Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Environmental hysteria is quite a problem. Same thing happened when the 'scientific' community discovered that dichlorodifluorocarbons broke down into elemental chlorine which destroys ozone. Suddenly we had a crisis. Of course, we don't consider volcanic activity (Mt. Pinatubo put more chlorine in the atmosphere in one eruption, than man has ever produced!) since you can't regulate that with government edicts. We hear so much about 'greenhouse gases' like carbon dioxide, but the Earth surface is 70% water, and water vapour is...a greenhouse gas! The same ridiculous thing goes for those besotted fools counting cow flatus in the cattle growing regions; no one worried about bovine flatus when there were millions of bison roaming the West, polluting the air- and we're still here! Even in photography, things change according to what is politically correct. I remember the E-3 and E-4 processes where supplanted by the E-6 process, the EP-2 by the RA-4, and that Cibachrome was a particularly nasty smelly process that had to be neutralized before disposal because of environmental concerns. I am not totally anti-environment! Some things benefit us all such as silver recovery. We are regulated to keep silver from our effluent to below something like 10 ppm in the lab. However, it is also an economic concern in that with little effort we keep from flushing money down the drain, literally. I use the silver oxide 625s in my SL, and the meter is dead-on with my R7 and R4; I don't know whether it is due to a voltage regulator in the camera, or if Leica adjusted it when I sent it in for a CLA. Well, so much for my soapbox session. Best of light, whether measured with alkaline or mercury cells! Dan'l dwpost@msn.com - -----Original Message----- From: Jim Brick <jim@brick.org> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> Date: Wednesday, April 15, 1998 9:55 PM Subject: Re: [Leica] Mercury Cell Ban & Fish >I remember many years ago when the "Mercury" scare swept the country. >"Don't eat this fish, or that fish" Then they pulled some very old fish >from the Smithsonian. Very old fish. And guess what. Some, of the same >species, had MORE Mercury than current fish. The conclusion was that the >level of Hg in fish has nothing to do with industry. This is the scientists >talking, not the EPA. And if the EPA has anything to do with anything, you >know it will be wrong. > >Jim > > > >At 01:44 PM 4/15/98 -0400, marc wrote: >>There are, of course, a zillion other ways to control the "threat" from >>mercury cells other than an outright ban. One suggestion was to have a >>deposit on the cells to encourage purchasers to return them to the store >>from which they bought the cell once it was dead. >> >>The reality is that flourescent lightbulbs introduce into the environment >>well over 1000 times the mercury that the batteries did; we all just toss >>the burned-out light tubes into the trash, and they break as soon as they >>are tossed into the landfill, if not before. The mercury batteries have to >>rust before they release mercury, and that is a matter of many years. >> >>The issue is one more of inflammatory environmentalism gone a-gley than of >>a reasoned response to a huge threat. >> >>As to the situation with the eating of fish, I am not a large-scale >>consumer of our finny friends. But I want to know just how these fish got >>mercury into their systems from camera batteries. Am I missing something? >>Is there a piscine market for MR-4 meters and old Spotmatics? Have I been >>neglecting a possible venue for camera shows I should be attending? >> >>Marc >> >> >>msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 >>Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir! >>