Below are some viewpoints about the
environmental "friendliness" or lack thereof of
lead-free solders.
Lead-free solder has reliability challenges,
which may (or may not) be resolved given time,
including the impact of new termination platings
on the components themselves. It has also soaked
up tens of billions of dollars in areas such as
capital equipment, re-design, materials research
and standards generation.
Secondly, the most valuable (non-renewable)
resource has been in engineering bandwidth,
which has been locked up for five years or more
in the run up to the European Union's
Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) lead
ban in solders. Most importantly, removing lead
in solder will actually have a negative impact
on the environment, and was not necessary for
any public safety or environmental
considerations, or based on any published data
in the first place.
The latest EPA report on
Solders in Electronics: A life-cycle
assessment , published August 2005, has some
very interesting data. It shows that the most
widely used replacements for "leaded" solder,
generally referred to as "SAC alloy", has a
greater environmental impact than tin/lead
solder in a number of key areas such as
non-renewable resource use, energy use, global
warming, ozone depletion and water quality.
