Chip Suppliers Warn on EU Plan To Bar 'Forever Chemicals' (ft.com) 64
Chip suppliers have warned that a European effort to impose a ban on "forever chemicals" will cause widespread disruption to already tight semiconductor supply chains. From a report: Five European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, on Tuesday proposed that the EU phase out tens of thousands of so-called forever chemicals, known as PFAS, used in the production of semiconductors, batteries, aircraft, cars, medical equipment and even frying pans and ski wax.
The ban would constitute "the broadest restriction proposal in history," Frauke Averbeck, who led the proposal for the German Environment Agency, said. "It's a huge step for us to take." Richard Luit, senior policy adviser at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment, added: "If no action is taken we estimate that the societal costs will exceed the costs without a restriction." However, industry executives warned that a broad ban could have severe consequences for many sectors. Chemours, a leading supplier of high-end fluoropolymers, warned that the chemicals were "absolutely critical" for semiconductor manufacturing as well as a wide range of other industries.
The ban would constitute "the broadest restriction proposal in history," Frauke Averbeck, who led the proposal for the German Environment Agency, said. "It's a huge step for us to take." Richard Luit, senior policy adviser at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment, added: "If no action is taken we estimate that the societal costs will exceed the costs without a restriction." However, industry executives warned that a broad ban could have severe consequences for many sectors. Chemours, a leading supplier of high-end fluoropolymers, warned that the chemicals were "absolutely critical" for semiconductor manufacturing as well as a wide range of other industries.
What societal cost? (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand the desire to ban PFAS chemicals from food containers, because we end up consuming them. I can also maybe understand banning them from things that are likely to go in the garbage dump because of the potential for leaching into the water supply. But banning them from chips that probably won't even be touched by any person, animal, or liquid before they get recycled seems of highly dubious importance. And if chips are ending up in the garbage dump, that's the problem you need to solve, not what the chips are made of.
Europe screwed over the whole world by forcing their lead-free solder nonsense, and almost two decades later, we're *still* paying the price for that mistake in the form of premature product failures that create mountains of unnecessary e-waste, because even now, lead-free solder breaks way too easily in the real world. And now the EU wants to monkey with chip design again? No. In fact, not just no. H***, no. Maybe even insert a few more swear words into that.
Find another way to solve the problem — one that doesn't break technology en masse.
Re:What societal cost? (Score:5, Informative)
I can also maybe understand banning them from things that are likely to go in the garbage dump because of the potential for leaching into the water supply.
Getting into the water supply is the real problem with these chemicals. Companies that make and use these chemicals have allowed them to leach into the water supply. It's probably very difficult to stop this from happening.
Re:What societal cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can also maybe understand banning them from things that are likely to go in the garbage dump because of the potential for leaching into the water supply.
Getting into the water supply is the real problem with these chemicals. Companies that make and use these chemicals have allowed them to leach into the water supply. It's probably very difficult to stop this from happening.
Problems being difficult doesn't mean that they aren't worth solving. The right thing to do is create standards for maximum amounts of these materials that can leach into the water supply, with penalties for failing to do so. The way companies solve that problem should be left up to them. If the easiest solution is to choose a different chemistry for something, and if that has no significant downsides, great. If the easiest solution is to encapsulate the chips in a thin layer of PFAS-free epoxy, that's just as great, because it solves the problem with the least downsides.
Re:What societal cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Was the industry even *asked* to solve the problem? AFAIK, nobody was even talking about PFAS as a concern until maybe a year or two ago, or at least that's when I started hearing about it. That's not enough time to come up with a mitigation strategy, implement it, and solve the problem, given the speed of industry. Heck, that's likely not even enough time to pass a regulation saying that they need to solve the problem, given the speed of government.
Re:What societal cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
And there was some pretty big clues on this well before then; there were investigations back in 1980 when male employees of a textile producer that used PFAS were experiencing impotence and “polymer fever” [theguardian.com]. This isn't new, the news cycle about this was triggered by investigations finding larger amounts of PFAS pollution than expected, and finding that many companies either lied about phasing out PFAS, or while they did actually phase out one specific PFAS (e.g. PFOA), in many cases they did so by just replacing it with some other PFAS (it's a large family of related molecules), adhering to the letter of the EPA rule without adhering to the spirit of the rule.
You didn't hear about it because it wasn't in the news much, but it was absolutely a big deal for the industry and environment protection organizations. The industry slow-rolled and weaseled out of voluntary compliance, now the hammer comes down.
Re: (Score:2)
PFOA is *a* PFAS, but it is not the *only* PFAS. Did they fail to achieve the reduction in that specific chemical? No. According to the EPA, all of the companies met the goal as of 2014 [epa.gov].
So either they lied or asking 8 U.S. companies to be more careful isn't equivalent to setting limits that apply across the entire industry, including internationally.
Besides, the biggest source of environmental PFAS in waste water is probably Teflon incineration [chemsec.org]. And unfortunately, banning PTFE is probably not technologi
Re: What societal cost? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The clue is in the name: "forever" chemicals. It's not like other kinds of pollution where it biodegrades over time, so you can keep pumping it into the rivers and the seas as long as you don't overload them.
This stuff accumulates forever. We need to remove what is already there, and stop putting more in.
Re:What societal cost? (Score:5, Informative)
Lead free solder (Score:1)
Europe screwed over the whole world by forcing their lead-free solder nonsense
It also chews up soldering iron tips like nobody's business. Ask me how I know.
Re: (Score:3)
I get it. Lead makes soldering easy. The problem is that it's lead. Banning it was absolutely the right thing to do, even if using lead-free solder slightly inconvenience you.
Re: (Score:3)
I get it. Lead makes soldering easy. The problem is that it's lead. Banning it was absolutely the right thing to do, even if using lead-free solder slightly inconvenience you.
Lead replaced one environmental problem (lead in drinking water) with a different environmental problem (mountains of consumer waste from products failing at a fraction of their historical lifetime). That's not a win; it's a lateral motion.
Re: (Score:2)
mountains of consumer waste from products failing at a fraction of their historical lifetime
LOL! I'd love to see some evidence of that! Consumer electronics simply aren't failing in large numbers due to bad solder joints. That's a complete fiction.
Re: (Score:2)
mountains of consumer waste from products failing at a fraction of their historical lifetime
LOL! I'd love to see some evidence of that! Consumer electronics simply aren't failing in large numbers due to bad solder joints. That's a complete fiction.
The GPU industry would beg to disagree. Large-scale failures have happened as recently as 2021 [eurogamer.net].
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like a very narrow problem not caused by using lead-free solder.
You're making my case for me. It's clear that wide-spread failures aren't happening.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that it's lead.
Much the same as the problem is that it's carbon.
Assuming there is only black and white for elements is as dumb as it is with everything else in life.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you not understand the problems with lead exposure?
Re: (Score:2)
Do you not understand the problems with lead exposure?
Yeah, it is a horrible thing lead even exists. We should shun it from the periodic table and totally never think it might ever be useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, it looks like you were you exposed to quite a bit of it as a child...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to see some evidence that Pb solder joints fail less often than alternatives. This seems to be nonsense imaged by people who just can't handle being slightly inconvenienced.
I have a bunch of RoHS compliant wotsits. If you guys were to be believed, most of it should have failed years ago. I've replaced a few usb and proprietary connectors, but never because the solder joints failed.
Re:What societal cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that PFAS are not a new concern. They are being phased out by manufacturers for years. In my industry we changed chemicals 3 years ago to remove PFOS (a typical member of the PFAS family). Our results in chip manufacture are exactly, exactly the same, according to our experience and to published literature.
People are once more asking for delays for something we know is a problem, we know how to solve. Same problem with phasing out single-use plastics, or neonicotinoid insecticides. It's your convenience over safety of all, or even the liveability of the ecosystem we need.
Along the past 2 decades, a bunch of dangerous industrial solvents were progressively phased out and replaced, in particular the chlorinated solvents (tricholoroethane, tricholoroethylene, chloroform), more recently the n-methyl- then the n-ethyl-pyrrolidone. Also chrolobenzene replaced by anisole, and anisole replaced by ethyllactate, amylacetate, other funny-smelling safer solvents. I still have to use dimethylformamide, but we are looking into ways to eliminate it out of the process. We also phased out liquid HF in favour of enclosed vapour HF, much safer for everyone.
A lot of these solvents used in labs just evaporate to air because of bad quality of lab equipment, careless work, or even because it's less expensive than having them recycled at a specialist waste plant. I don't know where you live, but my pollution from when I was a careless student long ago circled the earth multiple times in the meantime and you and your family members may be breathed it.
Banning the lead in solder was bad for me as a Sunday hacker because melting temperature of 200 C was more convenient than the new allows that require 300-400 C. I'm nevertheless happy we did it. Lead/cadmium/mercury are a dangerous pollutants and we have electronics waste everywhere in the city. If a single phone that falls off a car to be smashed by traffic is forever pollution in my neighbourhood (and in yours), then I'd rather not have them in the places where the neighbourhood council organize the yearly mushroom picking event.
Electronics are much cheaper than decades ago, and reliable enough such that we only need change the TV set when it stops being compatible with newer formats, not because they stop working due to soldering.
We are engineers and we work towards creating new objects that are useful to society. Sometimes we need to rethink design and process to make these objects safer. I'm happy to be part of that.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but rich people's profits!
Sometimes people use the reverse argument "in the end it's regular Joe who pays" so I don't know who is more affected. In worst case, I would say people living in developed countries can afford a 5% more expensive gizmo. (We are already buying more than we really need.)
In poor countries: factory workers jeopardize their health to manufacture electronics. A ban on process chemicals used in manufacture of products sold in EU will drastically reduce their use at least for products from reputable brands.
In deve
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That same lead-free solder is the reason USB connectors and headphone jacks have a half-life of approximately 2 years before they start having electrical problems because the solder literally fractured under stress instead of bending the way lead does. It's probably the #2 reason (after bad electrolytic capacitors) why it's so rare to find working electronic devices that are more than 10, but fewer than ~20, years old... thanks to RoHS solder, old electronic stuff now LITERALLY breaks from mere "old age" as
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just WAIT until homeowners start finding out that their next central A/C unit won't just cost twice as much
If there is just one to be proud of during our generation, it is the banning of chlorinated refrigerants. Propane is also not plutonium, it's the propellant in pressurized cans and as long as you don't throw it into fire it's fine. I don't feel sorry at all for some entitled homeowner with centralized A/C who now has to pay slightly more for such a luxury. If you are fortunate enough to be a homeowner, design your home or move to a home designed for your climate.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are fortunate enough to be a homeowner, design your home or move to a home designed for your climate.
Yeah that should be about 2% of homeowners.
Re: (Score:2)
About the same as the 4% of homes that have air conditioning, then (data: France).
Re: (Score:2)
I'm in Canada and have central AC. Occasional recharge is way cheaper than system replacement. Not feeling guilty at all.
Re:What societal cost? (Score:5, Informative)
The amount anyone will ever be exposed to due to cellphones crushed to dust under car wheels isn't even a rounding error compared to the amount of lead people used to encounter in their environment due to things like paint, leaded gas, or recently-disturbed 19th-century water pipes.
* Leaded petrol was banned everywhere, starting 20 years ago. Last country in the world still using it was Algeria and they banned it in 2021. The UN congratulated itself over the ban and established a parallel with the Montreal protocol banning the fluorinated refrigerants.
* Leaded paint was entirely banned in my place between 1988 and 1993. Soma places have regulation to assess and systematically replace leaded paint when houses change owner.
* Old water pipes are compulsory to replace when lead exceeds 10 ug/L (EU directive from 2013).
Your examples show that lead was banned step by step, with only corner cases remaining (car batteries). You are using "there is lead century-old pipes" as an excuse to prevent banning lead in 21th Century electronics. That way, you'd never get anything done. Just because there is still some lead circulating somewhere does not mean we should not continue reducing the supply that goes into nature. Eventually we'll get rid of the leaded batteries, and EVs are taking care of that. It does not mean that lead disappears entirely, there will still be corner cases in industry, but not anymore in consumer or disposable products (for example leaded batteries might remain in ton-heavy static storage associated to solar panels).
Your criticism reminds of people complaining about banning "the plastic straws". It was not the plastic straw, it was the plastics bags, then the straws, then the cutlery, the dishes, coffee cups, most recently the fruit trays, and hopefully one day the fast food hamburger boxes. We're banning things one by one such that industry and consumers have time to adapt to each change. It might take a couple more decades until we're finished, but we're getting there.
Re: What societal cost? (Score:3)
It's interesting that you mention Britain, because one of the worst residential skyscraper fires in world history - Grenfell Tower - was determined by the authorities to have been ultimately due to an exploding Hotpoint refrigerator that used butane as its refrigerant.
I'm sure the people who lost their homes, pets, family members, and/or possessions were comforted by the knowledge that their sacrifice reduced global greenhouse gas emissions by some negligible fraction of a percent compared to conventional
Re: What societal cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Grenfell fire only took this dramatic proportion due to the "calamitous deficiencies in the installation of the windows, cavity barriers and cladding system, and their failure to meet building regulations." Any small scale fire (it's a 24 storey building hosting 300 people, small fires happen) would eventually propagate into a total disaster. It only took 1 year after the "disastrous refurbishment" was completed for a small fire to occur.
Of course the regulations are designed for those who follow them. Propane as refrigeration fluid is ok as long as fluid installation, and house construction materials, are designed to resist a small fire. Britain chose to improve and banned the combustible insulation panels.
According to the web, one of the most common cause for fires are still candles. it does not mean we should ban scented candles. What we need to do is to make sure houses are built in a way a candle falling on the ground won't burn down everything.
Source: https://www.standard.co.uk/new... [standard.co.uk]
Re: What societal cost? (Score:2)
The point is, it was a fire that wouldn't have happened if the refrigerator had used nonflammable refrigerant.
And on the topic of insulation... Let's not forget that the spray-in insulation that got reformulated to be cfc-free in the 1990s only achieved its flame-suppression approval by using additives that themselves lose effectiveness over time... and it's delusional to think homeowners are going to spend tens of thousands of dollars tearing apart their walls and replacing it a few decades from now once i
Re: (Score:2)
and it's delusional to think homeowners are going to spend tens of thousands of dollars tearing apart their walls and replacing it a few decades from now once it's no longer safe.
There are regulatory frameworks that oblige you to do so. Until 2021 there was a nationwide obligation in France to oblige the replacement of old insulations, at the occasion of any change on walls and roof operated by any contractor. This was replaced by the new EU energy rating for houses (A+ to G) accompanied by restrictions to sell or rent the worst categories. The city of Paris keeps an obligation to have an inspection, possibly renovation of outer walls once every 10 years.
there are still hundreds of thousands of homes across the US with Zinsco or Federal Pacific circuit breakers, 40+ years after they became known fire hazards,
What moderates this problem
Re: (Score:2)
In most parts of the US, inspectors have no right to demand entry to private property (New York and California might beg to differ). The authorities can refuse to issue a building permit unless you agree to allow inspection, but the whole enforcement system basically depends upon their ability to put noncompliant contractors out of business. If an individual homeowner does work without a permit that isn't visible from a public vantage point, there's very little the authorities can directly DO to them.
As a p
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As someone who works in the electronics industry, and has worked on products which must have long term reliability , I'll ask for a citation please.
except for particularly narrow use cases, i.e. military equipment that must work for 20 years under extreme duress, saying that lead free solders are creating a mountain of ewaste is completely inaccurate. making me upgrade to android 56473 is what makes for mountains of ewaste.
I'll give you a small amount of leeway in that when lead free solder was first used,
Re: (Score:2)
You must be American.
Re: (Score:2)
Europe screwed over the whole world by forcing their lead-free solder nonsense, and almost two decades later, we're *still* paying the price for that mistake in the form of premature product failures that create mountains of unnecessary e-waste
Yeah nah sorry they did nothing of the sort. Lead free solder is perfectly fine for even hardened industrial applications. The problem arises due to poor manufacturing (especially early on where idiot companies thought you could just change the solder material and not adjust things such as the temperature curve).
What you're complaining about is poor quality control and cheap manufacturing. The biggest issue lead causes that isn't mitigated by manufacturing technique is tin whiskering and that basically cont
Re: (Score:2)
Lead free solder is fine. The problem is bad soldering, often due to it being done too cheaply.
Instead of making 0.1% less profit, some companies decided to use a cheaper manufacturing process.
Re: (Score:2)
Europe screwed over the whole world by forcing their lead-free solder nonsense, and almost two decades later, we're *still* paying the price for that mistake in the form of premature product failures that create mountains of unnecessary e-waste, because even now, lead-free solder breaks way too easily in the real world.
And don't forget that even lead-free solder still contains heavy metals, and thus still needs to be treated like hazardous waste.
Re: (Score:2)
... banning them from chips that probably won't even be touched by any person, animal, or liquid before they get recycled seems of highly dubious importance...
Recycled? Are you aware of how much electronics "recycling" is done in third-world countries by kids wading through piles of electronic scrap using blowtorches to remove chips and vats of chemicals to try to recover the gold?
Recycling is nowhere near as successful, helpful, or complete as we've been led to believe. Much of it is a total scam, and even the sectors that actually recover useful quantities of stuff tend not to have very good - if any - environmental controls in place. For an idea of what's real
Re: (Score:2)
paywalled link (Score:2)
Cool, thanks for sharing.
Just because it's difficult... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it's difficult doesn't mean we should whine about it rather than do it.
With 8 billion people on the planet, and a huge environmental impact from our activities, we should absolutely be extremely careful about what we're putting into the ecosystem.
If that makes some manufacturing more difficult and expensive... OK? I won't have as many electronic toys, but my grandkids won't have as many potential health issues.
Re: (Score:2)
Which day in the past 20 years have you felt like your lifestyle has grown closer to the Amish?
Not many, but I fight it every single day.
Re: (Score:2)
The Amish use tech, and lots of it. It's just tech typical of the 1700's and 1800's. Such tech is incredibly advanced compared to stone-age tech, but incredibly primitive compared to modern-day tech.
So choosing to be Amish is not a rejection of tech, it is simply playing-favorites with which tech one prefers. And anyway their values and culture are focused much more on religion and family than on tech anyway.
However, I don't believe for a minute that you actually think they have it right. If you did, yo
Re: (Score:2)
I see that I was modded Offtopic, so apparently I have to make the connection plain.
Cars have computer chips in them, in particular modern cars with onboard computers that control most of its systems, and have infotainment and tracking systems built in. The recent chip shortage has caused problems for car production, for this very reason. Further chip shortages, as discussed in the summary of this article, would further harm the production of such cars.
One possible response would be to make cars like they
Re: (Score:2)
Don't sweat it, if the "anything I don't like is a troll" mods don't get you, the "I'm a Wikipedia reject pedant" mods will.
Re: (Score:2)
Wise words.
Re: (Score:2)
Just because it's difficult doesn't mean we should whine about it rather than do it.
This really isn't a "suck it up and do it anyway" situation. It's a "nobody knows how to fix this" situation. Teflon is a PFAS, and there are no known alternatives in a lot of situations, including critical things like ball valves and metal pipe linings.
Besides, the primary cause of PFAS in the water is probably improper garbage handling practices by governments. But rather than spending the money to treat, recycle, and dispose of waste in a safe manner, they pass regulations trying to ban things that th
Work in Semiconductors. This is Half-Baked. (Score:1)
https://www.semi.org/en/blogs/semi-news/fluorinated-chemicals-are-essential-to-semiconductor-manufacturing-and-innovation
Here is a simple and accurate summary of why we can't manufacture chips without PFAs. At least at the moment.
Semiconductors require ultra-clean equipment and environment. There are entire books and international scientific conferences on the topic of ultra-clean semiconductor manufacturing. Unfortunately, PFAs are the only materials that do not react with almost all other chemicals, an