I have a b&W darkroom but the idea of draining those toxic chemicals into the river system is quite disturbing. Personally, i try not to waste too much chemical and i also use as little paper as possible. There semms to be a degree of sacrifice of quality to accommodate this environmental consciousness. When i feel particularly sensitive to this issue i doubt my entire involvment in the industry. Now i have a computer and photoshop which i feel is perhaps a little better on this front. How do other photographers out there feel about these things, i wonder??????

-- pandora karavan (pkaravan@hotmail.com), October 19, 1999

Answers

The amount of "toxic chemicals" produced by a home b/w darkroom is pretty darn small, and many of the chemicals are not really very toxic.

Does it bother you that the plastic resins and circuitry in your computer equipment was manufactured with all kinds of horrible chemicals being released into the environment? (And where is your plastic-cased computer monitor going to be in 15 years - in a landfill?!?) And how is your electricity generated?

I'm as environmentally concious as the next guy, but in the large scheme of things, home darkrooms aren't much of a problem... at least no more so than just about any 20th century technology I can think of.

-- Michael Goldfarb (mgoldfar@mobius-inc.com), October 19, 1999.

Pandora,

B&W chemicals are largely organic. Stop bath is aecitic acid. If it makes you feel better, use white vinegar from the local Food Store diluted 1 gal to 5 gal water to get 1% concentration.

Used fixer is the major culprit, with disolved metal (silver) in solution. If you're really conscientious, you could purchase a silver recovery unit from Porter Camera of Iowa or Calumet Photo (www.calumetphoto.com) or save your fixer in a 5 gallon jerry can and take it to the local photo finisher or college or university with a photo program. get on the phone. The local branch of the state university near me has a large silver recovery unit so they get the benefit (very very very small) of my silver.

Now, about Pyro and Selenium and the various toners and bleaches.... I've no idea, any chemists out there can tell us how to make a solution that'd render these two in-offensive?

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), October 19, 1999.

Isn't Xtol made largely of Vitamin C? So that might ease yer noggin' a bit when it's film processin' time.

Also, FWIW I live in an area known for it's industry, formerly the largest oil refinery in the U.S. and two of the largest steel mills extant. In the info flier that the county waste folks disTRIBute, they tell ya what to do with various household chemicals, paint, fuel oil, left over amunition, etc. etc.

They mention home darkroom products and say that mixed - (and presumably used), it's o.k. to send 'em down the drain with plenty of H20.... unless you have a septic tank, in which case yu need to read the label.

BUT (and I use that term correctly),

unmixed they say, "...the product should be saved until you can hand it to a licensed hazardous waste contractor."

Now, does that make any sense to you?

Meanwhile, I recall reading a letter to the editor in one of the more technically oriented photo mags in which the author told of his trouble getting his dream darkroom built in his new dream house. The local authorities had such stringent chemical disposal policies that he could not afford to comply. I believe this was in CA. I shall have to look up the letter. I know it sounds like some wise-use movement propaganda, and maybe it was, but I swear I did read it, I am, as Dave Barry says, NOT making this up.

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), October 19, 1999.

p.p.s.

I know, I got verbal diarehha, (oooohhh!!! Wish I hadn't said that! Nasty mental image just then! Quiet Trib!) anyway....

I don't worry about it too much, nor do I worry about how archival my prints are as it's an issue that hasn't come up and I don't worry about whether I follow the Zone System according to Picker or anyone else either.

How do you feel about the animal by-products used in the gelatin in film or cat food?

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), October 19, 1999.

Pandora, et. al.

Found the letter about CA. I mentioned, it's on page 8 of "Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques" July/Aug '90. Thank God I'm Not CRAZY (well, maybe senile, I'm probably still crazy). This magazine is now "Photo Techniques" I believe and they will sell back issues and articles.

The writer, Thad Spinola of Napa, CA is specifically concerned with darkroom effluent and septic tanks. According to Thad, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board was adamant that "disposal of darkroom waste water, even at the very low rates produced by a home darkroom, was unacceptable. They seemed to ignore the evidence I presented, reasoning that because photochemistry waste is not in the category of domestic waste water, it must be disposed of in some other way."

Robert Chapman, who holds a PhD in chemistry from Yale, responds in part, with:

"None of us, as responsible citizens, wants to poison the earth. On the other hand, I don't believe we are all willing to return to the stone age by banning all chemicals from everyday life. What appears to be missing is solid judgement and solid information as to what is truly, unequivically bad and what is innocuous enough that it can be safely left in the hands of the earth's great chemical cleaning power."

I also came across an article by Steve Anchell in "Camera and Darkroom", now sadly defunct, on environmentally safe developer formulas. I don't know but I thought I had read that the Photo Techniques folks had added those articles to their archive as well, so you may want to contact them. If not, e-mail me. It was published in the February '94 issue, starting on page 56. He discusses the negative effect of chemical oxidation demand - i.e. the depletion of oxygen in water by the disintigration of darkroom chemicals and a simple solution - let it aerate before you dump it. Let the chemicals sit in open containers (five gallon plastic gas cans from the hardware store) in a safe place where children, pets, the elderly, me, etc, can't harm themselves, preferably outside.

Lastly he points out that Edward Weston developed his negative with Pyro for most, if not all his career and died of Parkinson's which is hereditary. Brett, used pyro without gloves for some 60 years and lived to be 81. So, take the necessary steps, those that your conscience demands, and relax. I'm sure if you did more research you could find all manner of other ways to solve this problem on the personal level. I recall Zonal Pro was advertising their chemicals as being environmentally safe.

Sorry for blathering on.

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), October 19, 1999.

Thankyou Sean for your great efforts in responding to the topic I raised! A valiant effort and most appreciated for sure. It would be heartening to think that other photographers out there see resource consumption and pollution as at least an issue worth considering. Personally I think it is important to engage with the complexities of the topic despite the difficulty. I'd love to hear any genuine responses from people who might like to seriously engage with this issue. Thanks again Sean. pandora

-- pandora (pkaravan@hotmail.com), October 20, 1999.

I should probably get my copy of The Book of Pyro out again to double check this, but it seems that Hutchings argues that pyro is used at such high dilutions and oxidizes so fast (that's why it's used one- shot, right?) that its environmental impact is practically nil. I've used it for 5 years, pouring it into my septic system, with no apparent adverse effects. On the other hand, I have always taken my used fix and selenium toner to a friend with a silver recovery unit for disposal, because I know those heavy metals will get into the environment eventually. I try to take a middle-of-the-road approach and do the best I can to minimize negative factors without giving up photography entirely.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), October 20, 1999.

It isn't given to most of us to change the world. We can only change our own small part of it, so that is what we have to do.

Overall environmental damage is difficult to measure. I am inclined to think that if I switched to digital, I would cause much more damage, largely due to the short life spans of computers and digital cameras. It would take a lot of B&W chemicals down the drain to be as harmful as a single computer or digicam (I suspect).

I also suspect that industrial waste causes far more damage than domestic. I'm not an activist, so I don't really know. If I were, then I might use my photographic and other skills to lobby for changes.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), October 20, 1999.

I run a wastewater traetment facility and I will state that unless you are dumping your darkroom wastewater into a septic system that is rather small, then there is no environmental degradation. The quantities you dispose of are smaller than quantifiable by any means known to man. I dump a half gallon of used and exhausted fixer down the drain every week or so. Every day, 200 million gallons of wastewater are treated by my treatment facility. You figure out the dilution factor. An average treatment plant in small town America has a flow exeeding 20 mkillion gallons a day. Even at one million gallons a day the dilution factor is enormous. Don't sweat it, shweetheart. And the guy trying to get a permit for a darkroom in new construction? He shouldn't have told them in the first place. Find a barroom bully and cuss him out and then stick out your chin. Same thing. What are they supposed to say? Every lab would be on their case like stink on ----. I'm not advocating being less environmentally conscious, but compare yourself to China or India, the former Soviet Union who permanently poisoned vast areas of their artic ocean environment with spent nuclear waste and their Caspian sea areas are so polluted with petroleum waste it will never recover. And how about South American gold mining? There is so much mercury in some rivers that the arfeas will suffer birth defects for years to come. So don't sweat a little fix or developer down the drain from time to time shweetheart. The Turdherder.

-- james (james_mickelson@hotmail.com), October 21, 1999.

Pandora, I thank you for bringing up an important point and I'm sorry you ran afoul of an individual who refuses to play by the rules. Please do not let this discourage you from posting again on other topics in this forum, we are, with one notable exception, friendly and helpful people!

As you may have noticed, I've deleted a whole bunch of posts which I feel were all steps to what became an all-out flame war, and left those which stick to the topic at h

-- Mason Resnick (bwworld@mindspring.com), October 22, 1999.

Sean brings up an interesting, related point: while we are concerned about what if any effect photographic chemicals have on the environment, are we paying attention to their toxicity for the users? What effect does years of breathing the fumes of Fixer have on a body, for instance?

My feeling is that it has very little effect. Look at how long Weston, Adams et. al. lived, and they spent much time in the darkroom (of course they also spent plenty of time breathing the pure air of the wilderness as well...). I haven't heard much about photographers dying young of photochemical-related diseases. The worst I've heard of is an occasional rash on the

-- Mason Resnick (bwworld@mindspring.com), October 22, 1999.

Ansel Adams supposedly had his body examined after his death to see if there was any evidence of photochemical toxicity, there were none found.

-- bill zelinski (willy226@yahoo.com), October 22, 1999.

My parents are 80 and 76, and they've worked with b/w photo chemicals daily for over 50 years (actually, my father for several years longer - he started in the 1930s), not always with great ventilation, I might add. And they're FINE. (That is, they have any number of common complaints that go along with their age, but nothing due to photo chemical fumes or skin contact.)

While not a scientifically definitive statement, this is still a good example of the essentially benign nature of b/w chemistry.

-- Michael Goldfarb (mgoldfar@mobius-inc.com), October 22, 1999.