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California Classes LED Component Gallium Arsenide a Carcinogen
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Aug 24, 2008 03:41 PM
from the tooth-fairy-is-a-cat-burglar dept.
from the tooth-fairy-is-a-cat-burglar dept.
Reader LM741N, pointing to a report released this month by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, writes "Gallium Arsenide has now been listed as a carcinogen. Given the increasing usage of gallium arsenide, the main constituent in LEDs, and their recent championing as more efficient light sources in recent news stories and Slashdot, there may be significant environmental concerns as related to their disposal. Morover, workers in industries using the substance may be at risk of cancer as well."
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Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, California, where everything is known the cause cancer. I just got back from a trip there and saw those signs everywhere, even on most buildings. It seems to the locals it has even become a running gag.
Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, California, where everything is known the cause cancer.
Including sand. When I lived there, one of the utility bills (I forget which one) always had a statement that the company used chemicals "known to the state of California to cause cancer", because they used sand at some of the plants.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:4, Funny)
Billy! How often do I need to tell you to NOT EAT THE LED TAILLIGHTS! Just you wait until your father gets home!
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Do they post warning signs at all the beaches? (Score:5, Funny)
or does "free range" sand not cause cancer?
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
AC: Ever worked a day in your life? I mean the hard kind of work that'll make you sweat during the day and blow black shit out of your nose and lungs at night? (or worse/similar) I doubt it.
Some people in the US work for a living doing hazardous work. Yeah even more hazardous than jockeying that desk of yours all day.
Of the things that can be hazardous for people to work with, some of them are hazardous to your lungs - like sand.
"Play sand" like the kind you probably spend your days with has been thoroughly washed and graded for safety.
People who work around industrial sand (anything from quarries to paint shops) and breath a lot of silicates (very fine sand) end up with cancer.
I'm sure it's funny to you and some other people -- why else would so many signs be needed to point these things out?
Sadly more people of your mind you do not expatriate to a place where they already do business "your way" such as...well, nearly any second or third world country. You can sprinkle lead paint on your corn flakes and have silica sand for desert if you like. Sure civilization has its warts, but if you don't like it, don't fake like there's no alternative and try to drag the rest of us back in time. Bye.
-Matt
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This just in (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot causes cancer!*
*in California
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The real reason things in CA cause cancer (Score:5, Funny)
When you mix Californium [wikipedia.org] and Governmentium [wikipedia.org], causing cancer is the only chemical reaction that is allowed to happen.
The radioactive decay products of Californium include Liberelium and a heavy isotope of Governmentium called Bigovernmentium, which when combined are known to be toxic.
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Re:The real reason things in CA cause cancer (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Examples of buildings that have the signs posted:
- Junk yards
- Gas stations
- Vehicle maintenance yards
- Recycling stations
- Apartment complexes
- Malls
- Grocery stores
- Hospitals
- Vacant lots
And that's just the start of it. No one pays attention to them anymore, and even if we did, we wouldn't know just what the problem was, because the law only requires that the sign be posted, not explain what led to it being posted.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when is it a bad thing to notify consumers that the products they're buying and using may pose a health risk?
Since doing so excessively will trivialize the risk.
Imagine if instead of severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, the national weather service issued "wet weather" warnings any time it wasn't sunny. You couldn't tell the difference between a summer shower and a hurricane, and since summer showers are much more common you wouldn't realize today's warning meant 80mph winds until it was too late.
If you are going to do warning labels for things that aren't a significant risk, you should at least put a "danger level" on them. We could have categories like for tornadoes:
Instead of the Enhanced Fujita Scale, we'll have the Enhanced California Scale:
EC0 - You might get cancer. But 40 million other Californians won't.
EC1 - 1 in a million lifetime cancer risk from a single exposure
EC2 - 1 in 10,000 lifetime cancer risk from a single exposure
EC3 - 1 in 100 lifetime cancer risk from a single exposure
EC4 - If you touch it and live another 50 years, you'll get cancer
EC5 - You'll be lucky to be alive a year from now
EC6 - You'll be lucky if you live long enough to finish reading this senten
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
The signs are stupid don't tell you anything useful.
In some places, all the hotels have the sign. It doesn't tell you what the carcinogens are, how much there is, where in the facility they are, how much exposure you might get, what the risk is, or what you could do to control the risk.
It's a pretty safe bet that any building has something that, if properly prepared and administered in sufficient quantities over a long enough time, causes cancer. The cigarettes in the hotel lobby shop mean the hotel has carcinogens. The charcoal grilled steaks in the restaurant have carcinogens. If you took apart the TV in the room and decocted the various plastics and rare metals into a kind of gritty slurry, you'd have something that you wouldn't want to put on your English muffins every morning.
And some hotels don't have the signs. It doesn't take a genius to figure out this doesn't mean they're any different, the sign thing hasn't got there yet. Once all the hotels have the signs, then you're pretty much presented with a Hobson's choice: stay in a hotel that has carcinogens in it, or sleep in your car. Which probably has carcinogens in it.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, its a free country, so feel free to not read any warning you like. But I like knowing that the power cable on my blender contains lead and that I should wash my hands after plugging it in and before touching food. I like knowing which products at Home Depot are more likely to cause respiratory problems. And yes, if a building I worked in contained excessive levels of some toxin, I would like to know about it.
You don't get that kind of information though. You get a generic Proposition 95 warning sign that basically says "something sold, kept, or used on these premises has been deemed a cancer risk by borderline hypochondriac bureaucrats at the state level." It's no fucking use at all.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Informative)
Even some of the restaurants have them [flickr.com], "WARNING: Chemicals Known to the State of California to cause cancer, or birth defects, or other reproductive harm may be present in food or beverages sold here or served here"
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, in the biology community, the fact that everything DOES seem to cause cancer is a running gag. It's kind of black comedy really. The one way to be sure that you're not going to slowly and painfully to cancer is to get killed by something else first. Ha ha...
I blame our early RNA-based ancestors for choosing an imperfect nucleotide-based system of keeping notes that has not been significantly improved (aside from the DNA version at some point.) Is it too much to ask that the genetic material be completely error-free?
Physicists would say yes, but I say they're cowards, traitors, and anti-life.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:4, Funny)
Bah! In my day we had blankets made out of asbestos so the cigarettes we smoked in bed wouldn't burn holes. We had lead paint on our tableware and lead in our water supply pipes. We put mercury solutions on our cuts, brushed our teeth with PCB's and washed our hair with dioxin. We spent every day in the sun without sunblock and it was GOOD for us.
Kids these days have it too easy.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you forget to back that up with some compelling statistics you're saving for later? Let's compare housing values in silicon valley vs. detroit to see if you're right.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you forget to back that up with some compelling statistics you're saving for later? Let's compare housing values in silicon valley vs. detroit to see if you're right.
That's just a comparison of the desirability of living in those places. No, it's more accurate to compare state government fiscal responsibility between California and Ohio. The fact that the economy in California continues to be able to support ruinously idiotic government that continually spends more than it takes in is part of what keeps the idiots in charge, in charge. If California were a marginal rust-belt state, it's residents would have thrown those morons in the legislature out long ago.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Informative)
Did you forget to back that up with some compelling statistics you're saving for later? Let's compare housing values in silicon valley vs. detroit to see if you're right.
That's just a comparison of the desirability of living in those places. No, it's more accurate to compare state government fiscal responsibility between California and Ohio. The fact that the economy in California continues to be able to support ruinously idiotic government that continually spends more than it takes in is part of what keeps the idiots in charge, in charge. If California were a marginal rust-belt state, it's residents would have thrown those morons in the legislature out long ago.
That's sort of a silly comparison. If California were a rust-belt state then it would receive more in federal spending than it pays and there would be no problem. California pays the federal government $50 billion per year [calinst.org] more than the benefits it receives. If California wasn't subsidizing the unsuccessful economies of those rust-belt states with its very successful economy (a gross state product equivalent to the GDP of Italy), there would be no problem whatsoever. Complain all you want about the idiots in charge in California, but at the end of the day if it weren't for California, many of the governments of the States in the US would be bankrupt.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everyone who doesn't currently live in California desires to live in California.
Not even most.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, the price of homes there isn't just a measure of desirability, but also a measure of the ability of the economy to support those prices.
No... it used to be. The price of homes in most non-rural areas is not an indicator of the economy's ability to support those prices. Hence the ever increasing foreclosure rate. Hence, house prices have gone up many times more than income (as a for instance, houses that were worth $30K here in a NY suburb 30 years ago are now worth $480K (nothing but upkeep). House prices have thus went up 16 times their previous value... while wages for such people have went up by a factor of 2.5 to 3.
I doubt most of Cali or any other place that isn't rural or very close to rural isnt having the same problem. As the gap widens, it is going to become sickeningly obvious to more people that it's not what the economy can support that is driving house prices...
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Truly, a downtrodden people, crying out for the better way of life enjoyed by their fellow men in Mississippi.
While we're on the subject, after the thorough screwing that California got from the ever wise and beneficent market during the electricity deregulation and crisis, I'm guessing that they might not be rushing with open arms into a bold era of state nonintervention.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
The right-wing anarcho-capitalist nutjobs HATE it that "liberal" states tend to be far more economically prosperous than the "conservative" anti-environment, anti-union states. It kills them.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
California is liberal only in that it is less conservative than other states. Our politics are all over the map. We want legalized marijuana, but three strikes. We want compassion for first offenders, but we demand the death penalty. We demand impartiality in the judiciary, and yet we require that judges be elected and stand for re-election every four years.
As for the economics, we have a government whose spending has grown 40% in the last five years, and yet has had a combined population and price index growth rate of only 29%. We have no budget, spending expectations having outstripped revenue expectations by more than $15 billion out of $140 billion, nor do we have any signs of getting a budget soon, and the politics of the budget this year are even more brutal than past years. One Democrat who refused to cast a vote (she was protesting the refusal of the majority to bring up legislation she wanted heard) found that her office was moved across the street that afternoon on orders of the Democratic Majority Leader. (Not that her vote would have changed anything -- it still several votes short of passing.)
Unemployment in California is at 7.3% as of August, up from 6.2% in May. It ranges from a low of 5.0% in Marin County to 23.3% in Imperial County (admittedly a smaller county). Los Angeles County is at 8.1%. The foreclosure rates for the state have tripled in the last year.
There are states in worse shape than California (though I don't know if anyone has a budget mess as bad). Still, it's not exactly all peaches and cream in California.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:4, Insightful)
The #1 cash crop in the country is marijuana. The only thing screwy about that fact is that the federal government allows all that money to go to drug cartels instead of taxing it.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe you should have gone on to the second page. The capital gains tax is not typically considered a tax on the middle class. From the links you provided he isn't raising the social security tax rates, only increasing the amount of taxable income. That looks like it would probably impact the upper middle class, but these aren't struggling families. I don't see any evidence given of middle class income tax increases.
As for gas taxes nothing you linked to indicate he supports raising gas taxes, although if he did raise gas taxes and offset the increase with credits elsewhere it would probably be one of the best things you could do for the country. In case you haven't notice, or dependency on foreign fuel is a very bad thing.
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CA is the seventh largest economy in the world (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like those 'nanny state liberal' commies have ruined CA indeed! *cough*
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why it has consistently had the strongest economy in the nation?
As a life-long resident of California, I can guarantee that the success of the economy is in spite of the state government, not because of it.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Insightful)
The sign is pretty cheap, but the administrative overhead in determining which sign, how big, and compliance with all current laws, state, local, and whatever someone can pull out of their ass this week all add up. Businesses raise prices to compensate.
Then, there's the boy that cried wolf. If every square inch of everything is plastered with cancer warnings, people might miss the ones that warn of a near certain cancer mortality within 5 years because of all the ones for the 1 in one billion risk of mortality within 90 years.
I'm all for public health and product safety. Many states don't do nearly enough for either. However, Ca seems to have gone overboard.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Informative)
"I was thinking they'd be a viable alternative to mercury-filled CCFL's."
They still are, and truth be told CCFLs, despite containing mercury, are a viable alternative to incandescents which aren't exactly made of sunshine and pixy dust. The real problem is that we expect to just be able to throw everything in a bucket, ship it off to the dump and never have to worry or think about it again. That has never been a reasonable thought, but we're just starting to figure that out now. When the expectation is impossible to achieve, you shouldn't be surprised by disappointment.
In the mean time, I'd suggest not crushing up and snorting your LEDs, because even if the cancer doesn't kill you, I'm sure that the deadly poisons and glass fragments will.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like I said, many states don't do enough, but there is a point where it becomes less than helpful.
For example, any electronic device contains lead, but if the kids are actually touching the lead in a TV (for example), the multi-kilovolt discharge is by far the more serious problem.
The LEDs contain Gallium Arsenide but it is a tiny amount well sealed in plastic. That's preferable to mercury sealed in breakable glass tubes or to incandescents that cause more mercury release through burning coal to light them.
For that matter, any cancer fatalities from LED bulbs will likely be more than offset by the fatalities from fires started by incandescents that won't happen.
Please note, nearly every food contains toxins that if concentrated and taken in a single dose would be fatal. Many essential nutrients are themselves fatal in concentrated doses.
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Re:Known to cause cancer... (Score:5, Informative)
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Get cancer from an LED? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I will have to stop eating LEDs, at least while in California.
Re:Get cancer from an LED? (Score:5, Funny)
"I guess I will have to stop eating LEDs, at least while in California."
I hope insertion is still safe!
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Re:Get cancer from an LED? (Score:5, Funny)
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!Carginogen (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, am terrified of anything called a "Carginogen".
Re:!Carginogen (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that this is more or less the point. California has lost sight of 'risk management' in favor of 'risk avoidance'.
The problem? You can't economically avoid all risk. Apple seeds contain a poison/carcinogen. Yet, in order to have a risk of getting cancer from it along the lines of winning the lottery - you'd have to practically eat your body mass in seeds.
Lead is a carcinogen, in fairly massive doses. It'll generally lead to heavy metal poisoning long before you have to worry about it giving you cancer. As a bonus, when contained in a solder you really only have to worry about it if you're drinking water run over it, like in pipes. Sitting in your playstation or DVD player, it's not a concern to anybody but the workers soldering all day, and we have machines for that now.
Yet we spend billions on developing lead free solder techniques that create bonds that are worse than lead ones for these applications*, tending to break more often.
California bans** incandescent light bulbs - then starts screaming and holloring about the relatively tiny amount of mercury in fluorescent bulbs, now the gallium arsenide in LED lights.
When you have those 'contains something california has determined causes cancer' signs on everything, it becomes useless because you can't just chose to use stuff without them, and if you look at the literature the risk is negligible anyways. So it just ends up being a waste of time, effort, and money.
Heck, I'm fairly certain that the gallium in a LED is protected enough that even if a tyke ate a led it'd just come out the other end.
What california should do is set a standard - only the more dangerous cancer causing substances such as cigarettes and asbestos get the warning. Other items with carcinogenic substances have to show how well sealed the substance is/amounts, which is plugged into some sort of equation to see if it requires a sign. Then people will probably pay attention to the signs.
I'm sorry, but this is the sort of stuff that makes people think that the greenies just want to send us back to the stone age.
*You have a point if you're looking at drinking water pipes, but otherwise?
**In the future, but play with me
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Re:!Carginogen (Score:5, Insightful)
Sign blindness is more of a real problem than the tiny amount of Gallium in LEDs. If you want to protect people, you can't deluge them with constant warnings. They eventually become sign blind and begin ignoring, or worse mocking warning labels. According to the labels, every can of paint in the hardware store causes cancer in California. But what I don't know is if paint A is going to make me infertile the moment I look at it, or if paint B is just a problem if I drink 5 gallons of it. The labels don't have any kind of granularity.
A color coded system might do consumers well. No color==mostly OK. Green==Don't eat a bunch of this, it's not good for you. Yellow==Take care when using this, ventilation is a good idea and long term exposure is probably going to hurt you. Red==For the love of all that is holly, wear a respirator or leave it for the pros. Black==if you are reading this, you're already dead.
California needs to remember that poison is in the portion. EVERYTHING is poisons in the right quantity. A warning label can be useful, when not slapped on every surface that it can physically bond to.
Warning! This cliff is known to the state of California to cause plummeting, falling and smassing of bones. Gravity in effect at edge of cliff face! Short term exposure to gravity can cause serious injury.
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Re:!Carginogen (Score:5, Funny)
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CFLs (Score:4, Insightful)
CFLs cause cancer too. As technology uses more advanced chemistry (and the ability of medical technology to determent the carcinogenic properties of more materials) we can only find more dangers in the technology we use everyday.
The important thing to do is to educate everyone that some materials need to be treated with care. And should not be ingested or inhaled. And should be disposed of immediately if they are damaged or broken. In addition disposable of all possibly toxic materials needs to handled specially. And if we're going to have CFLs, CRTs, LEDs, and other three letter acronyms in our households, then each and every one of us needs to be educated on what needs to be taken through a special technology disposable/recycling process.
Here's a list of things people throw in the garbage that they should not have: rechargeable batteries, fluorescent lights, TV tubes(lead), car batteries(these are normally exchanged), used motor oil, appliances, electronics, ...
ideally you should only be throwing out old food, soiled paper/cardboard, plastic. and recycling glass and non-toxic metals(steel, aluminum). you can try and recycle plastic too, but it is debatable.
In other news, living has been shown .... (Score:5, Funny)
Umm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The emerging LED technology is GaN-based (Score:4, Informative)
I just wanted to point out that while many LED's are GaAs-based, most of the newer LED's that are starting to be used to replace things like traffic lights and light bulbs are GaN-based. No arsenic involved. Very non-toxic. In theory, your kid could eat several of the dies and be okay.
I want my simple band-aid solution! (Score:5, Funny)
Like all americans, I want a magic bullet to the problem of carcinogens and cancer! I hear a lot of chatter about incandescent light bulbs and waste, fluorescent light bulbs and mercury, and LEDs and cancer. I don't understand any of it, but I'm certain it's those bureacratic fat cats in Sacramento that are making me so very confused! If they didn't put those warnings on stuff, it probably woudn't be a problem!
Why won't someone just make it simple? Wave an american flag in the direction of the perfect light bulb that has no real-world problems that I can pick up at walmart on my way to Ikea while driving in my hummer and forget all about cancer, global warming, and mercury forever.
Is that really too much to ask?!? I'm beggin you, lie to me and tell me there are perfect solutions! Just give me one saying that will solve the problem completely without consequences that fits on a bumper sticker and I'm there instantly!
GaN not GaAs (Score:5, Informative)
Blue and white LEDs are based on gallium nitride, not gallium arsenide. Completely different material.
GaN, not GaAs.
It's the arsenic that's bad. It is in some specialized non-consumer electronics, but it is most definitely NOT in LEDs.