"The Deadly Tin Inside Your Smartphone" by Cam Simpson Businessweek (August 23, 2012) Photograph by Kemal Jufri ↬ The Verge
In recent years about one-third of all the tin mined in the world has come from Bangka, its sister island Belitung to the east, and the seabeds off the islands’ shores. Because almost half of all tin is turned into solder for the electronics industry, a dominant force in the global tin market today is tablets and smartphones bought by consumers in the U.S. and elsewhere.
This is a good example of how regulations governing one raw material (lead) have pushed a boom (with obligatory trade-offs) for another (tin) -- and how you can tie it to something that your students use every day. In K-12 we're required to teach properties of matter, but we don't always talk about the consequences of demand for the more desirable properties.
Article includes a 9 minute video, photo slideshow of illegal mines in Indonesia, and charts and tables on tin and its uses.
Some follow-up resources on tin and solder:
Minerals Commodities Summaries: Tin (2012) by USGS; includes data on production, reserves, recycling.
Minerals Yearbook: Tin (2010) by USGS; more in-depth statistics.
Lead-free Electronics Reliability (August 2011) by Aerospace Corporation; a presentation to NASA that covers history, trends, and issues of transitioning to Pb-free solders.
Solders in Electronics: A Lifecycle Assessment (2005) by EPA/Design for the Environment
