[pure-silver] Re: Strorage life of diluted fixer?
- From: Lloyd Erlick <lloyd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:29:33 -0400
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
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