i am thinking of doing my b&w development at home. my concern is whether the chemicals are environmentally hazardous. i used to use the darkroom in my university, which had a filtered sink (at least this is what they told us...). is it ok to drain the liquids in the sink, as most people seem to to? otr is there a better way for disposal?

stefan

-- stefan randlkofer (geesbert@yahoo.com), November 29, 2001

Answers

This answer pertains specifically to Canada, so you may want to check local regulations in your own country. Standard B&W chemistry is fairly harmless to the environment in the quantities that a home darkroom puts out. In Canada, where the law is pretty strict concerning what can be dumped into the sewers, B&W is pretty much left alone. One good hint - the active ingredients in dev and fix pretty much negate each other when mixed - so the one thing most people suggest is to flush both down the drain at the same time with plenty of water. Some of the toners and such are more of a concern. I do save my Selenium toner and such for proper disposal at a waste reduction facility, though again, I use such small quantites that I probably don't need to. Look at it this way. There is a lot of concern about photo labs because they are high profile (a 1-hr in every mall, so to speak). A few years ago a study was done and in Edmonton, where I live (a city of 650,000), one chrome bumper replating shop (of course out of the way in the industrial section of town) puts out more hazourdous materials in a year than all the major custom photofinishers in town (about 7 or 8).

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), November 29, 2001.

Stefan:

This subject has been the subject of controversy for "hundreds" of years, literally. In the old days, photogs used mercury vapours to make their plates and THAT IS toxic. Perhaps that is where some of the conern comes from. In the past, colour chemistry used fomaldehyde which can be very nasty stuff: a major irritant.

All of the currently available chemicals for photo work, with one or two exceptions, are benign. Developers use a small amount of a reducing agent that is easily dealt with in any modern sewage system. Stop bath is vinegar with a bit( very small bit) of a benign colour indicator. Hypo is a sulfate which is again readily decomposed in the sewage system. Kodak Xtol uses vitamin C and sodium sulfite, found in all wine, and sodium carbonates/hydroxides: safer than exhaust from even the clenest hybrid Toyota.

Selenium toner is a metal that is not seriously toxic in itself, but is best kept out of a city, or septic tank system. The best way to deal with small concentrations is to save it and dump it into the garden: the active minerals in the soil will tie up selenium very effectively. Selenium in small quantities is a vital mineral for human health.

Runoff from normal soil contains many minerals: that is why the sea is salty and contains every element.

The only really bad actor used at all these days is "Pyro" or Pyrogallic Acid. Luckily it is unstable and decomposes after a while. In the dilute concentrations that result when flushed down a sewer with running water, there is no known negative effect on the environment.

Anyone who uses a computer stresses the environment infinitely more severely than an amateur photographer. The amount of toxic stuff including lead from the monitor screen when dunped is dramatic; arsine and phosphine from the chips fabrication process is very very toxic. Anyone who uses anything with chips in it is stressing the environment more than if that person were an active user of darkroom chemicals. You do not want to know what stuff is used and dumped in teh manufacture of chips. There is a whole industry that has grown up to handle these wastes.

If one does not want to stress the environment he/she should live in cave and deprive him/herself of anything fabricated. I am not saying be irresponsible, but keep in mind the second largest source of greenhouse gas is flatulent cows.

Now this gets political. I agree with George Bush on this. Anyone who has spent more than 1 minute in China can see the amount of crap that goes into the air from those guys is soon to surpass the Americans as far as green house gasses is concerned. The other pollution they put out, -heavy metals, organic toxins, dioxins, not to mention halocarbons - is strictly 19th century and they are exempt from many aspects of the Kyoto Agreement because they are "developing".

Westerners have excellent sewer systems and we need not worry about a few grams of benign chemicals going into a system designed to handle them. Co-incidently, yesterday I was reviewing the WHO standards for sewage systems as a part of my job and the bad actors are certainly not photochemicals except for Pyro and chromium in Bichromate bleaches. The type of chromium in bleaches, while not nice is not bad. All leather contains chromium and waste from tanneries is nasty stuff. That is one reason why most leather comes from developing countries these days: there are few if any restrictions against dumping the stuff that leather uses. That is a more valid reason to not buy leather than mistreatment of animals IMHO.

End of tirade!! I shall now go and cut the strip of negatives I was drying after processing them at home and dumping the whole works down the sink.

To your, and my, continuing very good health.

Click Click, splash splash, gurgle gurgle, down it goes.

-- RICHARD ILOMAKI (richardjx@hotmail.com), November 29, 2001.

I think the home environment is a wonderful place to process film.

-- Dave Jenkins (djphoto@vol.com), November 29, 2001.

I remember at a lab in PA I used to use there was a collection point to recover silver, probably more for its economic value than for complying with regs. I would call the local sanitary sewer, a high end local photolab, and any school with dark rooms to see what they do.

I feel compelled to mention that tho' China and other parts of the developing world are belching out ever more industrial pollutants, that fact really doesn't leave the US and others off the hook- we did more than our share of pollution and natural resource depletion to amass the wealth we now have. As for computers, there is quite an industry of electronic scrappers that recover components and materials from discarded equipment. As in the case of leather making, some of these do contract out to developing nations probably to avoid env'l and employee safety regulations and seek cheaper labor. Ultimately, the morally right thing would be for the developed world to give a hand to the developing world to find less polluting paths.

Anyhow, it's good you're checking into this. I know for instance in some municipalities, photo labs are out of compliance, and the local santiary sewer folks seem to look the other way- not a good thing.

-- Tse-Sung (tsesung@yahoo.com), November 29, 2001.

Stefan--

Everything mentioned above seems right, given what I've learned. I'll just add this: I take my exhausted fixer to a lab in order to run it through their silver recovery system. Perhaps the fixer is not bad for the environment/water supply, but this just always seemed more prudent. If you don't have friends working at a lab (as I do), just go to a good lab and ask -- they'll probably take your used fixer, as long as we're not talking about ten gallons per week.

-- Douglas Kinnear (douglas.kinnear@colostate.edu), November 29, 2001.

Save your exhausted fixer and selenium toner for the the special hazard waste collections. Xtol is particularly benign as well as a great developer so you could switch to that if you are not already using it. The photo chemistry coloumn in "PhotoTechniques" has this issue come up from time to time.

-- John Collier (jbcollier@powersurfr.com), November 29, 2001.

Richard's correct and if you go to Ilford's website, they have a breakdown (hahaha) of what happens to the stuff post user. Selenium poses more of a danger.

He also makes a interesting point for a foreigner about Kyoto, but I think the lack of acceptace here has to do more with the europeans and Brits and how they seem to be forcing their point economically and underhandedly so than it does with say China or India (both developing nations and major polluters).

-- Dave Doyle (soilsouth@home.com), November 29, 2001.

I usualy drain my hc110 dev. into the sink mixed with some bicarbonate, but my fixer I put it in bottles to the sun, until it evaporates and I save a past that I´m sure contains silver, at the end I´ll provably discover it is just crap...

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), November 29, 2001.

Wong from hot humid Malaysia. I wonder why the US is the odd man out in the Kyoto Meeting. Probably there are still alot of money to be made.

-- WONG KH (DOSI@maxis.net.my), November 29, 2001.

Postscript:

I used to be able to take a gallon of exhausted fixer to a lab and they would give me a roll of film for each gallon in exchnge for the silver they recovered, then they stopped, as too many people were bringing in only partially exhausted fixer with little silver in it. I am sure they were losing money even with loaded fixer.

Keep in mind the electricity need to electrochemically deposit useful amounts of silver from old fixer probably causes polution form the generation station. If they had solar panels to generate the electricty that would be better, but that is expensive and the manufacture of Solar panels is just as dirty is computer chips.

You can't win in this game unless we have total recycling of everything, and not many of us would like to drink water which the day before we urinated out into the reclaim system, with the other waste products going into hydroponic toamtoes.

In nature, NOTHING is wasted except where we humans are involved. The trick is to minimize it and make it as benign as possible. When we colonize Mars, we can start over doing it better.

Cheers

-- RICHARD ILOMAKI (richardjx@hotmail.com), November 29, 2001.

thanks to all. i will try to find a lab which takes my stuff. just because someone else is dumping their fridges in the forest, i won't do that. if you have the luck of being educated and wealthy enough (like most of us in the so called first world are) to afford sustainable behaviour you have to try that. laziness is no excuse.

-- stefan randlkofer (geesbert@yahoo.com), November 30, 2001.

Developing countries are supposed to be big polluters....because they are developing(!), just like any country in the West during its own respective industrial period. Kyoto would have pressured developed countries into prioritizing research into more ecologically minded technology that would benefit the "other half" and everyone in the long run. This is not going to happen if research is solely driven by short term benefits. Alternative energy is not going get is day if there is no market demand especially when oil is cheap.

-- ray tai (razerx@netvigator.com), November 30, 2001.

I collect used fixer and developer in large separate containers. When I see the amount that is accumulated over a few months it would make me feel sick to pour it out into the sewer. Here, in Sweden, it would be illegal to begin with, but even if it wasn't I would need to see som scientific proof that it was harmless before I poor anything out. I do not subscribe to the "just dilute it in more water and then it will be harmless-theory". The accumulation of bio-hazardous chemicals and heavy metals in nature has showed that the dilution theory does not work. And no sewage treatment plant takes away 100% of anything. Also, not all sewage treatment is chemistry based, some are using biological methods to treat the waste water. The bacterias in bio- treatment can easily be upset (die) and stop working when they have to deal with certain chemicals.

Keep hazardous stuff out of the sewer, when you have alternative safer ways of handling it, period.

-- Peter.Olsson (peter.olsson@lulebo.se), November 30, 2001.