EU’s lead-free law will also affect U.S. IT products

Computerworld - Beginning July 1, the European Union will bar the import of electronic components that include lead, mercury cadmium and several other substances. RoHS, the European directive on restriction of hazardous substances, has vendors scrambling to meet its deadline, but it isn't without implications for U.S. users.

The law will have a global impact, especially as other countries adopt similar restrictions. China’s version, for instance, is due to take effect next year. Since manufacturers don’t want to run two assembly lines, one spewing out electronic components with lead and the other lead-free, U.S. customers will also get lead-free IT equipment, vendors and industry consultants said.

For IT users, there is the possibility that some vendors may accelerate product end-of-life announcements, and putting RoHS-compliant parts into production systems may require testing in some cases. Although some vendors and consultants are advising users to ask suppliers about their RoHS compliance plans, the issue hasn't been getting much attention in the U.S.

But Robert Rosen, CIO at the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and president of the IBM user group Share, sees little IT impact from RoHS for users. While there may be some “spot issues” created for IT, they will be minor, Rosen said. The PCs he is using from Dell Inc. are RoHS-compliant, and there have been no issues with them. As he sees it, the effort to remove the hazardous substances is a good one. “From an environmental standpoint, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.

Similarly, Bill Morgan, CIO at Philadelphia Stock Exchange Inc., sees RoHS compliance as “more of a problem for the computer manufacturer than for the end user like us.”

The stock exchange is a heavy user of Sun Microsystems Inc. systems, and because Sun offers such a wide variety of products, “we will have choices even if some older noncompliant products are discontinued by Sun,” Morgan said. The newer Sun equipment purchased by the exchange is compliant with the environmental law, and he didn’t see much of an issue for his company from the law.

But RoHS will nonetheless be influential, said tech industry consultants. “If you are a large multinational, you have to watch those end-of-life announcements,” said Debbie Cote, a principal at PRTM Management Consultants in Waltham, Mass., which advises high-tech companies.

For instance, fault-tolerant computer maker Stratus Computer Systems, which does about a third of its business in Europe, said it expects to shortly announce an end-of-life timetable for its ft6600, an Intel-based four-way server, that will apply to customers worldwide. The company had been planning the phaseout for the end of this year but decided to move it up because of the European directive, said Denny Lane, Stratus’ marketing director. Conversely, he said meeting RoHS requirements has accelerated some product improvements, such as a new storage subsystem, to comply with the law.