A sad CRT article

[Dude111]

And I bet many sheeple lunged @ that!!

[Sandy G]

C'mon, guys ! LAY OFF the Politickin'...Y'all KNOW better...

[rca2000]

Sounds like my best friend. She told me that a couple of years back...and so I did. Now--we are at the place where we can't talk about hardly ANY subject--without her going off at me...

Needless to say...our "friendship" is on VERY shaky grounds right now.

If pointing out how it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to collect and store our stiff due to regulations and laws is now forbidden....then we might as well just STOP talking altogether.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

C'mon, guys ! LAY OFF the Politickin'...Y'all KNOW better...

Sorry Sandy.... We dont want ya to close my thread..... (I guess its just too much of a temptation)

[Electronic M]

Neat, I did not know they made them that long.

Jon, That depends on the folks in question. My folks tossed my grandparent's GE monitor top in the 90's only to wish they had listened to me when they later learned crappy ones can fetch a couple hundred.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Neat, I did not know they made them that long.

Jon, That depends on the folks in question. My folks tossed my grandparent's GE monitor top in the 90's only to wish they had listened to me when they later learned crappy ones can fetch a couple hundred.

You saw the Monitor Tops at the Landmark and the Terminal in Milwaukee.
Per the owner, Joe, they contain Sulfur Dioxide refridgerant. Not much friendlier than ammonia. If you breathe it, it turns to sulfuric acid in your lungs.
IIRC, they still use ammonia refrigerant for skating rinks and large cold storage warehouses.
BTW, when the large fire occured at the Patrick Cudahy plant, the Cudahy, Wi. police evacuated the town, a two mile radius, from the plant, because of the fire might cause an explosion of the ammonia thanks.

[Eric H]

I don't think there are any regulations about collecting and storing old TV's, they simply don't want them tossed in the trash, river, side of the road, out in the woods etc.
There's a large amount of lead in CRT glass, it does leech out into the ground (and into the water eventually) if it gets broken, like it would if it goes to the landfill.

There are millions of CRT sets in the U.S. alone that will need to be replaced and disposed of eventually even if digital and flat screen had never happened, nothing lasts forever and pretty much all of them newer than 1980 aren't of much collector interest anyway.

There's a road I take home from work that is a dumping ground for old TV's (and oil, dead horses & so on) They all wind up broken and leeching into the ground.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Eric H

There's a road I take home from work that is a dumping ground for old TV's (and oil, dead horses & so on) They all wind up broken and leeching into the ground.

At least the horses are compost.

[Carmine]

Ok, somebody tell me if I'm just plain wrong here...

1) Lead was alloyed with CRT glass back in the 60s to provide shielding for the X-rays produced by HV.

2) A better term than "alloyed" in the case of glass is "vitrification", which means: To change or make into glass or a glassy substance, especially through heat fusion.

4) Vitrification is also used to stabilize nuclear waste. From Wiki (but I already knew this): Long-term storage of radioactive waste requires the stabilization of the waste into a form which will neither react nor degrade for extended periods of time. One way to do this is through vitrification... [waste with water burned off] is fed continuously into an induction heated furnace with fragmented glass. The resulting glass is a new substance in which the waste products are bonded into the glass matrix when it solidifies. This product, as a melt, is poured into stainless steel cylindrical containers ("cylinders") in a batch process. When cooled, the fluid solidifies ("vitrifies") into the glass. Such glass, after being formed, is highly resistant to water

5) Everybody understand this? You cannot, through any natural process, separate (leech) the lead out of the glass. This isn't just me saying this. You could literally suck on a piece of broken CRT and would be more likely to die from a lightning strike. Further: IX. Analysis of the migration and leaching of heavy metals from glass This study examines the components of glass and the possible impact of heavy metals if present in the glass could have on the environment and when coming into contact with materials. The study is a testament to the chemical stability of glass containers whether it is migration to food or leaching into the environment via landfills or incineration.

6) They vitrify freakin' nuclear waste with glass. I'm a helluva lot more scared of nuclear waste than something that is still used to transport water through municipal water lines (lead), is present in most copper plumbing systems and the wheel weights on your car prior to 2009 (+/- a few years). And none of that lead is vitrified with glass!

7) The "scare" of lead is that it retards your intelligence. For most of society; too late. On this basis, I would argue that most of what I see in the mainstream media is more dangerous than lead.

8) People who know better are lying to people who don't even know what questions they should ask. These people repeat the lie and spread fear. Fear is the greatest human motivator.

9) I question the motivation of anyone who is involved with step 8.

10) 8 & 9 are why I virtually ignore what popular culture dictates that I should care about. I was brought up not to waste things simply because it is stupid, gluttonous and wrong, not to please the one-world-religion "earth god".

I'm just sayin'.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Carmine

10) 8 & 9 are why I virtually ignore what popular culture dictates that I should care about. I was brought up not to waste things simply because it is stupid, gluttonous and wrong, not to please the one-world-religion "earth god".

I'm just sayin'.

That's pretty much my way of thinking. We don't need a bunch of modern-day hippies telling us what to do.

By the way, I saw your vitrification argument before, and I can't say anything against it.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Jon A.

That's pretty much my way of thinking. We don't need a bunch of modern-day hippies telling us what to do.

Exactly Jon... Its good to have a strong mind and not let others fill it with crap!!

[walterbeers]

The lead on those old CRTs never hurt anybody, unless they ingest it. Yea, kids sometimes eat contaminated dirt, and get lead poisoning, (and most of that was from factory's that used lead). but short of that, most all the CRTs buried deep in landfills don't cause anybody any problems. Worse is when they ship them to 3rd world countries to dispose of them, burning the sets and monitors containing all kinds of plastic chemicals, and most likely people are rummaging through the remains trying to reclaim copper, and other metals, among the leaded glass. Gosh when I was a kid, our main water line to the house was made of lead, and us kids never had any problems with lead poisoning. I'm still reasonably healthy for my age, lead or no lead. I think there still is a lot of older houses using lead piping, and somehow that seems more likely to cause lead poisoning than a buried CRTs. The environmentalists have gone way too far.

[old_coot88]

We had a 'frigerator around 1949-50 that was not a monitor top, but still had the motor and belt-driven compressor enclosed in the top, with a lid for access. It developed a leak, and gawd, I can still smell that ammonia to this day. A while after that was fixed and re-charged, the motor froze up and actually caught fire. 'Twas the end of that fridge.

[bandersen]

Here's a more thorough lead leaching test of monochrome and color CRTs

http://www.pca.state.mn.us/index.php....html?gid=4865

The second table seems to show that it's not the thick, heavy face that's the source of lead leaching out, it's the neck and especially the funnel.

Here's an excerpt from the conclusion:

Since monochrome CRTs do not fail the TCLP test, they
are not considered hazardous waste; therefore, their disposal
does not have to be managed as such. These CRTs are still
considered solid waste. Although 9 of the 30 color CRTs were
also less than regulatory lead levels, 21 of 30 samples did
exceed regulatory levels. Therefore, color CRTs found in
computer monitors and televisions may exceed the regulatory
levels for lead given in Title 40 CFR 261.24 definition for the
toxicity characteristic. These CRTs should be considered
hazardous waste, and their disposal should be managed
accordingly.

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by bandersen

Here's a more thorough lead leaching test of monochrome and color CRTs

http://www.pca.state.mn.us/index.php....html?gid=4865

The second table seems to show that it's not the thick, heavy face that's the source of lead leaching out, it's the neck and especially the funnel.

Here's an excerpt from the conclusion:

We'll probably have to agree to disagree but here are a few issues I have with this report...

The report itself admits that the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) is not without controversy. I do not accept the premise that the process represents conditions found in the typical municipal landfill. The procedure breaks the CRT into a 9.5mm size that I find reasonable... But then these pieces are "rotated at 30 rpm for 18 ( 2 h in a 12 vessel rotary extractor. The extract was filtered through a glass fiber filter of 0.8-ím pore size and the sample preserved using 2 mL of nitric acid per 500 mL of sample."

Now you are breaking the glass nearly into its basic silica components. Remember, the 9.5mm size is just a maximum size... There are already many sand-like bits created by using a hammer to break down the crt, per the study's methodology. That 18 hour "rock tumbling" is not something I would expect to see occur in a landfill... At least not in a time frame where naturally-occurring lead might migrate through the same soil. Then they are using an acid to "digest" this mix into a sample that can be passed through flame spectrophotometer.

The extracts were stored at 4 °C until digestion. EPA method 3010A (Acid Digestion of Aqueous Samples and Extracts for Total Metals for Analysis by FLAA or ICP Spectroscopy) was used to digest the samples

Sorry, but that process sounds more like what is done to determine material compounds (un-alloying, for lack of a better term), not the process I would expect to occur naturally in a landfill in even 1000 years.

I am not alone in finding fault with this methodology. Below I began selecting relevant text from a 1999 letter sent to the EPA critical of the text methodology, and I've left it if anyone wants to read it. But in summary it sounds like whoever conducted the study used a method that would basically separate the silica from the lead and give the expected result. Consider that there is money to be made (and government bureaucracies to be propped-up) in re-classifying CRTs as hazardous waste. Funny how water sits inside lead pipes in municipal water systems, yet there is no "push" to replace these systems. Maybe the lobby group and the money just haven't arrived yet for that cause, but does that make it more or less of a risk to health?

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...84349003,d.aWw

Waste Leachability: The Need for Review of Current
Agency Procedures... First, the TCLP is applied too broadly. Second, leach
tests, including the TCLP when used to characterize toxicity, can be improved by accounting for additional parameters. In 1990, EPA promulgated the TCLP as a method to characterize the toxicity potential of wastes using a particular worst-case scenario. In addition to its use as a waste classification test, the TCLP is being used by regulators and industry more broadly. The TCLP may be inappropriate in some of these broad applications...

...To be most scientifically supportable, a leaching protocol should be both accurate and reasonably related to conditions governing leachability under actual waste disposal conditions.

...Kinetics: The TCLP is based on an extraction time of 18 hours. This time frame was arbitrarily chosen and does not necessarily bear any relation to an equilibrium state.

...Liquid/Solid Ratio: The TCLP uses a 20:1 liquid to solid ratio. [Is this a realistic representation of what you would find in a municipal landfill? ]

...Particle Size Reduction: TCLP particle size reduction requirements may not
represent field conditions. The TCLP requires that solids must be reduced in size to pass a 9.5-mm sieve before the waste is mixed with the extraction fluid. This reduction in size increases the specific surface area of the particles, which increases the leaching potential. Monolithic wastes have a lower leaching potential due to physical stabilization and the resultant increase in the length of the diffusion pathway from waste into the leachate. Additionally, some processes also provide for chemical stabilization by binding heavy metals in insoluble hydroxide and other complexes.18 Consequently, reductions in leachability that derive from solidification/stabilization associated with monolithic wastes are ignored.