Originally published February 15 2006
New regulations will help clean up European electronics industry
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The European Commission has adopted a new set of rules, which will require many device and gadget makers across Europe to adjust their hardware designs to meet new requirements, including the reduction of toxic chemicals and lead in electronic wares.
Device makers across the globe are retooling factories and tweaking hardware designs to meet a looming European deadline aimed at reducing lead and other toxic materials in electronic gear.
New environmental rules (.pdf) adopted by the European Commission are scheduled to take effect July 1, and require makers of virtually all electronic products to limit the use of brominated flame retardants polybrominated biphenyl and polybrominated diphenyl ether as well as cutting use of four heavy metals: lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium.
Known as RoHS (for "the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment"), the rules aim primarily to make disposal or recycling of electronics safer and easier.
Companies are "not going to make one product line for the European Union and another line for the rest of the world," said Richard Goss, spokesman for the U.S.-based trade organization Electronic Industries Alliance.
Even companies that don't sell in Europe may have to comply, as other countries are writing copycat regulations.
China, for instance, is developing similar provisions.
RoHS doesn't so much require technology breakthroughs as mandate that companies use the best technology available.
Hewlett-Packard, for example, found substitutes for brominated flame retardants about 10 years ago, according to spokesman John Frey.
Frey said HP started working on removing lead from its products in the early 1990s, but the company still hasn't fully solved the problem.
Lead, combined with tin, has long been a favorite material for solder on circuit boards because it melts easily at low temperatures.
Other exemptions include lead in picture tubes and plasma screens and mercury in the fluorescent backlights of LCD panels.
Though acknowledging that RoHS is a significant first step, environmentalists like Iza Kruszewska of Greenpeace International say that the directive could have gone further.
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