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how bad is it to breathe in solder?


cameron marical

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I've corrected the spelling in the title to cut down on potential confusion. If that's not what was meant, let me know

 

solder: any of various alloys fused and applied to the joint between metal objects to unite them without heating the objects to the melting point.

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I Soldered 8 hours a day everyday for many years, never had a problem.

in fact I can recognise certain brands of solder by smell alone (I even have Favorites), although the smell is largely from the rosin flux running through the core of the solder, some have multiple cores.

it never did me any harm!

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I Soldered 8 hours a day everyday for many years, never had a problem.

in fact I can recognise certain brands of solder by smell alone (I even have Favorites), although the smell is largely from the rosin flux running through the core of the solder, some have multiple cores.

it never did me any harm!

 

If you replace solder by words like smoke or tobacco in that quote you get exactly what lots of people used to say about smoking- till they got cancer.

 

There are legal limits to the amount of solder flux fumes permitted in workplaces in the UK and US (and I guess elsewhere too).

http://www.hse.gov.uk/coshh/table1.pdf

(listed under "rosin")

http://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsampling/data/CH_266137.html

 

It's not good for you and you ought to minimise the amount of fume you breathe in.

BTW, unless the soldering iron is really hot, the amount of lead in the fume is minimal.

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On the plus side, solder is not addictive. With the possible exception of YT, of course.

 

Yeah, took us ages to get him off injecting liquid solder into his veins.

 

i've done a fair bit of soldering too. although, i don't have a proper soldering iron, just used a screwdriver and a butane torch. worked well enough.

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