[Milsurplus] Oil filled capacitors and PCBs in our equipment

[Facility 406]

Some random thoughts, which probably won't even help, but the first 
things that come to mind...

> Anyway...  Oil filled caps in our gear.  Was it standard to denote 
> whether they contained PCBs in them, or is it a safe assumption that ANY 
> oil filled cap with a manufacture date before 1980 is suspect?

I would suspect all, by default, if made during a time the material was 
in common use for a particular product.  I can't imagine anyone labeling 
an item with just one single material inside, especially when that 
material wasn't thought to be an issue at the time.  Imagine an air 
filled tire with a warning, "May Contain CO2" (even though the 
atmosphere already does), because it can be toxic to humans.

Where are you that 1980 is a key date?  In the US, it was banned in the 
70's, for issues known since the 60's, of a material that may persist 
for eternity.

> of those are likely out of spec and leaky, is there ANY way to open the 
> cap, dispose of the contents at an EPA approved site and then restuff 
> the shell with new components?  Or is my only recourse to decouple the 
> old cap from the circuit and then place newer ones under the chassis (or 
> try to hide them, etc).  If my only option is the latter, once decoupled 
> from the circuit, what's the likelihood that it will actually start 
> leaking (as in, the oil).  One would think that would be fairly 
> miniscule, but what with some of these going on 80+ years old, it's a 
> crap shoot at this point, no?

Cut out, toss in trash.  One drop of a maybe, is nothing compared to the 
hundreds of thousands of tons of the same, already in the landfills, 
mixed throughout the soils, and coating the surfaces of industrial 
sites.  Start leaking?  If it exists, it will fail, the question is, 
will it fail within the span of humanity, and matter, especially to 
everyone who is already exposed (anyone born/alive after the creation of 
the material), and the tons of material already out there on a global scale?

On the plus-side, all your caps probably don't have this label, so 
there's probably a real easy way to dispose of them, like everything else:

https://svswa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/noTrash.jpg

A person could always mail them to a waste facility, and let them figure 
it out, as processing material, and keeping suspect items out of the 
landfills, is their job.  Personal liability would prevent one from from 
stating, or speculating what the material is, so it's better to send 
such items blind, and let the experts figure it out.

Anyway, just random thoughts regarding the concern of a capacitor, with 
a maybe issue.  There could be no PCBs in it at all.

Kurt