7 ms·

I wouldn't recommend this. If you do use lead soldering, make sure you don't breathe in any fumes.

by Flozzin 5y ago

the-dude 5y ago
The boiling point of lead is 1749 °C (3180 °F).
- turminal 5y ago
  That by itself does not imply fumes cannot form at lower temperatures.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Great. If we follow this line, standing next to a roll of solder is just as dangerous. No need to fire up the iron. If lead was so easily dissolved into air, wouldn't we have had massive issues in electronics factories? I don't recall ever reading such a thing ( as opposed to painters madness for example ). Not a native speaker, probably doesn't translate too well.
    - the_jeremy 5y ago
      Mad Hatter[0] is a good example in English. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erethism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erethism
    - kadoban 5y ago
      Or you could just look at the actual material property that matters, which I believe is called vapor pressure.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      "Results showed that the mean PbB concentration of the exposed workers (6.12 +4.61 µg/dl) was significantly higher than that of the unexposed workers (4.63+3.91 µg/dl ) (z = 4.96; p = 0.001). There was a significant association between the blood lead concentrations with the exposure to lead (2 = 437.72; p = 0.001)." (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271077842_Occupational_Lead_Exposure_of_Soldering_Workers_in_an_Electronic_Factory https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271077842_Occupatio...) "Epidemiological and experimental studies indicate that chronic exposure resulting in blood lead levels (BLL) as low as 10 µg/dL in adults are associated with impaired kidney function, high blood pressure, nervous system and neurobehavioral effects, cognitive dysfunction later in life, and subtle cognitive effects attributed to prenatal exposure. Pregnant women need to be especially concerned with reducing BLL since this can have serious impact on the developing fetus." (https://www.osha.gov/lead/health-effects https://www.osha.gov/lead/health-effects)
      - amatecha 5y ago
        is that because they inhaled it in fumes, or because they touched it? or something else?
- xmodem 5y ago
  The boiling point of water is 100 °C, and yet my shower seems to produce an awful lot of steam despite not being anywhere close to that.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - at_a_remove 5y ago
    You have confused steam with small water droplets, akin to what emerges from an ultrasonic mister. If it were steam, you would be shrieking and then dead.
    - B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
      Good point. Also, steam is invisible. What we see - e.g. from a boiling kettle - is condensation.
    - deathanatos 5y ago
      But it's still water, and it's still moving up and about of its own accord in the local air which is the point. That it isn't technically steam doesn't disprove the point the person you're responding to is trying to make… The commenter's point isn't that the lead has technically been boiled, it's that, if we analogize to "steam" in a shower, I don't have to reach water's boiling point before I'm breathing in water. Does that translate to lead: i.e., even if I'm below lead's boiling point, could I be nonetheless breathing in lead vapor, or something like that? (I don't know the answer here, which would push me towards lead-free solder. I.e., I don't know if the precautions I'd take with lead would actually suffice.)
      - at_a_remove 5y ago
        That's the reason I was being persnickety and "science-y" about terms: analogies can lead you astray. You don't know the answer here, and so your options are: 1) do some experiments, 2) reason by science, not analogy. I have some weightlifting plates. Pure iron. Can I forego iron in my diet and just ... sit next to them? Now, by analogy, sure. Practically? Probably not. Here's one for you: what do you think happens if you drank a glass of pure liquid mercury? Most people think you'd die on the spot. Wrong! That mercury hasn't sublimated into mercury vapor. Instead, it barrels through your alimentary canal like a shot and was used to treat constipation, of all things. It is poorly absorbed by digestion and just runs right through you. Phase changes matter for these things.
semi-extrinsic 5y ago
The vapor pressure of lead at 300 °C is around 10^-6 Pa. In laymans' terms, there is zero evaporation of lead happening during soldering. Ice at -40°C evaporates (sublimates) 10 million times faster. The fumes from soldering are from the flux or rosin, and that is just as dangerous if you are using lead free solder. Always use adequate ventilation and/or filtration to avoid inhaling fumes.
foldr 5y ago
The trick is not to end up inhaling or eating the solder in its solid state. This is actually quite difficult to avoid, as cleaning the tip of your iron will create lots of tiny solder balls that fly everywhere and can persist in your environment. Personally I would say that in hobbyist electronics tin whiskers are the least of your concerns when it comes to the reliability of the devices you’re making. I wouldn’t risk using leaded solder even if the risk is low.
- mrob 5y ago
  Agreed. This, not lead fumes, is the real danger of leaded solder. You can't hand solder reliably without cleaning the iron, but both of the common cleaning techniques (damp sponge and brass wool) inevitably break the soldier into tiny balls, which bounce and roll all over the place. They can get caught in clothes, and from there they might end up getting into food. With the safe dose for lead being zero, I don't think it's worth the risk.
  - trhway 5y ago
    During my elementary school years (beginning of 198x USSR) the lead was a go to material for a lot of things - using campfires we melted the lead out of Navy cables and batteries (from the Navy dumps), no gloves, no masks, and made a lot of things out of it - toy action figures/soldiers for example, weights and weighted hooks for fishing, bullets for DYI guns, gear for some games, etc. (I'm a drop-out from PhD. program at a top Russian Math school - didn't see money in it and thus went into programming, so i guess the few IQ points i lost due to lead (i score usually about 130) is what caused such poor judgement :)
    - foldr 5y ago
      None of those activities pose the same risks as soldering using leaded solder, for the reasons given above. You are unlikely to end up ingesting significant quantities of the lead. It's probably worth emphasizing that this is risk with home soldering, where you're likely to eat and solder in relatively close proximity, and without being completely rigorous about changing your clothes and vacuuming up every last spec of dust. Lead free solder works fine, so there is really no reason to take even a small risk if you are soldering as a hobbyist. (And yeah, it's probably a small risk. By all means use leaded solder if you think the slight additional convenience outweighs the small risk of significant lead exposure.)
myself248 5y ago
Or just get your blood lead level measured. A few months ago, I happened to be at the doctor getting some other stuff checked out, and the week prior to the appointment I had done a ton of soldering, like two 12-hour days bashing out a whole batch of boards, both paste reflow and hand-PTH work, with a fair bit of sucker rework, and of course after that the lab needed a good tidying so I emptied all the suckers and tip cleaners as part of that. All tin-lead solder. Zero gloves, and I only wore a mask part of the first day (when there were other people around). And actually the several weeks leading up to that also saw a lot of SMT rework and other up-to-by-elbows-in-solder sort of activity. So I figured, that's kind of a worst-case for my lead exposure, hey Doc, can I get my blood lead level checked? Sure why not, it's one extra vial on top of the bloodwork already being ordered! And the results came back below the test's detectable level. So as far as I'm concerned, if that didn't do it, I don't think I have anything to worry about. Now, I'm sort of a germophobe and I never eat with my hands, so this doesn't necessarily generalize, but as far as skin absorption or vapor inhalation, I've gone from "not very worried" to "abjectly unconcerned" after getting that result. I would encourage everyone to get their level measured and have actual data to make decisions with. Superstition does not become us.

I wouldn't recommend this. If you do use lead soldering, make sure you don't breathe in any fumes.

the-dude 5y ago

The boiling point of lead is 1749 °C (3180 °F).

turminal 5y ago
That by itself does not imply fumes cannot form at lower temperatures.
- the-dude 5y ago
  Great. If we follow this line, standing next to a roll of solder is just as dangerous. No need to fire up the iron. If lead was so easily dissolved into air, wouldn't we have had massive issues in electronics factories? I don't recall ever reading such a thing ( as opposed to painters madness for example ). Not a native speaker, probably doesn't translate too well.
  - the_jeremy 5y ago
    Mad Hatter[0] is a good example in English. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erethism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erethism
  - kadoban 5y ago
    Or you could just look at the actual material property that matters, which I believe is called vapor pressure.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    "Results showed that the mean PbB concentration of the exposed workers (6.12 +4.61 µg/dl) was significantly higher than that of the unexposed workers (4.63+3.91 µg/dl ) (z = 4.96; p = 0.001). There was a significant association between the blood lead concentrations with the exposure to lead (2 = 437.72; p = 0.001)." (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271077842_Occupational_Lead_Exposure_of_Soldering_Workers_in_an_Electronic_Factory https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271077842_Occupatio...) "Epidemiological and experimental studies indicate that chronic exposure resulting in blood lead levels (BLL) as low as 10 µg/dL in adults are associated with impaired kidney function, high blood pressure, nervous system and neurobehavioral effects, cognitive dysfunction later in life, and subtle cognitive effects attributed to prenatal exposure. Pregnant women need to be especially concerned with reducing BLL since this can have serious impact on the developing fetus." (https://www.osha.gov/lead/health-effects https://www.osha.gov/lead/health-effects)
    - amatecha 5y ago
      is that because they inhaled it in fumes, or because they touched it? or something else?
xmodem 5y ago
The boiling point of water is 100 °C, and yet my shower seems to produce an awful lot of steam despite not being anywhere close to that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  You have confused steam with small water droplets, akin to what emerges from an ultrasonic mister. If it were steam, you would be shrieking and then dead.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
    Good point. Also, steam is invisible. What we see - e.g. from a boiling kettle - is condensation.
  - deathanatos 5y ago
    But it's still water, and it's still moving up and about of its own accord in the local air which is the point. That it isn't technically steam doesn't disprove the point the person you're responding to is trying to make… The commenter's point isn't that the lead has technically been boiled, it's that, if we analogize to "steam" in a shower, I don't have to reach water's boiling point before I'm breathing in water. Does that translate to lead: i.e., even if I'm below lead's boiling point, could I be nonetheless breathing in lead vapor, or something like that? (I don't know the answer here, which would push me towards lead-free solder. I.e., I don't know if the precautions I'd take with lead would actually suffice.)
    - at_a_remove 5y ago
      That's the reason I was being persnickety and "science-y" about terms: analogies can lead you astray. You don't know the answer here, and so your options are: 1) do some experiments, 2) reason by science, not analogy. I have some weightlifting plates. Pure iron. Can I forego iron in my diet and just ... sit next to them? Now, by analogy, sure. Practically? Probably not. Here's one for you: what do you think happens if you drank a glass of pure liquid mercury? Most people think you'd die on the spot. Wrong! That mercury hasn't sublimated into mercury vapor. Instead, it barrels through your alimentary canal like a shot and was used to treat constipation, of all things. It is poorly absorbed by digestion and just runs right through you. Phase changes matter for these things.

semi-extrinsic 5y ago

The vapor pressure of lead at 300 °C is around 10^-6 Pa. In laymans' terms, there is zero evaporation of lead happening during soldering. Ice at -40°C evaporates (sublimates) 10 million times faster. The fumes from soldering are from the flux or rosin, and that is just as dangerous if you are using lead free solder. Always use adequate ventilation and/or filtration to avoid inhaling fumes.

foldr 5y ago

The trick is not to end up inhaling or eating the solder in its solid state. This is actually quite difficult to avoid, as cleaning the tip of your iron will create lots of tiny solder balls that fly everywhere and can persist in your environment. Personally I would say that in hobbyist electronics tin whiskers are the least of your concerns when it comes to the reliability of the devices you’re making. I wouldn’t risk using leaded solder even if the risk is low.

mrob 5y ago
Agreed. This, not lead fumes, is the real danger of leaded solder. You can't hand solder reliably without cleaning the iron, but both of the common cleaning techniques (damp sponge and brass wool) inevitably break the soldier into tiny balls, which bounce and roll all over the place. They can get caught in clothes, and from there they might end up getting into food. With the safe dose for lead being zero, I don't think it's worth the risk.
- trhway 5y ago
  During my elementary school years (beginning of 198x USSR) the lead was a go to material for a lot of things - using campfires we melted the lead out of Navy cables and batteries (from the Navy dumps), no gloves, no masks, and made a lot of things out of it - toy action figures/soldiers for example, weights and weighted hooks for fishing, bullets for DYI guns, gear for some games, etc. (I'm a drop-out from PhD. program at a top Russian Math school - didn't see money in it and thus went into programming, so i guess the few IQ points i lost due to lead (i score usually about 130) is what caused such poor judgement :)
  - foldr 5y ago
    None of those activities pose the same risks as soldering using leaded solder, for the reasons given above. You are unlikely to end up ingesting significant quantities of the lead. It's probably worth emphasizing that this is risk with home soldering, where you're likely to eat and solder in relatively close proximity, and without being completely rigorous about changing your clothes and vacuuming up every last spec of dust. Lead free solder works fine, so there is really no reason to take even a small risk if you are soldering as a hobbyist. (And yeah, it's probably a small risk. By all means use leaded solder if you think the slight additional convenience outweighs the small risk of significant lead exposure.)

myself248 5y ago

Or just get your blood lead level measured. A few months ago, I happened to be at the doctor getting some other stuff checked out, and the week prior to the appointment I had done a ton of soldering, like two 12-hour days bashing out a whole batch of boards, both paste reflow and hand-PTH work, with a fair bit of sucker rework, and of course after that the lab needed a good tidying so I emptied all the suckers and tip cleaners as part of that. All tin-lead solder. Zero gloves, and I only wore a mask part of the first day (when there were other people around). And actually the several weeks leading up to that also saw a lot of SMT rework and other up-to-by-elbows-in-solder sort of activity. So I figured, that's kind of a worst-case for my lead exposure, hey Doc, can I get my blood lead level checked? Sure why not, it's one extra vial on top of the bloodwork already being ordered! And the results came back below the test's detectable level. So as far as I'm concerned, if that didn't do it, I don't think I have anything to worry about. Now, I'm sort of a germophobe and I never eat with my hands, so this doesn't necessarily generalize, but as far as skin absorption or vapor inhalation, I've gone from "not very worried" to "abjectly unconcerned" after getting that result. I would encourage everyone to get their level measured and have actual data to make decisions with. Superstition does not become us.