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California Classes LED Component Gallium Arsenide a Carcinogen
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Aug 24, 2008 04:41 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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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: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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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, 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: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)
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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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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!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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In other news, living has been shown .... (Score:5, Funny)