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Pipe Organs and Related Topics

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Mon, 27 Mar 2006 22:46:06 -0500
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I received the following report from my son-in-law in the UK, who is in material science not organ building. This may add something of value to the discussion.
Dennis Leight

>From: Timothy Joseph 
>Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 21:02:07 +0100
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Fwd: Europe Declares Pipe Organs Health Hazards
>
>Hi,
>
>Here's the text of the directive:
>http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?
>uri=CELEX:32002L0095:EN:HTML
>
>Also their FAQ on it:
>http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/waste/pdf/faq_weee.pdf
>
>It took me a while to find them because I assumed that it was a recent
>directive, not one that was signed in 2003.
>
>"1. Without prejudice to Article 6, this Directive shall apply to electrical
>and electronic equipment falling under the categories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and
>10 set out in Annex IA to Directive No 2002/96/EC (WEEE) and to electric light
>bulbs, and luminaires in households."
>
>I thought originally that this line says the requirements for lead content only
>apply to items in those categories but the Annex describes itself as a list of
>items that are exempted from the requirements.
>
>I've seen comments from French and German officials saying that they think it's
>obvious the terms don't apply to pipe organs. Plenty of others saying that the
>directive doesn't apply to pipe organs but that the UK government's
>implementation is badly worded and does. I've also seen a few comments from
>the European Commission which imply that it does apply to wholy new pipe organs
>(it's defintely clear that it doesn't apply to new pipes fitted during a
>repair/refurbishment).
>
>I'm not quite sure who is right to be honest. There's a long history in this
>country of distorting and lying about EU laws/rules to try and make the EU look
>bad. About ten years ago there was a directive that dealt with fire safety in
>the workplace and furnaces/open fires, etc. In this country the Conservative
>party and parts of the media made a lot of fuss about how it would shut down
>all our tourist railways and force us to scrap preserved locomotives. It
>didn't say anything of the sort of course and wasn't meant to apply to steam
>locomotives at all. There have been similar things made up about bananas and
>other things so you come to take anti-European stories with a pinch of salt
>(and I've only seen articles about this in the more anti-Europe parts of our
>press).
>
>I have seen various MPs talking about it so if it does turn out to be applied
>to organs then I think it is going to be fought at the legislative level.
>
>I'm obviously not that knowledgable on the details of organ construction but I
>would have thought that they could separate the organ into two parts to get
>around the law. If you can make the blower a physically separate unit from the
>organ then presumably you could sell the organ as two items "Bespoke organ with
>pipes, manuals, bells, whistles, etc" and "Electronic blower accessory for pipe
>organ".
>
>I'm surprised by the way the law appears to be written. Weight percentage of
>the entire item seems a strange way to do it. Both a computer and an old TV
>style monitor to go with it would easily be exempted because the shear weight
>of metal in the computer case and glass in the monitor would be vastly greater
>than the weight of any lead in the electrical components (and quite possibly
>the same for other things). It would seem to me to make more sense to define
>it as percentage of the weight of parts that have electric current flowing
>through them.
>
>I'll keep an eye on the story anyway.
>
>Best wishes to all,
>
>Tim

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