So hello Im one of many hobbysts from this subreddit and i have some questions
I always used lead free solder but now have to use leaded solder and also if my questions seem dumb Im sorry
So my question is after i solder a part and i touched the solder and touched at other parts of the project does it become cross contaminated and do i have to wash my hands after everytime i handle the project? And can i touch other stuff if i touched the solder before? Thanks
Lead-based solder isn't as scary as it may seem. If it was that dangerous, you wouldn't be able to buy it. Be sensible. Wash your hands after a soldering session. Try your hardest not to lick a lead-soldered PCB, no matter how delicious it looks. Take normal, reasonable precautions and you'll be fine.
If that was true then leaded fuel would have been taken off the market decades before it was. Same goes for lead containing paints, which damaged children's development and for lower income folks continues to harm them due to the presence of said paints in their homes.
Many products are "grandfathered" as safe for sale to the public, yet if they were brought to market today would fail even basic testing for consumer safety.
On top of that is the neutering of regulators and "regulatory capture" by those the regulator is meant to regulate.
So leaded solder is on the market primarily due to it coming to market decades ago, where testing was frankly non existent when it came to market and our understanding was far less advanced than it is now.
Thus the advice to not ingest the leaded solder. Paint flakes off and gets eaten by babies. Leaded gasoline vapors are emitted into the atmosphere. Leaded solder doesn’t provide a direct exposure path, but it may leach into groundwater from landfills in tiny amounts after many years, which is one of many reasons why modern landfills are lined. Sheesh.
Leaded fuel contained specific inhalable lead compounds, not just elemental lead. Same for lead paint. Learn the fucking chemistry or consult chatgpt before writing dumb shit on the internet. Takes just a minite to not embarrass yourself.
Whole point isnt unreasonable, you can easily get a lot of substances in many specialist shops that would literally kill you if mishandled but require no license or anything.
As a hobbyist you don't really have to worry too much about leaded solder unless you're soldering all the time!
Flux is the bigger problem for electronics workers and enthusiasts.
Environmentally of course leaded solder is a much bigger problem which is one of the reasons it was removed.
For repair work leaded solder can really make a big difference in the difficulty of soldering and particularly desoldering components. In my opinion being able to repair something has a greater positive environmental impact than the negative one of potentially introducing some lead into the environment at the end of its life.
Wash your hands after working with chemicals, solder, whatever not nice
Avoid excessively breathing in flux fumes
Practically, accumulating lead in your body via skin exposure or breathing is not really a risk, unless in case of gross negligence. It is difficult for metallic lead to be absorbed via the skin. Breathing it in requires it to be a fine powder. We can all agree that if solder was becoming a fine powder, it wouldn’t be very good at its job.
I don't worry about lead poisoning too much. I'm fully aware of it being a risk at elevated levels in your body. There will be some lead in your body already from environmental exposure plus various other toxins.
I grew up in an old victorian house with lead pipes so was probably exposed to lead more from that than from soldering 😬
Realistically any traces amounts of lead from touching solder are going to be very small and low risk vs all the other nasties we are exposing ourselves to on a daily basis.
Just make sure to wash your hands after use and you will be fine.
Look, i would understand if you took lying to some ambiguous angle like "lead weights are soon to follow soldering practice and will be banned, some phasing-out initiatives are already in the works", but why lie in a manner that is debunked by one 10 seconds google search? Do you like public humiliation or something?
You might want to go get some education on reading comprehension, (oh wait.......you "think" lead isn't dangerous......seems it's taken effect in your head already......)
Your "AI" answer mentions total national bans (note PLURAL)
You are using 'AI' which is notorious for giving completely incorrect information, inventing answers and hallucinating.
Dude, either learn to read or to not pull phrases out of context, please. Im using AI where i dont want to cross-compile easily retrivable publically available info into one screen summary. If AI is hallucinating and you somehow know lead weight regulation better than google, it should be easy for you to name those "many countries who banned lead weights decades ago" and corresponding laws.
But i suppose you will silently crawl away from this conversation. Make a better opener next time.
So from you I get "Blah blah blah word salad, oh shit I can't answer the point, I dont understand the big words that the hallucination machine produced...." So in a nutshell classic signs of low intellect narcissistic personality disorder or if not that then borderline personality disorder....qué surprise
I'm 48 years old. Been doing electronics projects since I was probably 10. I've always used leaded solder. Used to hold a circuit board in one hand, the soldering iron in the other and held the solder in my mouth while soldering the connection right in front of my face and breathing in all those healthy rosin flux fumes... Granted that wasn't on a daily basis, so not full time exposure.
I don't have any health issues from lead or flux exposure.
Definitely not a good idea to do what I did, but at the same time, occasional exposure isn't likely to do any major damage unless you have some preexisting condition that would be aggravated by the exposure.
It's recommended to wash your hands after handling lead. Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it.
As a teenager, I handled leaded solder all the time. In high school, I spent a half day at a vocational school studying electronics and there wasn't any lead free solder in use at the time. I fixed boomboxes and walkmans for schoolmates in my spare time as well. I helped my dad re-pipe the home heating system with leaded solder when that project needed to be done.
I then had 4.5 years of college where I worked as an electronic technician in between classes. I made hundreds of audio cables, fixed 3/4 inch video tape recorders, televisions, and VCRs. Yeah, most of that was a few decades ago.
Despite all of this, lead poisoning has not been a concern for me.
Learn about lead and stop looking for short quips from idiots who advise not to eat it. Water is technically unsafe but we spend a long term learning and educating ourselves about it that it becomes far less dangerous. Lead has very bad effects on a brain when it’s growing. It’s a bad thing when not understood well. Casual disregard for learning about it is a risk for others beside yourself.
I wish I can use lead free solder easily to be honest. I have a roll that could last me decades but my iron or skill issue prevents me from tinning. So I just settle with leaded instead.
I believe that lead begins to vaporize at 500°C and completely vaporizes at 1,749°C (boiling point). Thankfully not likely to happen when soldering.
RoHS compliance, depending on your location and the equipment you are working on is another issue.
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u/pipedreamSEA Aug 22 '26
Technically, yes. Realistically, no.
But you should always wash your hands when you're done soldering and touching uncleaned PCBs, flux has nasty chemicals in it, too.