RoHS and Regulating Smartly

I am all for doing the smart thing when it comes to our environment. I understand (quite well) that asbestosis and many other environmental lung disorders will be a thing of the past largely because of regulation. I know that the EPA has had a significant impact on the environment, and most of it was good. I know that California's tight air quality regulations have drastically reduced the air pollution in cities that used to be lost under smog. I've heard of creeks/rivers so polluted they could catch on fire and I'm grateful that, except off the Gulf Coast (thanks to the oil spill), that's also a rarity in this country.

And I know regulations involving lead in paint, gasoline and children's toys are a huge factor in why the lead level in this generation's children is much lower than it was in the generations that came before. But that doesn't mean that every ban is the right thing to do, even for something as dangerous as lead.

The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive, is a directive of the European Union intended to reduce dangerous heavy metals and two flame retardant materials in industrial wastes. Great idea, largely. There can be as much as 2 kg of lead in a cathode ray tube (which are going the way of the dinosaur) and more lead in many other components. To date, I've heard little to no complaining about those aspects of the regulation. In fact, in my technical part of the world, all I hear complaining about is lead-free solder and pure tin (i.e. lead-free) plating.

Now, before I go further on this, let me mention two things. First, I'd take this (RoHS) a lot more seriously if batteries (both those with cadmium and those with lead acid) were part of this directive - they're not. There is a battery directive that limits cadmium, but not lead, although it promotes more battery recycling. But, at this point, 90% of the lead put in products today is used in batteries. I have to say, dealing with the rest of the lead while leaving the lead battery issue largely untouched is much like closing the gate once the horse has left.

Secondly, though I have concerns about the lead-free solder, there are some uses where lead-free solder might be the right choice, for various reasons. But not always.

Now there's a whole list of issues with lead-free solder. but what I want to focus on here are those that result from the use of pure-tin plating: tin whiskers. Because reducing a tiny fraction of the lead in the environment (there must be natural sources of lead in the environment, too, right? That's where we get it... Sorry, distracted) is only the right thing to do if the cost for doing so (i.e the good of the consumer) isn't higher.

In this case, I don't think it is. Sure, in most cases of consumer electronics, the power source is small (like a battery, not covered by the RoHS) enough that metal vapor arcing is unlikely. Which means that, worst case, you get a short that shorts it out - and it's broken - and, best case, it's just an intermittent irritation. But some plugged in electronics have the power, and to spare, to create metal vapor arcing, which can not only destroy the electronics, but everything around it, readily causing a fire. High price for a few grams of lead. And, given the ubiquitous nature of electronics, a design that allows the arc once can allow it over and over again. A number of metal vapor arc failures happened in designs that included circuit protection I might add.

After all, RoHS just applies to consumer products. Which is great. Unless, say, your consumer product happens to be a car, which has a fairly high power electric system with more than enough power to induce metal vapor arcing. But, even if it doesn't burst on fire while you're driving, imagine what an intermittent power or data short can do to an electronically controlled car like most of us drive.

But, let's assume that consumer electronics are "perfectly safe" with minimal impact. Unfortunately, with the vast bulk of consumer electronics requiring lead-free electronics, parts with plating containing sufficient lead to preclude whiskering will become either impossible to find or prohibitively expensive for those applications where high reliability parts are essential.

Like medical equipment like apnea monitors and pacemakers, which are specifically exempt from the RoHS requirements (at this time), but that have had to be recalled because of tin whisker failures.

Or commercial satellite failures, which, while no one was hurt, were very very expensive. Or military equipment like planes and missiles. Or the Space Shuttle. The military, NASA and the FDA have specific prohibitions against pure tin plating, yet they've all been struck with tin whiskers from parts that got through the system.

Or there was this, the tripping of a nuclear reactor by the lowly tin whisker (and there are multiple other examples of nuclear scrams and pre-trips of nuclear reactors from the same cause). And there are more failures no one's willing to admit to except as an anecdote.

(For those who have become fascinated, check out the interesting stuff on silver whiskers and zinc whiskers, the latter having taken out whole highly redundant computer centers).

The lesson I want to impart here is that we need to be careful and cautious about what we do to the environment and ourselves, but we need to understand the implications of trying to make everything "perfect." Regulations (if they're smart) can do tremendous good, preventing such catastrophes as we see off in the Gulf right now (an abject lesson in lax regulation). But a regulation that does not take sufficient account of the consequences, can be just as destructive and short sighted.

We need to be smart about regulation instead of one extreme or the other.

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Capitalism's Achilles' Heel

Now, in the past I've gone back and forth with this person or another on government vs. business. If you've been reading here a while, you probably know I'm a little more pro-central government on many topics than some of my friends.

There are reasons for that. One of which is my own study of history. I know how often things only got worse and worse until the public, which couldn't get business to solve the problem, pushed the federal government to make important changes. Sometimes labor unions helped with this; sometimes they hindered. But, in the end, real changes in many important topics never really took off until the central government of this country forced the changes.

Things like food safety, workplace safety, environmental pollution and clean up, discrimination and child/adult labor used to mean horrific conditions for children, for people, for minorities, for health in general. Go back even a hundred years, and the world is a far different place as far as all these topics are concerned. I stress the federal government because, in many cases, local regulations were in place in pockets here and there to address these. Business just moved somewhere where they weren't in force and went on, business as usual, with no repercussions crossing state lines.

And this is what's wrong with trusting the market to do it. People talk about people getting bad service or a product and going elsewhere. That the market or competition will make it all better.

All well and good if that were entirely true. Truth is, people don't buy products just because of quality, per se, or just price or any reason. In fact, the reality of the product isn't what brings customers - it's the perception of the the quality, price, availability, convenience, etc. Reality doesn't change; perception is malleable. People who believe that a product is better made or hard to find or a really good price will often buy without checking it out. People who care about jobs in America might buy a GM vehicle made in Ottowa rather than a Toyota made in San Antonio. Really, "American" products could be made 'most anywhere.

It's the perception that counts.

That's true for other things, too. We convince ourselves that big business is competing against each other and we come out ahead as a result. Amazing, isn't it, that all the oil companies, for instance, have price hikes at holidays or are within a cent or two of each other's prices. In the finance industry, a few money men have so much influence, so much power, and are using tactics so obscure, we can only go on faith. When the market is driven by perception, that's a heady brew and will do Mainstreet America no good.

I thought about this while reading an editorial this morning in the NYT by an ex-Goldman employee explaining how the worst transgressor in the huge Goldman swindle/financial fiasco was the federal government and everyone else, including banks that lost their shirt, was "at best, a willing accomplice. " Goldman, though masterminding the deal and priming the pump for making out like a bandit, is considered to be on the same level with the victim banks who didn't do their homework. Actually, the editorial is a masterpiece of misdirection and bull$hit arguments on why people consciously out to swindle and steal billions weren't at fault.

She makes the argument that the government was the MOST at fault because they didn't stop 'em. In fact, I found this bit amazingly important and the key to my point here:

Yet, in the end, it comes down to this: Goldman Sachs, ACA Capital, IKB Deutsche Industriebank and even the rating agencies never had any duty to protect us from their greed. There was one entity that did — our government.

Now, I'm not excusing the massive deregulation that's been dismantling financial oversight for the past few decades. Or saying the government doesn't have plenty to answer for. They do, but, as we bitch and moan at the government "letting" unemployment get so high, etc., we might want to bear in mind that these are often the same folks bitching and moaning about the government having too much interference with business. Folks, you can't have it both ways.

Truth is, business will continue to ream the public backwards and forwards without any consideration for anything but their own bottom line, using every loophole, every geographical and legal advantage, every advertising distortion possible. We know, from experience, that expecting them to police themselves or to have market forces keep them honest is bust. It's been proven time and time again. And, when we catch them with their hands in the cookie jar, they'll say it's the government's fault that they were thieves and liars.

Meanwhile, they'll pump money into "grass-roots" keep-government-small movements and lobby/pay-off our elected officials so they can keep on doing what they have been doing in the name of the free market.

They're right. They're under no obligation to be ethical and honest unless we make them with laws - as we've done before. Laissez-faire is a proven loser. Regulation is not.

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