[TheForge] Avoiding the Darwin Award while trying to reduce risk

[Kathy]

The following was posted on another group:
It is always necessary to understand the filler materials and fluxes you are
employing; take the case of Cadmium Vs Antimony for instance: Cadmium (like
lead) is toxic in all its forms, which means among other things that you must
use extreme caution when sanding. It is illegal to employ cadmium bearing
joining alloys on items used for food and drink, or on medical instruments. One
of the replacements for cadmium in filler alloys today is antimony. But,
antimony is also poisonous; it is very similar to arsenic. Both cadmium and
antimony produce toxic gas when you exceed their boiling points, but antimony's
is far worse than cadmium's. In gaseous form, antimony combines with hydrogen to
form stibine gas, which can be fatal at concentrations as low as 10 parts per
million.

So, we see that a thorough understanding of tooling and materials is our only
road to safety. Substituting products which have been safely used by
professionals for decades can lead to greater risk than is posed by the
originals. Also, not every product can be replaced with an adequate substitute.
Handy and Harmon's Easy-Flow #45 can be traded out for their #560 with only a
small increase in price as penalty. However, Easy-Flow #35 is a capping
(filleting) alloy which has no good silver braze substitute.
Michael Porter
Seattle WA.