[pure-silver] Re: Strorage life of diluted fixer?
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 13:43:43 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lloyd Erlick" <lloyd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 9:29 AM
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Strorage life of diluted fixer?
> At 11:06 AM 9/22/2004 , you wrote:
>>
> ...
>>Using fixer as a one-shot strikes me as wasteful and bad
>>for the environment.
> ...
>>
>>Jerry
>>
>
>
> sep2304 from Lloyd Erlick,
>
> The ingredients of fixer that are bad for the environment
> come from the paper.
>
> Fixer itself is composed of sodium thiosulfate, sodium
> sulfite and
> distilled water (if it comes from my darkroom, anyway).
> None of these
> substances is particularly bad.
>
> As soon as photo paper goes into the fixer, there are
> silver compounds that
> are not so nice. The more paper (silver) that goes through
> the fixer, the
> more silver compounds, and the more complex they become.
> The more complex,
> the worse for the environment.
>
> Thus, using fixer moderately and avoiding the higher
> concentrations of
> silver compounds avoids the creation of the worst of the
> silver compounds.
> Thus, single-shot or perhaps single-session use of fixer
> could be a good
> thing for darkroom workers to do for the environment.
>
> Should we be discarding silver at all? Are any forms of
> silver acceptable
> as effluent? Is my understanding, as outlined above,
> correct?
>
> Thus far most peoples' behaviour (certainly including
> mine) has been guided
> by municipal or other guidelines, often expressed in
> zoning regulations. I
> live where I can release low levels of stuff into the
> drain. The municipal
> water treatment is supposedly sufficient. But really,
> should we be
> releasing silver at all? And is giving it to a lab that
> uses a silver
> recovery unit good enough?
>
> regards,
> --le
> ________________________________
> Lloyd Erlick Portraits, Toronto.
> voice: 416-686-0326
> email: portrait@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> net: www.heylloyd.com
> ________________________________
>
The silver dissolved in fixer is easily removed by any
of several means. The simplest is steel wool of the kind
that doesn't have oil on it. There are better methods if you
want to reclaim the silver but this works for removing it
from the fixer. For the most part the silver will plate out
on your drain pipes anyway.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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