Indium Blog

You cannot "grind up" a product and analyze the powder to show RoHS compliance

Candy writes:

Dear Dr. Ron:

I work in telecommunication company in Taiwan. Recently we have received many inquiries on WEEE and RoHS from our customers. We are pleased that your informative website has listed many inquiries and your answers and comments have been helpful to us. I have another question for you:

Some people are saying that to show RoHS compliance one simply has to grind an electronic device into a powder an chemically analyze it. If the concentrations are below the RoHS limits for lead, mercury, CrVI etc the unit is RoHS compliant. Is this correct?

I look forward to your reply.


Candy,

Thank you for your kind words about my Blog!

No, this view is not consistent with the intent of the directive. The material concentrations must be below the limits in "homogenous" material. As an example, the amount of lead in each solder joint must be below 0.1%. Or the amount of CrVI must be below 0.1% in a screw's plating.

I hope to have a protocol developed soon with colleagues at Dartmouth that will recommend techniques and a vendor to perform this type of analysis.

Dr. Ron