[HN Gopher] Finding lead in Stanley's Quencher
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Finding lead in Stanley's Quencher
Author : ChrisArchitect
Score : 60 points
Date : 2024-03-15 05:40 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lumafield.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lumafield.com)
| infinitedata wrote:
| Funny how even before being consumed by their adopters it has
| already contaminated their brain and making them think they are
| something just because of a product.
| bigyikes wrote:
| Whoa. Alternate take: people are having fun with a silly cup?
| It's a meme in physical form.
| uoaei wrote:
| It's a meme you're spending money on.
|
| Meme transmission is a kind of peer pressure, the entire
| thing seems prickly to me from a moral perspective. I for one
| don't appreciate being pressured to spend money on things I
| don't need or want.
| frankharv wrote:
| Alot of money.
|
| I overheard some office ladies gossiping about a co-workers
| Starbucks cup.
|
| It cost over $85 and they were pouring over it to determine
| if fake or real.
|
| A cup.
| dustymcp wrote:
| Its the kids that are being influenced into consuming,
| nothing else.
| dghughes wrote:
| I'd call it hysteria more than a meme. Similar to the Dutch
| Tulip Mania in the early 1600s.
|
| Every company I worked at gave out cheap plastic tumblers
| with the company logo everyone threw them in the trash.
| bigyikes wrote:
| Beautiful imagery in this article!
|
| It doesn't reveal anything the world didn't already know, though.
| There is lead, but it is within the sealed inner chamber of the
| cup. It isn't accessible to drinkers.
|
| Still, doesn't seem wise to use lead in such a popular drinking
| device. With the millions sold, it's hard to imagine there not
| being a few defects.
| clarkdale wrote:
| Absolute science like this, with x-ray imagery, does reveal, or
| rather, confirm what we needed to know. Independent
| verification is an important part of the process and shouldn't
| be discounted.
| frankharv wrote:
| I agree. I love the imagery and I am jealous.
|
| Imagine being able to look inside a weld with this level of
| detail...
|
| We have crude tools in my field compared to this...
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Weren't there some other studies that found lead on the inside
| drinking surface?
|
| I had assumed maybe it was the manufacturing process, maybe lead
| in the environment(from the solder), then some vapors condensing
| on the inside surface.?
| perihelions wrote:
| Why is lead illegal to use in consumer electronics solder than no
| one eats off of (EU/RoHS), but acceptable for food cutlery like
| this?
|
| Why is lead so advantageous for sealing vacuum chambers that a
| manufacturer would risk all this backlash? Do simple epoxy glues
| not work?
| f_devd wrote:
| It's not acceptable that's why it's news.
|
| As to why it's advantages, lead is really cheap and really
| effective. In material science there are 2 groups, those making
| amazing new materials, and those trying to match them without
| using lead or cadmium
| chaxor wrote:
| As has been said, it isn't acceptable.
|
| _No_ level of lead is safe and_no_ level of lead is acceptable.
| That's a statement from CDC, WHO, or any other 3 letter agency
| you could ask.
|
| Why is it still "used". Often, the difference is in percentage
| of lead in products when it's intentional vs not (probably
| obvious). The part that may be less known is how difficult it
| is to ensure that steel or other metals don't have <0.001% lead
| still in them, and even that is far, far too high (see original
| statement on lead safety level).
|
| Working in characterization of materials _can be_ difficult. I
| have had 3 different pieces of equipment give 10% X, 50%X, and
| 80% X all for exactly the same batch of the same material.
|
| However, lead is far more established in it's characterization
| in metals, so _given enough care and money_ these problems
| don't really occur.
|
| This company, and many others, aren't going to check - that's
| the government's job to worry about the safety and health of
| the public, and protect them if a company makes an unknowingly
| harmful product. The government meanwhile does not have the
| funding, personnel, or time to tackle such a monumental task.
| This is why it takes so long to find bad products like this -
| it's typically on the shoulders of curious individuals.
|
| To recap, this _should be_ a solved issue (also lead needs to
| come out of GA, as it has been shown to be possible for
| decades, and actually _harms_ the engines of small planes), but
| as it often is, harming people to save money spells success in
| our world.
| fmajid wrote:
| Reminds me of the scandal when Sigg water bottles were found to
| be painted inside with a BPA-containing varnish. At least here
| the lead is not in direct contact with the drink, although any
| manufacturing process involving lead can potentially suffer from
| cross-contamination.
| doubloon wrote:
| I have the same problem with this as with retro youtubers using
| lead solder.
|
| Consumers are not the only ones that matter
|
| The people working in the factoriesare exposed to lead. The
| people at the mines are exposed to lead. The people in shuttered
| ghost towns like Pitcher Oklahoma are exposed to lead. The people
| transporting lead are exposed to lead. People working in
| recycling or waste management or landfills are exposed to lead.
| Lead is not good to put into the manufacturing stream or the
| waste stream. By continuing to create demand you are continuing
| to put lead in the environment in forms where it gets into humans
| and damages their brains.
| frankharv wrote:
| Exposed to lead? Heck I machine it.
|
| What do you think SAE660 bearing bronze contains.
|
| This level of hype is horribly misguided.
|
| I have not witnessed one machinist harmed by lead in 40 years.
|
| If I cared I would wear a face mask when working with bronzes.
|
| Truthfully Hexavalent Chromium exposure from stainless scares
| me more.
|
| That is a known carcinogen and I machine alot of high Chrome
| content stainless.
| pgcudahy wrote:
| "I have not witnessed one machinist harmed by lead in 40
| years." Do you know what you're looking for? Lead poising can
| be subtle but eventually devastating. This is like the
| asbestos industry saying that miners didn't get harmed
| because they didn't follow up with them years later when
| mesothelioma slowly strangled them.
| copperx wrote:
| I suggest you temper your gut feelings with a blood test for
| lead. It's $49 at Quest and you don't need a doctor's order.
| msrenee wrote:
| It's interesting to me that there's so little public
| awareness about stainless steel as it affects workers. I'll
| go ahead and skip working with it as the piddly amount of a
| pay bump doesn't offset the known danger it poses. My nose
| has the correct number of holes in it, thank you very much.
| Add in the cancer risk and I've got no intentions of screwing
| around with the stuff.
| rsaxvc wrote:
| You're eactly right. I saw the blight at Herculaneum, MO in the
| 2000s - dozers plowing down houses in a slowly expanding circle
| centered on the smelter.
|
| 1 in 5 students had excess blood lead. The schools nearby were
| scraped down and soil was replaced whenever the lead levels got
| too high from the dust blowing off the open ore and slag trucks
| running town. The smelter didn't hit EPA requirements for 25
| years, and when faced with enforcement, decided to leave rather
| than produce lead cleanly, because it is not economical to do
| so cleanly. Cheap lead offloads the environmental and health
| effects to someone.
|
| https://health.mo.gov/living/environment/hazsubstancesites/p...
|
| https://www.kbia.org/science-and-technology/2012-08-08/the-e...
| doubloon wrote:
| thats very interesting, i never heard of this, i wonder how
| many other towns are off-the-radar. and in China probably
| even more now.
|
| i wonder if the EPA could be better off if it gave grants
| instead of fining people.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| government handouts seem to escape their original purpose,
| famously.
|
| For a recent example there are the covid relief scams
| galore. very often in the news the last year or two at
| least in Arizona, where some egregiously shameful people
| 'embezzled' and 'gamed' the grants system to buy super
| extravagent properties, etc. .
| analog31 wrote:
| Superfund is such a a program.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Doesn't have to be a smelter. Battery factory is enough. Like
| former VARTA, now Hawker, now closed (2021) in Hagen i.W.,
| Germany.
|
| Lead, so sweet, its dust a sheet, over kindergardens, parks
| and shools, the fools!
|
| https://osm.org/go/0GMgy_p2J--?m=
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| That retro Youtuber gripe is silly. You really think it's worth
| getting bent out of shape that one guy is using a little bit of
| lead solder to repair a valuable antique thing full of lead
| solder and thus keep it out of the landfill? They want to use
| it for technical reasons. There are many more significant
| sources of lead than oddball hobbyists, such as aviation fuel.
| Technically most hazardous chemicals we ever use end up in the
| environment. Even medication. So getting too fixated on a rare
| specialist use of lead is misguided. We should reduce the uses
| of lead and other toxic materials where possible, but sometimes
| it isn't possible or economical.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| "You really think it's worth getting bent out of shape that
| one guy is using a little bit of lead solder to repair a
| valuable antique"
|
| Yes.
|
| Not even close.
|
| As someone who repaires such things myself, I know that there
| is no excuse for it.
|
| Simple as that.
|
| I do it myself and so I know just how not-a-problem it is.
|
| Several lead-free solders are perfectly usable in all the
| same places, and the only way to reduce the background
| radiation of lead permeating the entire environment, is to
| stop putting it into the environment.
|
| Keeping the antique radio out of the dump does not excuse the
| fact that the same user had to buy a spool of lead solder
| which had to be manufactured, and at least half of that spool
| will go right into the environment, not into museum exhibits.
|
| It will be in spatters and sponges and wicks and soldapults
| and brillo scrubbers and random junk scrapped wiring and junk
| projects that are not antique radios housed in museums
| forever. Probably 90% or more of that spool ends up all over
| the environment rather than in some precious artifact.
|
| Yes the lead-free solders are slightly more difficult to work
| with, but hardly enough to matter. If you never soldered
| anything before, the very act of soldering successfully at
| all is a baffling art to a lot of people. After some amount
| of trial & error, maybe training if they're lucky enough to
| know someone, they eventually develop a feel and a sense for
| how to get it to work right. Going from lead to lead-free
| requires a similar adjustment, but it's a freaking
| microscopic fraction of the difficulty.
|
| Complaining about lead-free solder is nothing but pathetic
| baby crying, and crying over something that is simply not
| that difficult, and something that comes at a simply
| inexcusable cost.
| bxparks wrote:
| You have strong opinions on the use of leaded solder. I'm
| curious if you have some numbers to drive home your point.
| For example, what is the relative risk of using leaded
| solder for a hobbyist creating a handful of prototype
| circuit boards a year (using proper ventilation of course),
| versus living close to an airport exposed to burning jet
| fuel which contains lead to this day? I want to know,
| roughly speaking, if using leaded solder a few times a year
| cause 100X more exposure or only 1/100 the exposure
| compared to living near an airport. If it's only 1/100
| compare to an airport, I'm not going to worry about it. If
| it's 100X, then I think your position is quite valid.
| [Addendum: Another example, what is the risk of leaded
| solder compared to lead exposure from common household
| items like brass knobs, handles, fixtures, and keys?]
|
| My current inventory of solder was obtained from estate
| sales, so they are all leaded, but old stock, not newly
| manufactured. If I had not bought them, they would have
| been thrown away into the garbage dumps.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Jet fuel does not contain lead. Jet fuel is for practical
| purposes roughly the same part of the dinosaur juice as
| kerosene and diesel. Jet fuel is burned in turbine and
| turboprop airplane engines, which comprise the enormous
| majority of the commercial fleet.
|
| Avgas is the stuff with lead in it. Avgas is basically
| gasoline with lead added as an anti-knock agent and is
| burned in reciprocating spark ignition engines. Typically
| these are found in the general aviation fleet.
| jki275 wrote:
| Sorry, but as someone who has had to use them, lead-free
| solders are garbage. They are difficult to work with,
| require higher temperatures to use, don't last as long,
| whisker and destroy equipment they're used in.
|
| This is all well known, it's not a mystery, and lead in
| solder is the least of the problems with lead in the world
| today.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| If all you've used is crappy old SAC305 lead-free solder,
| you owe it to yourself to try a modern alloy like SN100C
| (& friends, it has several names and similar
| competitors). It's generations newer and with the right
| flux (I like AIM's Glow Core wire) it's just great for
| routine work. It runs a little hotter, but most people
| already solder too hot anyway, so who cares.
|
| I still use 63/37 or 62/36/2 for anything challenging,
| though. Or for old rework: many people in this thread are
| missing that you really, really shouldn't mix alloys on a
| joint, so you've got to get the _old_ stuff _out_ before
| switching to lead-free, and at single-joint scale that 's
| a lot more polluting than just grabbing the spool of
| 63/37.
| jki275 wrote:
| I'll definitely agree that you shouldn't rework old
| joints with different solder.
| LM358 wrote:
| You are aware that leaded solder is in use in many
| industries to this day?
|
| I'm soldering with SN62 now as we speak.
| kortilla wrote:
| Av gas is what has led, not jet fuel. Av gas consumption is
| negligible by comparison so it's not the impact you think.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Literally tons of aviation fuel vs. trace amounts of fresh
| lead solder. I think the fuel is obviously worse. Neither
| one may be so bad that it needs to draw excess concern of
| course.
| skybrian wrote:
| As with anything in the manufacturing process, it depends how
| it's done. You can imagine it being done safely or dangerously,
| but either way, it's not a fact, it's something you imagined.
|
| Unfortunately, we usually don't know what safety procedures
| were followed or whether they're adequate. This requires
| insight into the whole supply chain.
|
| So, maybe it's better to be safe and ask for alternatives? But
| we don't know if it helps, because there are other materials
| and other reasons why one manufacturing process might be better
| than another.
|
| Consumer purchase decisions are a very indirect way of
| affecting working conditions and a poor substitute for work-
| safety regulations.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Maybe I'm just too old, but I will never understand the brief
| viral Stanley popularity, or the viral inaccessible-lead-pellet
| alarmism.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > I will never understand the brief viral Stanley popularity,
|
| it isn't the product, but the effect of viral. the effect of
| influencers is the thing to be looking at here. however, that's
| just the next evolution of marketing. to me, it is the ability
| to be influenced that should be studied and improved.
| HankB99 wrote:
| > it is the ability to be influenced that should be studied
| and improved.
|
| I'm curious about what you mean by "improved?"
| dylan604 wrote:
| awkwardly worded to be sure after rereading if not just an
| incomplete thought. i would hope that we could improve our
| abilities to be less susceptible to the influence after
| studying. some of us seem to be impervious since we don't
| spend any time on the socials where these influencers live.
| others seemingly can't tell there's an influence at all.
| while others yet seem like they couldn't figure out how to
| feed themself if an influencer didn't first suggest it
| ianburrell wrote:
| Stanley invented, or at least popularized, a new kind of
| tumbler. It is insulated to keep drinks hot or cold, it has
| large capacity but fits in cup holder, has handle to make
| easier to carry.
|
| I don't like since prefer smaller water bottles, but I
| understand why some people would. I also don't get the viral
| popularity, but I understand why social promotion of something
| people want and is new can take off. It is turned into
| phenomenon that people want just cause its popular.
| luplex wrote:
| Stanley hired the guy that made Crocs cool before, so he knows
| what he is doing.
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