[PLUG] LCD thingies

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2006 16:27:00 -0800
Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> dijo:

> plastic and glass, and those are very low toxicity (non-leaded glass
> is just modified sand, mostly).  

At the risk of going off-topic, this discussion has me wondering a bit
about lead and glass. Meine elders were Deutsche and I have inherited
the odd "lead crystal" object. Now, it occurs to me that, in the
unlikely event such items made their way into a landfill, the lead
would be pretty much trapped inside the glass. Not that I am going to
drink high acid wine from them, but do we really need to worry about
lead inside of glass? Yes, I suppose given enough time the lead would
leach out. But I'm guessing we're talking about tens of thousands of
years here. Surely Ma Nature can handle that, right? For that matter, I
can go to any of a number of stores right here in PDX and buy more lead
crystal. Were it really that evil, wouldn't it be banned by now?

So why are we so worried about lead in the glass in CRTs? Or is this
just one of those pop culture things where people hear the word "lead"
and freak out without thinking things through?