Does fixer and hypoclear hurt soil/plants?

[markbarendt]

I see no issue with the wash water, I do avoid using it on root crops like carrots and leafy stuff like lettuce but for trees, shrubs, flowers rock-n-roll.

[Klainmeister]

Well I like the idea of maybe using a de-ionizing system on the residual water....maybe some sort of filtration to pull any silver, but otherwise it sounds like the dilution and chemistry involved should be OK for my cottonwood and other shrubbery.

Sorry for stirring up such a bee's nest! I don't like polluting nor being wasteful either, so sometimes analog photography has it's hypocrisies built in.

...now time to pour that dichromate solution on my neighbors tomato plants...

[NedL]

Just to play devil's advocate... it's wash water for a reason and the reason is that it is still washing chemicals out of the paper. At what point they become "trace" I'm not sure. I also worry about this since we are on a septic system at my house. So far, I use RC paper, processed one at a time and the first rinse is for > 1 minute and vigorous and goes into jugs for disposal. After that I rinse them in the sink and let it go into the septic. This topic has come up before and I still plan to do some testing for residual silver to attempt to make these sorts of processing decisions based on some real evidence rather than "what someone on the internet says"....

I have a large vegetable garden and I don't think I'd let photo chems go into that at any concentration.

[Bob-D659]

Well silver isn't a heavy metal, it is a noble metal. Metallic silver is rather benign, after all people have been using silver for cutlery for hundreds of years with beneficial effects, as silver is an excellent bactericide. It is incorporated into bandages for protecting ulcerated sores on people.

Silver salts can be another story.

[Photo Engineer]

As noted earlier, Silver metal and Silver salts are bacteriostats. As such, they kill bacteria. Good soil needs bacteria, for better or worse. Kill bacteria and some things cannot grow or live.

Silver can be considered a heavy metal from several standpoints.

PE

[boswald]

I used to have a bulletin on just this subject. If i recall correctly they showed the math to figure out concentrations and quantities, but ended by saying call your ag. dept.& they will give you to a local person who will help you, but Kodak said even if allowed you should water ornamentals, not crops- just to be safe. I have some old bulletins somewhere in a box. I'll look for them. Steel wool will remove any silver if you're worried about it, just run it into a plastic trash can as a holding tank and water stuff the next day. Put the drain a hand's width from the bottom, and when the steel wool is gone drain and dry the sludge. When you have an ounce or more send it to a refiner, and get money for film.

[jk0592]

Kodak publication j300 provides good advice on environmental issues for amateur photographers.

[Klainmeister]

I used to have a bulletin on just this subject. If i recall correctly they showed the math to figure out concentrations and quantities, but ended by saying call your ag. dept.& they will give you to a local person who will help you, but Kodak said even if allowed you should water ornamentals, not crops- just to be safe. I have some old bulletins somewhere in a box. I'll look for them. Steel wool will remove any silver if you're worried about it, just run it into a plastic trash can as a holding tank and water stuff the next day. Put the drain a hand's width from the bottom, and when the steel wool is gone drain and dry the sludge. When you have an ounce or more send it to a refiner, and get money for film.

This is what I had in mind. Creating another tank to release the water into filled with steel wool, and out the other side.

[Prof_Pixel]

You might want to take a look at J-212 'The Technology of Silver Recovery for Photographic Processing Facilities' at http://www.kodak.com/ek/uploadedFile...12ENG-0311.pdf

[jnanian]

You might want to take a look at J-212 'The Technology of Silver Recovery for Photographic Processing Facilities' at http://www.kodak.com/ek/uploadedFile...12ENG-0311.pdf

unfortunately your link doesn't work