There were no fume extractors and no special ventilation, just a 10% fresh air intake on our heating system. We had about 40 people hand-soldering for 8 hours per day using a combination of non-regulated soldering irons with lead-tin rosin core solder and temperature regulated solder pots with lead-tin solder and dippable liquid rosin-type flux. An employee was convinced that they were being poisoned by all the soldering, they complained to OSHA and OSHA decided to do an in-depth study over several days. No joke.īack in the ‘80s OSHA showed up one day at the factory where I worked. But now a kicker: The only way you can get rid of excess iron is by bleeding. The minuscule lead absorption in hobbyist leaded-solder circuit soldering is a couple orders of magnitude below our ability to shed lead. Any "extractor" that you can buy for a couple hundred bucks is not worth the the paper that comes with it as a "manual".įor occupational manual soldering on a production floor, the fumes are vented to outside, just as is the case in a welding booth, etc.Īn aside: humans can actually get rid of small amounts of excess lead. Solder "fume extractors" are a bit of a pointless thing if they don't provide serious air filtration or are not vented to outside. Make sure the air cleaner has both HEPA and carbon adsorber elements. It will catch particulates from the flux, and adsorb the vapors. If the area you're in is not ventilated well, use a whole-room air cleaner in addition to the fan. If you want to keep the hobby, get a little fan to blow the fumes away, and work in a ventilated area. The flux fumes are comparable to various smoking/vaping products, except in much lower concentration, and should not be a problem in occasional use. In hand-soldering, most of the fumes come from the flux. There would be way more of them - enough to be a concern - if you were hovering above a continuously-on solder pot, or worse yet - with an air leak from a wave soldering bath - but you're not doing that. The fumes you're breathing during point-to-point/component lead soldering contain only trace amounts of the solder alloy. Don't lick tin-lead plated wire or component leads mindlessly, and don't lick your fingers while soldering. you should wash your hands periodically while and after handling leaded solder. Lead is important only in direct contact, i.e. There's no "therapy" that would undo the exposure, since the exposure itself is so minuscule that it'd be hard to even quantitatively determine it just by taking samples from your body.īut, first of all: presence of lead in the solder is beside the point as far as fumes go in point soldering. In any case, the deed is done, so worrying won't retroactively fix anything. Incidentally, countries that have banned the use of lead in solder have done so not because of safety or health reasons, but purely because of reclamation and recycling reasons.Not really. If you really must use leaded solder the main possibility of lead poisoning is through physical contact with the solder (getting lead on your hands) and then eating without washing your hands, thus transferring the lead to your food and then to your stomach. Most common flux is contained in Rosin, a natural plant product, and it is the vaporisation of that which you see while soldering. The fumes you see rising off the solder are not metal vapours, they are the fumes from the flux. You have to put the water in a kettle and heat it up to about 50% of its boiling point (50☌) to get it to start steaming. If you compare that to water, your solder is a block of ice, and when you are soldering you're melting the ice to tap water (or colder) temperature. It has a boiling point of 1749☌, and the melting point is only just below what you are soldering at. If you want to sell your products in any civilised country you will be using lead free solder.Ĭreating lead vapour that you can breathe in with a soldering iron is impossible.
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