RoHS Compliance

The RoHS regulation bans the selling of new electrical and electronic equipment containing more than agreed levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants to the European Union market.

California has passed SB 20: Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003, or EWRA. This law prohibits the sale of electronic devices after January 1, 2007, that are prohibited from being sold under the EU RoHS directive, but across a much narrower scope that includes LCDs, CRTs, and the like and only covers the four heavy metals restricted by RoHS.

Other US states and cities are debating whether to adopt similar laws, and there are several states that have mercury and PBDE bans already. At the time of this writing, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have also enacted such bans.

At least five toxic metals are used in the production of old CRT technology including mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants, and lead with lead being the most dangerous and damaging of the toxic metals in CRTs.

While it is more expensive to do, INTEC took a proactive approach to reduce to permissible levels or eliminate entirely the use of the restricted materials and all of INTEC’s current products meet such requirements.