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Chromate Regulation: Implementation dates around world

2005

We have been purchasing aluminum strip with a chromate conversion coating, which is subsequently fabricated into battery terminals. These battery cells have applications in a variety of products around the world.

Looking for current updates concerning regulation of chromates in commercial products sold to various countries, ESPECIALLY any established DATES in regulations anywhere that prohibit the sale of chromate-containing products outside the U.S.

Trying to stay up-to-date with regulations on chromates and need a good resource, especially if time is soon to run out on the use of chromated parts. Help!

Steven E. Barr
battery cells - Indianapolis, IN, USA

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2005

There isn't a single regulation but 3 or 4 competing regs that the Euros have passed all restricting or outright banning certain "hazardous substances" namely: cadmium, hexavalent chromium, mercury, lead and polyphenyl bromides. You need to be concerned not only with RoHS, but WEEE and ELV as well. Besides obvious places like cadmium plating and tin/lead plating, cadmium and lead pop up in plating such as electroless nickel where it was heavily used both as a brightener and as a stabilizer. A silly ppm of either in the plating solution could end up as 1,000 ppm or better in the deposit! The suppliers hid this fact since the de minimus amounts were below the threshhold that required disclosure on the MSDS. Quite frankly, I'd never look for hex chrome on a battery cap! Good luck with a very complex and getting more complex set of regs....

Milt Stevenson, Jr.
Syracuse, New York