RE: tossing highly diluted selenium...

["Nelson, Donald W" <donald.w.nelson@intel.com>]

When I put my darkroom in back in 1995, I worked with the county waste division. They said "don't worry about the selenium -- by the time it gets to us, its been chelated by the organics in the waste (of course this is small quantities in home darkroom). Other than silver, their only concern was color chemistry. Since I didn't plan on Color they were not concerned (Silver was precipitated out electrically)."


-----Original Message-----
From: Judy Seigel [mailto:jseigel@panix.com] 
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 4:26 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: Re: tossing highly diluted selenium...

Almost compos mentis again after an... interesting/lovely week, I try to 
prune my overloaded inbox. Most seem to be taken care of, but I must have 
saved this because no one answered????

On Fri, 21 Nov 2008, Paul Viapiano wrote:

> Hi all...
>
> Just wondering if I should take any precaution in tossing 1% selenium 
> solutions used for argyrotypes...?
>
> Down the drain with water, or to the waste site along with the stronger 
> dilutions used for silver printing?
>
> Thanks...
>
> Paul

The only comment of any possible use I can add would be that one variable 
is where you live. If you're in a city where 100 toilets are flushing 
every minute, it's much less serious than in a rural area, or, heaven 
forfend, a septic tank of your own.

I however have put buckets of dubious stuff outside under the porch, and 
found that in due course they evaporate & I can scrape up whatever solid 
residue & dispose of in regular trash.  I cleared this with NYC EPA and 
was told that in my amounts it was .... irrelevant.

J.