Eliminating Hazardous Lead

Ames Laboratory senior metallurgist Iver Anderson explains the importance of lead-free solder in taking hazardous lead out of the environment by eliminating it from discarded computers and electronics that wind up in landfills. Anderson led a team that developed a tin-silver-copper replacement for traditional lead-tin solder that has been adopted by over 50 companies worldwide.

Transcript

00:00:07 [Music] we know uh that lead in our environment is a toxin um at extremely low levels lead free solder is an alloy that um myself and several others of us on the team here at Ames lab uh developed um about now 15 years ago and it is used uh to replace the type of solder

00:00:40 that was uh in use for about 5,000 years you know it's very widespread uh video cameras uh cell phones personal computers um anything that you buy in an electronics store it looks the same it bends the same and it is very and that's actually part of the whole um ability to get it accepted into common use all of the

00:01:09 machines that are used to make the circuitry to assemble the circuitry can be used with this solder at just slightly higher settings best thing about it is it it's not poisonous [Music]