Re: Distractions....

Government officials are illiterate in chemistry as well as physics and
biology, However, they have been forced to be rational a little bit, As I
remember, and you need to ask an industrial chemist to get the proper EPA
rule, not a government official, you can dump up to three pounds of PCB
contained in transformers or capacitors in ordinary landfill garbage.


Perhaps you remeember the article in the Wall Street Journal about 5 years
or so ago. The scientist that blew the whistle on PCB's, on examination
of a lot more evidence, decided that he had overstated the public risk. He
showed unusual understanding when he said that no politician would dare to
unwind the proscriptions to a level in keeping with the risk. To my
knowledge, no responsible government official has proposed reevaluating the
regulations, but even the EPA recognizes that a few pounds of sealed
capacitors are not a superfund problem.

Having said that, you should understand that any attempt by you to behave
in a responsible manner will normally get you crucified by people that
don't know an acid from a base.

Jon's advice to replace the capacitors is sensible. Just don't make it a
bigger deal than it is.


At 11:33 PM 12/22/99 -0600, you wrote:

>From: Jon Elson <jmelson@...>
>
>Jon Anderson wrote:
>
>> From: Jon Anderson <janders@...>
>>
>> David,
>>
>> There are two cans with two caps per can, sharing each sharing the
>> center of three taps. They are Sprague-Clorinal 17.5-17.5 @ 360 volts
>> AC.
>
>Acck! These are PCB containing capacitors! Your house may now be
>a superfund site. I'd get those replaced with equivalent non-PCB
>capacitors, and see how bad it will be to have them disposed of by
>a licensed handler of those materials. Most especially, you really don't
>want to keep using 30+ year-old capacitors, that might blow up on
>you, and make an honest hazardous waste dump of your shop. And,
>if one of them does blow, you really wouldn't want to keep using the
>shop.
>
>Jon
>