies have three options:

1. Don't sell in the EU.

2. Make two sets of products - one for the EU and one for rest of the world.

3. Make one product that is RoHS compliant and sell it everywhere.

Well, the votes are in, and option 3 has been almost universally embraced. What this means is that effectively the EU is setting american environmental policy in this area - with other areas to come.

Thus as the Bush administration works to dismantle as much environmental legislation as it can, the EU is thankfully stepping in to the gap. Anyone else find this ironic?

I noticed when I bought a Dell color laser printer for $300 a couple of days ago that it said not RoHS compliant. That probably explains why they were anixous to sell it at such a cheap price and discontinue that line. Their $550 replacement model stated "RoHS compliant".

It seems like a good idea to me to reduce toxic chemicals if possible. Afterall, we'll all be paying for it in the long term.