From: Linda Phillips (linda__phillips@hotmail.com)
Date: 04/30/00-05:18:05 PM Z
Good point, Liam. You're right. The laws weren't made for the little guys
like us. So lets just IGNORE them.
>From: Liam Lawless <lawless@ic24.net>
>Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>Subject: Re: Dichromate Hazards - Thanks!
>Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 23:34:12 +0100
>
>Hi,
>
>Your message made me think, but a general question for anyone who cares to
>consider it...
>
>Gum printing, negative intensification with chromium and mercury, and other
>procedures involving toxic chemicals have been around for a long time, but
>it seems to me that our concern for the environment is a comparatively
>recent phenomenon. Has the disposal of photographic wastes on a small
>scale
>ever been known
>to cause *problems* in the past, or is our anxiety due to a greater
>awareness of pollution in general? How significant are our efforts (or
>lack
>of) against the efforts (or lack of) of industry, motor vehicles, power
>stations, etc.?
>
>
>OK, so OSHA regulations now prohibit the release of dichromates into
>sewers,
>but were the rules framed with the small individual user in mind, and are
>they actively policed? Indeed, how much of a threat to public health and
>the planet is the average gum printer? An article I once read said that
>getting silver out of the ground does infinitely more damage than any end
>user of photographic film, but in faraway places that *don't matter*.
>
>My practice has always been to take mercury, lead, cadmium or cyanide
>residues or unwanted solid chemicals for safe treatment, but *small*
>quantities of liquid waste (not involving any of the above) go down the
>drain. This is based on advice in a Kodak publication, "The Disposal of
>Photographic Waste", that I read quite a few years ago; even (most of)
>those
>chemicals that are toxic to aquatic organisms can be handled, in small
>quantities and if well diluted, by water treatment works. Maybe that is
>out
>of date now, but what quantities constitute a problem? The most dichromate
>that I would ever throw away at one time would be 5 g (in a litre of used,
>diluted reversal bleach), which I had assumed to be a *small* amount by the
>definition of the Kodak booklet. Unfortunately, I no longer have it.
>
>
>
>Liam
>
>
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