[Frank Stearns]

"William Sommerwerck" writes:

Lead in petrol was even worse, and it was found that average
academic performance was affected adversely by children living
closer to main roads. An effect which is now greatly reduced.

Once again, if there were any data to suppport that assertion I
would have expected the environmentalists to be waving it in our
faces. I haven't seen any evidence that the academic performance
of children has increased since lead was removed from petrol.

Whether it has or hasn't, there has supposedly been a significant reduction
in the amount of lead in people's blood.


True, but in my reading this has been attributed to the eventual
removal/encapsulation of the last remaining bits of lead paint, scrubbers on various
smokestacks where lead might have escaped, etc. And fuel has been lead-free for
decades.

Seems to me that house paint, for example, would have an immediate path to a child's
bloodstream, while landfill leaching would be a much longer path, and RoHS has only
been around in any widespread way for what, 5-8 years, and perhaps only just
recently have RoHS waste electronics been hitting the landfills.

And, at the same time, at least here in the USA much has been done to stop landfill
leaching.

That, by the way, seems to be the far wiser solution: appropriate disposal rather
than forced inferior manufacturing that makes devices malfunction early on.

RoHS has that dual aroma of crony capitalism and fantasy-result feel-good-ism...

Frank
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