spent fixer ... the poll

In most localities, hobby use is not required to be on the radar.

very true kirk!

like with any hobby, one would hope the person with that hobby would take the necessary steps
to insure the materials s/he might be using would used and disposed of properly ...
the photographer's formulary, realize this and have something typed out on everything they sell, that says if you aren't going
to use and dispose of these chemicals properly, then send them back to us
(or something like that)

I'm surprised at the cavalier attitude of many of the posters here...

Its Sad, Bad, and Mad.

For what it is worth, those in the Los Angeles area have these options for permanent disposal centers:

http://www.lacity.org/san/solid_resources/special/hhw/safe_centers/index.htm

It is free. It is quick. They take up to 15 gallons at a time. It must be appropriately labeled. I put "photographic chemicals" on mine, followed by "Ilford Rapid Fixer", "Kodak Rapid Selenium Toner", or the proper product name of whatever other toner it happens to be.

I make a trip twice a year on average. I also take batteries, automotive chemicals (mostly engine oil, transmission oil, and brake/clutch fluid, as I service these systems myself), removed or worn auto parts that are not rebuildable (brake pads, etc.) paints, solvents, electronics, etc.

I know that PVia goes to the same facility I use, near the north-eastern part of Griffith Park.

It really could not be much easier unless they came around to our houses to pick it up. You put it in the back of your car, unlock the doors, drive in and sit in your car while they unload it. (I started to get out to talk to them one time, and they got really upset.) What harm is a Sunday drive to drop off a few bottles of stuff a few times a year?

Try this link as well for a different portion of the Website: http://www.lacsd.org/info/hhw_e_waste/default.asp

jnanian said:

very true kirk!

like with any hobby, one would hope the person with that hobby would take the necessary steps
to insure the materials s/he might be using would used and disposed of properly ...

Click to expand...

When the authorities are called here, they say that disposal down the drain is proper.

But collection of waste and transporting to a recycling center is preferable.

Kirk Keyes said:

When the authorities are called here, they say that disposal down the drain is proper.

But collection of waste and transporting to a recycling center is preferable.

Click to expand...

i would imagine that
the authorities would say that to most hobbyists,
even where i am ...

it has been a few days since i posted this poll

and while the results might seem depressing to some
( 61% use the drain ... and the remainder do something else )
i suppose it could be worse ...

I run an commercial photo lab here in Toronto for the last 18 years, and before that worked at three major labs before that.
I can tell you the commercial operations , minilabs included are under strict regulations, to the point of unannounced inspection every two years, If you do not pass the regulations, which now include a backflow prevention device , your lab will be shut down. more detailed and accurate information regarding waste in The GTA of Toronto can be found at this site.
www.toronto.ca/water/protecting..quality/backflow..prevention/forms.htm.
Anyone can come to my lab and bring there fix , any time any week I work weekends.

This Thread is interesting as I have put in my 2cents on at least three threads like this one from the very first days I joined APUG.
You will not find any commercial lab in GTA dumping, but here on APUG potentially 58% of all hobbyist darkrooms do... very suprising.

If we have over 30 K members and 58 % of them throw there fix down the drain I think it speaks about our membership.

I would have thought it was us greedy commercial lab operators who are only in it for the buck and the filthy manufacturers who produce the products we use would be so cavalier in how we dispose of our waste.
I mean we make our millions and then fade off to the sunset.

Go figure..58% sensitive photographers who are so committed to their craft and art, are so willing to pump crap down the drain so the person sitting downline can take care of it.

I have heard the argument of putting a silver spoon in the grass and see what harm will come.
Well try giving your child a liter of my spent fix to drink and we will see how concerned you become.

This continuing debate is really about how safe is it to put any kind of polluntants into our watersheds, or waste systems.
There are safe ways of doing it.
Next time you are on your way to Tim Horton Donuts to get a coffee, find a lab in your area and ask them to dump your fix into their silver recovery system.
I thank John for starting this thread as it is a really disheartening to find this attitude of dumping fix down the drain.

Mr Bill said:

Wogster, sorry to say, I don't share your confidence in the knowledge of the "waste material handlers" related to "safe and environmentally friendly..." disposal. If someone could describe to me the actual process and fate of certain things, it might change my minde, but 'til then...

You might be surprised about the mini-lab you used as an example. In your backyard of Toronto, there's a good liklihood they're using a "washless" system, and that all effluent is hauled to a specialist for treatment. Not an overall hazardous waste facility, but a photoprocessing specialist who will recycle the silver and do what else is required to meet effluent regulations. Overall, in your area, I would expect a hobbyist or two, to actually discard more silver than a small to moderate minilab. I'm not saying that the hobbyist is bad, rather that the commercial labs have evolved to meet some pretty stringent requirements. Next time you're passing such a lab, you might stop by and ask them how they handle the waste.

Click to expand...

What do you do with the silver sludge if you use the steel to separate it? Is it usable? Might be sort of fun to try? I've just been dumping all my spent chems together into a jug to haul to the chem pickup day offered by the county. Does it matter if you mix them? Interesting thread anyway! -Lori

Thanks 2F/2F.

Steve

lorirfrommontana said:

What do you do with the silver sludge if you use the steel to separate it? Is it usable? Might be sort of fun to try? I've just been dumping all my spent chems together into a jug to haul to the chem pickup day offered by the county. Does it matter if you mix them? Interesting thread anyway! -Lori

Click to expand...

hi lori

i guess you could bring the silver sludge to the household waste drop off ..
put it in a bin and tell them what it is .. or better yet call your
sanitation department / transfer station &C and find out what they want you do to with it ..
i know the eco-depot the household waste drop off area, near me ...
they ask for the chemicals to be labeled like 2f/2f does .. so they know what to do with it ...
usually with developer, stop, fix remover, it is PH they worry about ..
the other "stuff" well, that is what they worry about most ... and at least
around here, they don't want it all mixed together .. but where you live
it might be a bit different.

i agree with you bob, 100% !

Woops! I guess I'll start keeping it separate.

jnanian said:

...usually with developer, stop, fix remover, it is PH they worry about ...

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I might be a bit thick, but if the ph is what worries them, then why not ban drainpipe cleaners as well? It can't get more alkaline than that, can it? As for stop bath, I'd toss it down the drain without any thought. It's less acidic than the vinegar you pour at your salad and pretty benign, acetic or citric acid based.

Anon Ymous said:

I might be a bit thick, but if the ph is what worries them, then why not ban drainpipe cleaners as well? It can't get more alkaline than that, can it? As for stop bath, I'd toss it down the drain without any thought. It's less acidic than the vinegar you pour at your salad and pretty benign, acetic or citric acid based.

Click to expand...

What about ammonia or Clorox bleach? Neither of those are pH 7.

Steve

i agree, people in their homes use things that are
caustic or acidic, drain cleaners, solvents ... household chemicals &C are nasty ...
i am sure if you were pouring whatever you have in your
cabinet down the drain, it wouldn't be advised either ...

but this thread isn't a comparison between what is in your cabinet and photochemistry, and which is worse ...

it is about spent fixer ...

jnanian said:

they said the effluent needed to be neutral ph, and diluted before drained ...

Click to expand...

What about pouring the developer into the toilet, then pouring in the stop bath [if you are using stop bath with indicator it turns purple], and then pouring in the hypo? That should bring the pH to about 7.

Steve

Reinhold said:

Crumpled aluminum foil insead of steel wool. Just as effective, cleaner, and gives me some useable silver sludge for jewelry and other "fooling around" metal working projects. I't easy to tell when the silver is totally removed when a few bits of aluminum remain in the preciptate. Dump the fixer (siphon it off) after stripping out the silver.

Stripping silver with aluminum also makes it possible to re-use the fixer. This was discussed by Chapman in Darkroom techniques about 10~15 years ago.

Reinhold

Click to expand...

How do you separate the silver from the aluminum? Is it loosely bonded or just slough off? What does the silver sludge look like when it has dried out?

Sirius Glass said:

What about pouring the developer into the toilet, then pouring in the stop bath [if you are using stop bath with indicator it turns purple], and then pouring in the hypo? That should bring the pH to about 7.

Steve

Click to expand...

i would NOT recommend doing what you just suggested ...

pouring everything untreated in the toilet and then down the drain ...

that is the worst thing you could do, and do not recommend that at all ..

jnanian said:

i would NOT recommend doing what you just suggested ...

pouring everything untreated in the toilet and then down the drain ...

that is the worst thing you could do, and do not recommend that at all ..

Click to expand...

Because?

Developer plus the Stop Bath leave the toilet at somewhat pH 7++. Added the hypo and it will be ~pH 7. The point was that the pH will be neutral or close to it and ready for dilution. Now just add a couple of ball of steel wool, flush and it is good to go!

RAOTFLMAO!!

Steve

johnnywalker said:

I have a septic system, so don't want to dump it in there and kill the bacteria that makes it work. Instead, I dump it on the gravel driveway.

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That is exactly what I do and for exactly the same reasons. I hope the heavy metals won't make it as far as the water table. Unlike some other folks here, I actually do care about what my silver does to the environment... even in very small quantities.

When I am feeling more empathy for the critters who drink water from springs down hill from my house, I take my spent fixer to my local photo lab. They happily rid me of it. Oddly enough, the owner of the lab and I were talking about this recently. He showed me two twenty pound bricks of silver which represent the result of silver recovery efforts going back only a year. That's a lot of silver! Of course, he runs a high volume lab and goes through a lot of fix.

Bob F. said:

My local Environmental Health Officer's recommendation is to dump it down the drain as the volume is inconsequential. Were I running a minilab then that would be a very different matter.

Silver is not mercury, nor is it lead. It is simply not accurate to state that all "heavy metals" (I use the quote marks as such a term has no scientific meaning) are dangerous and accumulate in the drinking water and the human body. Iron is a "heavy metal". Try living without ingesting iron and see how long you survive - amongst other things, without iron you would not be able to produce the red blood cells that carry oxygen around your body... Likewise half a dozen other "heavy metals".

Silver in particular is not very toxic at all to humans - your kidneys will happily process it. It does not generally accumulate in the body and cause problems except in exceptional cases of massive ingestion such as Andy's "blue man" - and even then it just pigments and does no damage....

The problem from large quantities of silver comes from its toxicity to micro-organisms: it can kill the bacteria that are used to process our sewage. However, the numbers killed by what remains from that litre of fixer that was dumped down the drain has no detectable effect: bacteria reproduce at quite a rate.

Indeed, that's probably one good reason for not ingesting a lot of silver: around 10% of your body weight is bacteria and a lot of those are very helpful in maintaining digestion and other, often unknown and unresearched, body functions (some are believed to assist the immune response for example). Silver compounds are another matter and I believe just about all are poisonous...

Click to expand...

Bob, thank you for providing some context to the argument... along with actual facts.

I'm on a septic system, and I pour most chemicals, including developer and stop bath, down the drain. But there are exceptions....

Used selenium toner is saved to water the garden, and used fixer is placed in an open pan to evaporate. I use the same pan, so eventually I'll have to dispose of the residue. But that's several years down the road.

SchwinnParamount said:

... I hope the heavy metals won't make it as far as the water table......

Click to expand...

And what is your back up plan? It may take a hundred years, but what then?

fotch said:

And what is your back up plan? It may take a hundred years, but what then?

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It won't take a hundred years here in Washington. Recent studies have shown that in areas that get as much rain as we do, heavy metals can get into the water table in less than 10 years.

So, you're right. I need a backup plan. As it happens, I have one. The fix goes to a silver recovery unit at my local lab.