RA4 chemical disposal

AgX said:

To get back to our issues: At this forum typically Silver-ions are seen as great hazard.

The same time industry over the last years introduced products releasing Silver-ions. And there is a study showing that Silver-ions are less a danger to environment than typically stated.
In this context I can understand mshchem's remark on the big picture.

That is why I worded my reply of post #2 as I did.

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The Britta type water purifiers use a silver component, if there is lead in your drinking water the cartridge exchanges silver for lead. Much healthier to drink tiny amounts of silver than lead. I won't get this to far off topic. However, one word, Plastic! YIKES

Sorry I haven't replied to everyone individually but I couldn't find anyone at my local council to help, all they offered was a service from an external company. I'm going to do a bit more digging and I really appreciate everyones help.

How is your waste service organized? Dates of hauling of various kinds of waste are communicated some way. Also what you may offer at which date and what not. The creator of such information would be the first person to approach.

I can't belief a municipality in the UK advises a consumer with some small amount of "hazardous waste" to use an external company. Was this advice dedicated to your RA-4 bath, or to hazardous waste in general? May they mistake you for a commercial user?

You might want to try the councillor that represents your district of Glasgow. Given how unhelpful the actual council seem to have been, the councillor should want to assist. Usually such people want to gain a reputation for getting answers. It's what gets them re-elected

If it were me then based on the good explanation given by the likes of Maris on how sewerage is treated in the U.K. then I'd just pour it down the drain with a reasonable amount of water

pentaxuser

says silver is typically the only hazardous waste of photographic processing and that you should contact your local authorities to ask if you can dump it down the drain.

This was discussed pretty thoroughly a few months ago with reference to developing film while living in a camper-van.

Here in the U.S., fixer is usually the only issue. Local codes will always vary of course, but dumping developer and stop bath is no big thing in a city system, especially the tiny percentage of people that are shooting film and developing it at home. That must be a very, very small figure. Fixer can be brought to almost any disposal place here.

If you have a septic system, there's a lot of info on how that needs to be addressed. Depends on your geography really: hard stone, soft dirt, the amount of people on it, etc.

Again, look at the amounts we're talking about. It isn't much, just use common sense w/ this. If you have a well for water, it's all verboten. Getting public officials to respond to queries on this is the same everywhere in the world......it gets ignored.

jnania said:

The clean water act was done because of a lack of understanding ?

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Hey John, glad to see you back here.

I think the Clean Water Act (USA) was a pretty good deal and the EPA (USA) did some very legitimate studies on US photofinishing. The lack of understanding issues come in later by the local municipalities making the laws related to their POTWs (Publicly Owned Treatment Works).

Let me give an example... in 1981 the EPA had a publication called "Guidance Document For The Control of Water Pollution in the Photographic Processing Industry." (This was sort of our Bible in my QC department at the time, doing the initial work with respect to those things.) Going from recollection the EPA had recommended that effluent limits be set based on the amount of photo materials processed, NOT as concentration in the effluent. But in practice virtually all the municipalities regulated on concentration. Why? Nobody seems to really know for sure, but likely it was for the simplicity of enforcement. The net effect - this virtually halted water conservation efforts. (If you could, for example, cut your water usage in half, this means that your effluent concentrations double, more or less, and maybe now you are in trouble with certain concentrations.)

Another thing, in a different (?) EPA publication, has to do with the toxicity of photographic silver. They acknowledge that photographic silver (silver thiosulfate) is something on the order of 10,000 to 20,000 times LESS toxic than ionic silver (such as silver nitrate in water). There was some speculation on WHY so many municipalities legislated such stringent limits on silver - it was thought that perhaps they regulated on the basis of possible ionic silver, and just ignored the lower toxicity of photo silver. But again, no one seems to know for sure.

At one time the outfit where I worked owned the largest chain of one-hour labs in the US. Although it was a different division, people from my former department used to oversee the sewering "permit applications" (part of the Clean Water Act regs). So I know there were substantial variations in the allowable concentrations of silver, for example. Out of curiosity they tried to find out how some of these limits were arrived at. It seems that, for the most part, the legislators did NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WERE DOING. Consequently they just copied the regs laid down by other municipalities in the area - places that they presumed were more knowledgeable. (Which they probably were not to any significant extent.)

So this is the sort of thing where there is plenty of misunderstanding, etc. The actual experts probably have it right, but the applicable laws are generally made by non-experts.

Ps, John, would you confirm the situation of Silver Magnets? (I saw a previous post to the effect that they are out of production, but couldn't message you.)

hey Mr Bill!
thanks for the background and information .

Sorry you couldn't get in touch with me,
I decided to suspend my activities here due to one person who posted some abhorrent things. he's still here,
so my days may still be numbered ...

I don't have 2o posts yet so I can't contact you but you can PM me directly if you want. from what I understand I can reply.
About the magnets. ...
long story short, Gunter retired, so there aren't magnets anymore, but
my longterm contact there decided to continue to manufacture the trickle tanks, and I am still selling them.

I am guessing some may suggest my "extreme" point of view had to do with that, but it doesn't, I'm not much of a used car salesman
but I do fish, hike, camp and enjoy the outdoors and I'm not very happy when I come across people who deliberately pollute
because it's easier than doing the right thing ... I spend time on a small island and have photographed there continually for years, I sometimes bring
a trash bag with me and pick up the mess left there by people who are slobs and leave their mark ( I was taught to leave a place better than I found it! )

have a nice week end.
john

momus said:

Here in the U.S., fixer is usually the only issue.

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Hi, actually that's not really true. Although many people think it's so.

People who do commercial processing in the US will generally have a special sewering permit that lays out all of the specifics. The only (legitimate) way out of this, for the most part, is to have all of their waste hauled off-site, including all the wash water.

I have experience in several large labs where the effluent limits for silver were something like 0.2 mg/L (this is essentially equivalent to two-tenths of a part per million). To put the numbers in perspective, it is roughly similar to trying to control the population of New York City to within 2 people.

Now, a normal person has almost no possibility of achieving such crazy low limits. Just the act of fixing a roll of film, and then putting the roll in wash water will probably put the wash water way way higher than 0.2 mg/l. Most photographers on the internet would probably say, just run more water. But with respect to effluent regulations it is not permissible to intentionally dilute the waste. In the case of RA-4 processing, this means something like 600 mL per 8x10" print for the entire wash (as I recall this is the spec for a 2-tank counter current wash). For amateur users this would most likely put the wash water well into the realm of a RCRA-defined Hazardous Waste (> 5 mg/L silver, as I recall), assuming that you tried to transport the used wash water. Except that there are small user exclusions, as I recall, that will pretty well rule out any amateur processor reaching a regulated amount.

If home users, or even small labs, were regulated to the same concentration standards, it would essentially nearly end amateur developing. Even if the fixer was hauled off. With respect to attempting to use silver recovery to get below regulated levels, the best a serious hobbyist could hope to do is somewhere around 2 to 3 mg/l silver, using a good-quality steel/iron wool when it is fresh. This is still something like 10x higher than some of the stringent limits.

I sometimes wonder how school/university photo labs can possibly meet effluent standards. My guess is that play on the angle that they are not a standalone lab, and that is therefore permissible to see their effluent as only a small part of the entire university "process," and thus all of the university sanitary waste can be used to dilute the photo lab waste.

Sorry i'm no help for outside the US. (Or even in the US, for that matter, with respect to non-commercial processors.)

I had lunch today with two fellows who each had a film and print processing labs. Both of these fellows had silver recovery systems. Simple canisters with steel, iron wool. Ion exchange the silver would precipitate and the iron would go back into solution, this solution would go down the sewer.
Since these were replenishment systems there was very little effluent. No developer waste, no stabilizer waste. The blix, or fixer was the only effluent.
One of these guys sold his years of collected silver when silver hit 33 USD/Oz. He got $11,000. This was from decades of collecting this material.
There was very little oversight by authorities, both these folks entertained the city engineers, who didn't really know anything about photo-waste, no further inspections.
Bottom line minilabs are not a problem. Canisters are available if you want to extract silver from blix and fixer.

Mr Bill said:

Sorry i'm no help for outside the US. (Or even in the US, for that matter, with respect to non-commercial processors.)

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I don't wish to seem rude but having moved a long way from the OP's situation which is in the U.K. and Glasgow in Scotland specifically might it not be best to begin another thread that covers the same problem in the U.S.

Very quickly we had U.S. members replying to our new OP from Scotland giving him the U.S. perspective on a problem that is outside the U.S.

With respect none of that advice by definition could be germane to solving his particular need for pertinent information to what was a specifically Scottish issue

pentaxuser

While it is true that the US perspective isn't strictly on topic for a Glasgow resident, some of the discussion there is probably useful to the OP if they ever get to talk to someone in or near Glasgow about the issue.
Things like nomenclature, and a sense of relative importance of the potentially problematic waste.

Ilford says, relating to domestic processing in the UK, and this would also be true of colour chemistry, "small amounts of used chemicals should be flushed down the drain with plenty of water. Do not mix chemicals for disposal. It is inadvisable to dispose of used photographic chemicals into a septic tank because this may compromise its effectiveness. Small quantities of scrap film and paper should be treated as normal household waste."

Most of the advice he's received here amounts to "ask the relevant people" and, at the worst, which is in accordance with any actual legitimate scientific estimation of the material, that it doesn't matter if you do dump it down the drain. Telling him to bring his spent chemistry to a local film lab for disposal is great advice but the afterword is needlessly insulting to everyone else who responded.

I may buy one of the steel wool silver recovery units. It would have enough capacity to last me for 25 years. I am quite careful regarding the environment. Things continue to get worse. Better to be over careful than not enough. My local lab here has closed, in the past I would save blix and fixer, take it there for de-silvering. Closest lab now is is 100+ km away.

Maybe a do it yourself silver trap would be a fun project.

One important thing to remember is outdated photo paper is loaded with silver, old black and white prints, black and white negatives. When clearing out, this stuff should definitely be taken for proper disposal.

pentaxuser said:

I don't wish to seem rude but having moved a long way from the OP's situation which is in the U.K. and Glasgow in Scotland specifically might it not be best to begin another thread that covers the same problem in the U.S.

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No problem, and you're exactly right - with respect to legislation (and I certainly have digressed). But... the chemistry is gonna be the same no matter what country you're in.

One reason why info from the US is pertinent is... that is where the great bulk of the published research has been done with respect to environmental effects and treatment of photochemicals, including silver recovery. Primarily from Kodak, as they had a vested interest in this - in order to sell their products they wanted to make sure that their customers could continue operating.

mshchem said:

I may buy one of the steel wool silver recovery units. It would have enough capacity to last me for 25 years.

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Hi, don't be too confident in those things. They're not always reliable and you do need to keep an eye on the output. Sometimes they just quit working for no apparent reason. So if you aren't monitoring you might end up throwing silver away.

Eventually you'll need a place that will do the refining for you, and if you didn't buy the cartridges from them they may not want to deal with you.

As a general rule if your solution pH is too high you may effectively get "rust" on the steel/iron wool, and if pH is too low it dissolves prematurely.

Fwiw I used to oversee the silver recovery from an outfit that recovered about a half million us dollars per year, back when silver was about $8/TO. So I've seen a number of cartridge styles over the years.

Mr Bill said:

One reason why info from the US is pertinent is... that is where the great bulk of the published research has been done with respect to environmental effects and treatment of photochemicals, including silver recovery. Primarily from Kodak, as they had a vested interest in this - in order to sell their products they wanted to make sure that their customers could continue operating.

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Looking into the history of processing I cannot fully agree. For instance already in the 90's over here even a desilvered Kodak bleach bath was probited from going into the sewage, due to the complexing agent employed.

AgX said:

Looking into the history of processing I cannot fully agree.

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Hi, which part is in question? Do you mean who did the most research?

Here are several examples... researchers such as (going from memory) Rami Mina and Pedro Quinones of Kodak did research on the use of ion-exchange resins with effluent. Then CPAC, of New York state, built equipment, based on that research. I have personal experience with these systems - one was used to remove (primarily) bromide ion from a color developer (EP2/3) to allow regeneration of the developer overflow (waste). The other was to remove silver from wash water, which normally has too small a concentration for more conventional silver recovery methods. NO OTHER MAJOR MANUFACTURERS PUBLISHED SUCH RESEARCH.

In other silver recovery studies, Austin Cooley of Kodak published numerous papers with respect to optimizing the conditions used for both electrolytic silver recovery and the use of metallic replacement (ie steel/iron wool recovery cartridges).

Fwiw silver in the wash water was a major problem for photofinishers in certain areas. I mentioned wash water ion-exchange systems previously. I oversaw the operation of one such system where we were regulated to something like 0.2 mg/l silver. (As I mentioned, this is an incredibly low concentration with respect to photofinishing.) Our ion-exchange system was able to achieve this when the resin was fairly fresh, but after a number of resin "stripping" and regeneration cycles the effectiveness would fall off.

Kodak researchers came up with yet another technology, called TMT precipitation to achieve much lower concentrations of silver. Because of the expense such a system would be used only for the final "cleanup" or "polishing" of silver-bearing waste. I don't recall who built equipment, but there were small scale machines built, that could be used in a minilab. (But at that point it would have probably been more cost effective to use a "washless" system and simply have the waste hauled off by a licensed waste hauler.)

But the issue pointed out by Maris still remains - WHAT is being done with that waste!? As I have become older I've become more aware of how sneaky and crooked some of our government agencies/bureaucracies are. So when users of community Hazardous Waste pickups, and that sort of thing, DON'T KNOW exactly what happens to the waste, I get suspicious. But I digress.

I could go on and on... I recall having a discussion at an IS&T conference with a young Kodak researcher who had presented a paper on the use of diamond anodes in an experimental electrolysis system for the destruction of photographic waste. I (and and one of my coworkers) were asking, WHY, and WHO would ever use such a system? (Not to mention, what is the mechanism?) Essentially they just wanted to get the results out there, practical or not.

Fwiw pentaxuser would be perfectly justified to call me out on deviating so much from the original topic, and I would agree. I'm guilty (but will probably continue.)

As I indicated it seems to me that the emphasis at your side was much more on silver. Anyway, from bibliography I got it is hard to trace research back to Kodak, as of course it is on name of researchers.



On the other aspect I am with you. It is easy (more or less) to bring in our waste. And out of sight means out of mind...

But I know of cases were such waste was not handled the way I expected it. Even own experience made me wonder. Repeatedly I asked the commercial waste disposer, who handles waste on behalf of my county, if they prefer blix and fixer apart (which for recyling would be the better way). I never got a reply. And what does such firm with just a few liters of aqueous waste of a certain code for a whole county...?

AgX said:

As I indicated it seems to me that the emphasis at your side was much more on silver. Anyway, from bibliography I got it is hard to trace research back to Kodak, as of course it is on name of researchers.

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Hi AgX, yes, on this forum I talk mostly with respect to silver, as this is the main "environmental" thing that members here seem to have interest or concern with. (Notice that only a small number use replenishment.)

And yes, the bibliographies, alone, make it difficult to trace back the origin of various studies. I have been in a fairly unique position as a result of the place where I worked and the position(s) I somewhat "fell" into. I was a 30-some year on-and-off member of the SPSE (Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers, of which I am neither, really), later the IS&T. We always kept someone in the department as a member, mainly to have an uninterrupted set of the Society Journals.

Anything environmentally concerned, of interest to the Photographic Industry, would pretty much be covered. So with the original papers, one knows where the studies/authorship originated. Need I say that I have read everything related to silver recovery? (Including where the authors were employed.) The great majority of the pertinent research came from roughly the 1980s, give or take a half-dozen years.

A quick note about Maris, on this site: he clearly has deep knowledge way beyond mine with respect to sewage treatment plants. In the photographic industry the main concern is, what it is the eventual fate of all the chemicals, say through a treatment plant? The IS&T Journals mostly stop there. So he brings in knowledge beyond that point.

Maris said:

In a previous career as a scientist and environmental analyst in Australia I had many occasions to deal with the operators of sewage treatment plants. None of them, from lab-tech to laboratory manager, ever worried about photo-waste in the effluent streams they were treating. It was a non-problem compared to disasters like foam eruptions caused by too many people running their washing machines on the same day.

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Maybe just because a heap of foam calls outside attention and may hamper operation, whereas some amount of toxic stuff that slips through the treatment plant unaltered does not...

AgX said:

Repeatedly I asked the commercial waste disposer, who handles waste on behalf of my county, if they prefer blix and fixer apart (which for recyling would be the better way). I never got a reply.

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Fwiw, Kodak used to periodically publish approved "process alternatives" that were presumably designed to deal with various "local" or regional problems.

As I recall one of these included an option to separate out the bleach and fix in the RA-4 process. As I recall we did very seriously consider this option, but concluded that there was no real benefit to us.

But there could have been situations where a finisher might have had to go to this to somehow meet local regulations. Back in the day Kodak could have been counted on to come up with solutions to such problems. These things were not well-known to the general photo community, but to those doing significant photofinishing Kodak was a good partner to have. Maybe this still exists, I dunno since the bankruptcy.

My point in this case was not regional legal/technical issues, but rather desinterest or maybe even incompetence.