By Lloyd Graff
Miles Free - Directory of Industry Research and Technology for the Precision Machined Products Association
LG: I am with Miles Free of the PMPA, and we are talking about the unleaded world of materials. Is lead to steel as trans fat is to food?
MF: It seems to be; although I don’t know what benefit trans fat gives to food. We can certainly document the energy savings that lead gives to steel for machining, let alone brass and aluminum. The state religion seems to be “lead is bad.”
Where did this come from?
It comes from the European Union’s belief in the precautionary principle on lead. It’s kind of disturbing. The EU says when an activity raises threat to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some of the cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. To me this is really a state of faith that any suspicion of any threat to the environment really trumps the lack of scientific evidence that the threat really exists. They’ve turned the burden of proof upside down and said, “Prove absolutely that your product is harmless.”
It sounds like global warming.
Very much so.
So what is the underlying scientific hunch about lead?
I don’t know in terms of what its proposed mechanism for environmental or personal harm is in machined parts. Lead was a real problem from tail pipe emissions, but that lead was reduced 96 percent with unleaded gas. Lead got its face on a reward poster that it’s a bad actor. I don’t know how many children in Europe are expected to ingest screw machine parts. I don’t know how many cars have to end up in an acid bog to raise the net level of lead. I don’t get it.
Nice interview from the people who have effort on machining.