computer monitors for lead?

[hornsurgeon]

i read somewhere online that computer monitors have 3-5 pounds of lead in the tube. could this be recovered for boolits?

[billyb]

48 hours had a episode sunday on crt's being shipped to china for recycling,showed chinese wemon melting the circut boards down for the lead based solder, the killer was the dixon levels. Bill

[HeavyMetal]

I think the hazards of recovering what little lead is in a monitor far outways the value of the lead.....today, in 2 years??? who knows!

I think China's on a headlong rush into some huge cancer issue's in the next 10 to 12 years! I'd rather not expose myself to the stuff in a crt.

I think you better off chasing wheel weights for boolit alloy and leave things like monitors and car batteries to the needs of a more desperate time..... that I hope never comes!

[jonk]

I'd say the only way I'd try it would be to remove the casing, build a bonfire over it and walk away. Whatever lead melted off when things settled I'd pick up.

Hardly worth it.

[0802]

Saw a feature on such processes in National Geographic (I think) several months ago. AIRC, this was about how its done in Africa by kids and how its ruining the environment. These kids dig though landfills, come up with cables, circuit boards, CRTs, etc. and then put them on bonfires in the shantytowns and burn the plastic off. The produces all kind of toxic gas and runoff into the water supply.

Looked like pretty toxic stuff. Boolits are important, but my health is more important.

[AZ-Stew]

I believe the lead in computer CRTs is "alloyed" into the glass, a-la lead crystal. I know some is, for the purpose of reducing X-rays that are generated via the high voltages required to make the CRT work.

At one time I worked in an RCA picture tube manufacturing plant. The old TVs (non-flat panel) are CRT displays. To my knowledge, the tubes consist of a glass envelope, they contain a thin, perforated sheet steel mask just behind the tube face, the tube face inside is covered with different phosphors to generate the three colors, and the rear (neck) end of the tube contains the electron gun assembly which is almost entirely made of aluminum, but with tungsten elements for each of the three guns, each having a thin coating of something (only a few grains weight each). There is also a barrium compund (a few molecules thick) used to coat the inside of the tube which captures any remaining gas particles after the tube is evacuated (all the air sucked out).

Bottom line, there's no loose lead that can be extracted from a CRT. It's all in the glass.

Regards,

Stew

[Tom Herman]

....The lead in the CRT's is tied up as Lead Silicate, or lead glass... Essentially unrecoverable for us.

Happy Shootin'! -Tom