Some of my favourite camera lenses disappeared from production due to this ham-fisted piece of legislation.

Lead in petrol - bad

No lead anywhere at all, even in tiny amounts is not near so clever, especially in critical applications.

I hadn't heard of that, and it is a little concerning.

I doubt that immediate failures in anything safety critical are a major concern in that anything that can be designed to fail into a safe configuration should be being designed on the assumption of other things such as, eg, hitting the assembly with an axe triggers failsafe behaviour. (I gather there are somethings like the latest jet fighters which are literally completely aerodynamically unstable and are only flyable at all with the active aid of the avionics, but they're relatively rare.)

What's more concerning is if it introduces such high levels of failures that field replacements of the affected boards is overwhelming/too expensive.

Better hold on to your last computer, as the newest one may go belly up any time. That would include your hard drive as well. More frequent backups would be in order for those of us who tend to be a bit lazy.

E. Swanson

I wonder how many people have died of lead solder circuit boards?

I remember this tech, whenever I walked into his lab he would have a soldering iron in one hand and a spool of solder in the other and he would always pull the solder off the spool with his mouth.

Today when he comes to our retirement get togethers he looks like a 70 year old man but he is only in his 80's.

Peak electronics.

As someone who has wielded a soldering iron while putting together several electonic devices from kit back when one could do so in the 1960s, I'm not sure it would be a totally bad thing to have to go back to that era. You got to really understand how your equipment worked. Such devices were could be repaired and re-repaired for decades and decades. Now, almost anything you buy is non-repairable. Use it until it breaks (which isn't very long, either), and then you have to throw it away and buy another. That is about as far removed from sustainability as it is possible to be.

Beyond the whiskers, the lead free solder melts at a higher temperature, and the joint quality is generally poorer. At the same time the complexity is increasing, the size of features is decreasing, and so it the price. I see a lot of stuff, especially computer stuff, that simply doesn't work (at least not for long).

There is also no continuity, as all the design and manufacturing work is outsourced (it seems even the "low cost countries" are outsourcing to even lower cost countries), so often each batch is a dead-end one-shot and designs do not evolve over time.

Contrary to what most people believe, electronic devices don't last forever. There are alway exceptions, but in general I'd bet that if all electronic manufacturing were to end, then virtually all electronic devices would be gone within a generation. Motors and other heavy electrical devices can last much longer, depending on how well they are made.