Chemistry disposal question

[gaylandd]

I am just setting up my first darkroom. One question I have is how to dispose of used chemicals. I live in the country and have a septic tank. Will putting the chemicals in my septic system distroy the bacteria in it?

[jp]

most chemicals are fine; no worse than laundry chemicals.

List the chemicals used to be sure, as we can't really generalize accurately about this.

[gaylandd]

I am just getting set up in the next week or so. I haven't even decided on what chemistry I'll be using yet.

[Oren Grad]

Kodak Environmental Guidelines for Amateur Photographers (http://www.kodak.com/global/en/corp/environment/kes/pubs/pdfs/j300.pdf) (pdf)

[Graybeard]

I am just setting up my first darkroom. One question I have is how to dispose of used chemicals. I live in the country and have a septic tank. Will putting the chemicals in my septic system distroy the bacteria in it?

Silver is a potent bacteriacide; When the metal was less costly, silver nitrate was proposed for use in sanitizing public swimming pools. The eyes of newborns are still treated in most states (as required by statute), with silver nitrate to prevent blindness caused by congenital disease (check your own birth certicate, it may well document that you were cared for in this way). I speak from knowledge on this; I'm a chemist who, before retirement, was responsible for product development at a major silver chemicals manufacturer.

If you dispose of spent fixer down your household drains you will do serious damage to the friendly bacteria in your septic system and probably cause a consequent premature failure of your septic leach field.

I, like you, now live in a rural area and have both a septic system and a well. The county government here has an annual toxic waste collection day and darkroom chemicals are explicitly included in the materials which they will accept. I just handed off a year's waste this way at the beginning of June. You will do well to take the time to find out if your area offers a similar service - it is a Federally subsidized program primarily directed toward keeping oil based paint, solvents, and pesticides (agricultural and domestic) out of the landfills but they generally accept other materials as well. It is astonishing to realize the nasty stuff that routinely can be used by others all around us.

To minimize the liquid volume that I have to store, I let the darkroom chemicals evaporate (in an outbuilding) in plastic storage bins until I can take them to the annual collection. I can reduce my liquid volume to about 5-10 gallons in this way and simplify handling considerably. As it happened, the volume of old paint and varnish that I disposed of was larger than my darkroom waste this year.

I hope that this is of some use to you.

[dsphotog]

Used fixer will contain silver, I take mine to a local city college photo dept, they have a silver recovery system. A friendly one-hr lab should be able take fixer also.

[cdholden]

John Nanian (forum member jnanian) offers a silvery recovery gadget for a small fee to extract most of the silver from spent fixer.

[jnantz]

thanks for the plug chris :)

supposedly there is about 1/4 troy oz in a gallon of well-spent fixer ...
at 33.92 / troy oz it can add-up :)

john

[Bill Suderman]

If you are a "Professional" photographer and do photo finishing for others, you may have to play by different rules than amatuer photographers do. And if you dump "waste/used" chemicals to the community sewage treatment facility, the rules will be according to the state/county/local rules AND the EPA. So, yes, check the local regulatory agencies for directions, you should find information on the internet. There are stiff civil and criminal costs associated with disposal of waste. If you have some storage for used chemicals, as suggested above by others, save it up and haul it to your community hazardous waste accumulation station. BTW, to let the liquid evaporate can be considered "treatment". Again, check your local regs and include definitions they use. The price can be the loss of personal wealth and freedom. Hopefully, you are an amatuer in this case.

If you use a nearby lab to process your work, give them a call and visit with them on this topic...don't forget the local education system, either.
Best in your search, not having a darkroom, ouch, not an option.
Bill

[Graybeard]

The evaporation that I mentioned was allowing the water in the fixer to evaporate at ambient temperature with no heating or other external manipulation; if the water left if was the will of the Lord.. This produces a crop of solid material which is less voluminous to store; it is difficult to imagine this as a processing operation. It is no different from simply leaving the fixer in its tray in the darkroom sink until all of the water is gone. And, indeed, I am an amateur.


If you are a "Professional" photographer and do photo finishing for others, you may have to play by different rules than amatuer photographers do. And if you dump "waste/used" chemicals to the community sewage treatment facility, the rules will be according to the state/county/local rules AND the EPA. So, yes, check the local regulatory agencies for directions, you should find information on the internet. There are stiff civil and criminal costs associated with disposal of waste. If you have some storage for used chemicals, as suggested above by others, save it up and haul it to your community hazardous waste accumulation station. BTW, to let the liquid evaporate can be considered "treatment". Again, check your local regs and include definitions they use. The price can be the loss of personal wealth and freedom. Hopefully, you are an amatuer in this case.

If you use a nearby lab to process your work, give them a call and visit with them on this topic...don't forget the local education system, either.
Best in your search, not having a darkroom, ouch, not an option.
Bill

[banjo]

there was a company that made a black evaporater barrol !
ONLY H2O evaporate's the chemicals will dry out !!
use one evaporater barrol for silver to sell later
use one evaporater barrol for Developer
this is a good way for small labs

[jnantz]

i sold them back in 1988,
they were made by a company called AG-MET ...
maybe there was another version --
they had a heater on the base of the barrel, and a small fan on top ...
the solid sludge could be removed by a waste hauler ...
less of a hassle than liquid i suppose, but breathing in evaporated
water that used to be in fixer did not seem very pleasant ...
( it probably evaporated more than just H2O ... )

one of the problems with small quantity generators and sludge
is you can't sell it for $$ to a refiner without " minimums "

[neil poulsen]

I did some checking on this, called Kodak and others, for my darkroom. I came to the following conclusion. I will dispose developer, stop, and hypo-clearing agent. I will not dispose spent fixer and selenium toner.

[Sal Santamaura]

Silver is a potent bacteriacide...If you dispose of spent fixer down your household drains you will do serious damage to the friendly bacteria in your septic system and probably cause a consequent premature failure of your septic leach field...The following is from "Photolab Design," KODAK Publication No. K-13, First Edition, Copyright 1967, with minor revision July, 1968. Per its introduction, the book was not a do-it-yourself manual, but was intended to be used in consultation with architects and other professionals. The information is geared to studios, processing labs and other professional/commercial photofinishing situations handling both black-and-white and color processes.

On page 38, under "Drainage Systems," one finds this paragraph:


"If a septic tank is included in the drainage system its activity may be impaired temporarily by an excessive amount of photographic solutions. However, it will regain its normal activity after sufficient dilution has taken place. With a 300- to 500-gallon septic tank, about 40 gallons of solutions per day can usually be disposed of with no adverse effects."
While today I would never put used fixer down the drain without first removing its silver, even if one did, our current concept of how severely such chemistry from a low-volume amateur darkroom harms the waste disposal process is apparently unrealistic. Many septic tanks are now in the 1250- to 1500-gallon range. If I ever dump 40-gallons of used developer or fixer in one day, it will no longer be a hobby!

[Graybeard]

I point out that if operation of the septic tank is "impared temporarily", then untreated sewage will flow from the septic tank into the leach field. Ground water dilution will allow bacterial growth to flourish in the leach field where it can cause system damage. Bacterial growth there will result in the formation of a bacterial mat surrounding the drainage tiles, waterproofing what is intended to be a precolation bed and shortening the useful life of the leach field.

I believe that Kodak changed its position considerably in later publications regarding the disposal of darkroom waste and no longer suggests sending spent developer or fixer into a septic system, regardless of quantity.


The following is from "Photolab Design," KODAK Publication No. K-13, First Edition, Copyright 1967, with minor revision July, 1968. Per its introduction, the book was not a do-it-yourself manual, but was intended to be used in consultation with architects and other professionals. The information is geared to studios, processing labs and other professional/commercial photofinishing situations handling both black-and-white and color processes.

On page 38, under "Drainage Systems," one finds this paragraph:


"If a septic tank is included in the drainage system its activity may be impaired temporarily by an excessive amount of photographic solutions. However, it will regain its normal activity after sufficient dilution has taken place. With a 300- to 500-gallon septic tank, about 40 gallons of solutions per day can usually be disposed of with no adverse effects."
While today I would never put used fixer down the drain without first removing its silver, even if one did, our current concept of how severely such chemistry from a low-volume amateur darkroom harms the waste disposal process is apparently unrealistic. Many septic tanks are now in the 1250- to 1500-gallon range. If I ever dump 40-gallons of used developer or fixer in one day, it will no longer be a hobby!

[Wayne Aho]

Fixer should be disposed of properly, its where a lot of the silver ends up. The local photofinishing store offered to take it, so that works for me. You can put fixer in a plastic container, with steel wool, this will form a sludge, and the upper liquid can be decanted off and disposed down the drain. Most public sewer systems accept everything from a household down the drain, but in many states, if you are a business, the fixer must be collected.
You can evaporate, and take the remainder to the local hazardous collection site. Most of the other chemicals are fairly benign, unless you are into alternative processing, wet plate, etc.

[Sal Santamaura]

I point out that if operation of the septic tank is "impared temporarily", then untreated sewage will flow from the septic tank into the leach field. Ground water dilution will allow bacterial growth to flourish in the leach field where it can cause system damage. Bacterial growth there will result in the formation of a bacterial mat surrounding the drainage tiles, waterproofing what is intended to be a precolation bed and shortening the useful life of the leach field.

I believe that Kodak changed its position considerably in later publications regarding the disposal of darkroom waste and no longer suggests sending spent developer or fixer into a septic system, regardless of quantity.I understand what you're saying. However, if an amateur today does not dispose of fixer without first removing its silver, has at least a 1250-gallon septic tank and pours, let's say, approximately 1/2-gallon of solutions down the drain per week (not 40 gallons each day) along with all the other household effluent, will a measurable decrease in leach field life result? You're the expert and I look forward to your reply, but suspect the answer is "no."

[Graybeard]

There are so many variables involved here that I'm simply unable to answer your question in a qunatitative fashion.

Some unconsumed fermentable matter finds its way into the leach field even when a domestic septic system is operating properly and a darkroom is absent from the scene. The rate at which the bacterial mat accumulates depends (at least) on the daily volume of discharge from the residence, the ratio of graywater to sewage in the domestic discharge, use of a dishwasher, domestic usage of other disinfectants (bleach, toilet cleaners, and the like), the mass of silver in the darkroom waste dischrage, and the volume of the septic tank.

The bacterial mat slowly builds and the leach field has a finite life in all cases. It is not uncommon to divert washing machine discharge (largely graywater unless diapers are involved) to a percolation field other than the septic system to reduce the volume which enters the septic system; this increases the residence time of the liquids in the septic tank and enables more complete fermentation and less carryover into the leach field.

Is there some rate of darkroom waste disposal that a common septic system can tolerate without a measurable decrease in leach field longevity? Almost certainly, in my opinion.

Can I suggest an readily tolerated volume/concentration of spent fixer that a common septic system will accept without functional damage? No, I am unable to do do this for the considerations that I've enumerated above.

If one has an fixer disposal means other than the household septic system, it is only prudent to use that alternative disposal means and not place an additional burden on ones domestic system.

I really must question your estimation of septic tank volume. Here in the Northeast US, existing (as differentiated from recently constructed) septic tanks are more likely to be 500 gallon capacity rather than something larger). I live in a rural farmhouse with a 475 gallon concrete septic tank that was installed in 1990 (replacing a steel tank). A recent inspections suggests that the life of this tank will exceed my own, considrably.





I understand what you're saying. However, if an amateur today does not dispose of fixer without first removing its silver, has at least a 1250-gallon septic tank and pours, let's say, approximately 1/2-gallon of solutions down the drain per week (not 40 gallons each day) along with all the other household effluent, will a measurable decrease in leach field life result? You're the expert and I look forward to your reply, but suspect the answer is "no."

[Sal Santamaura]

...the mass of silver in the darkroom waste dischrage...Thanks for your reply. By the above are you referring to residual silver after fixer has already been treated to remove it?


...I really must question your estimation of septic tank volume. Here in the Northeast US, existing (as differentiated from recently constructed) septic tanks are more likely to be 500 gallon capacity rather than something larger)...I must confess to more than an academic interest in this subject. We are giving serious consideration to retirement in the Northeast US in an area not served by sanitary sewer plants. We're looking at building lots in a new subdivision. All the homes being constructed there have at least 1250-gallon septic tanks. That's why my question was predicated on what you've now made clear is substantially larger than the region's installed septic base.

[Toyon]

Fixer needs to be treated. Selenium should sequestred and dropped off at a hazardous waste facility. You may also want to consider the more environmentally benign formulas such as those sold at digitaltruth.com under the Eco Pro label.

[Sean Galbraith]

From the Kodak PDF:
"If you are on a sewer system, the best
way—and the most appropriate—is to
dispose of your photographic processing
effluent through the sewer system."

Consider me surprised.

I was once told that putting steel wool in used fixer will (after a day or so) extract the silver. Anyone know if this is true?

[Joseph O'Neil]

If any of you are really worried, a company here in Canada, that has a product that will solve your problem
http://www.maxill.com/products/green-treat.html


How it works, you dump used developer and fixer into one large container, add this activator, let it "cook" overnight or for 24 hours, you see a dark sludge at the bottom of the container. You dump the liquid at the top down the drain, and you take the sludge (that ahs all the silver and other stuff in it) at the bottom to your local waste disposal site. for me, it's the same city dump site that has a special depot for residential pesticides or used oil paint, etc.

Now bear in mind that the product is designed to treat B&W chemistry used in dental x-ray film development, but I've looked at the MSDS and B&W dental x-ray film & developers are almost like old ortho film and a high contrast developer, similar to D-19. Not exactly the same thing, but close.


Also bear in mind that for legal & litigation and likely commercial reasons (this company sells their own line of dental film chemistry ) reasons, this company will NOT say this product is for anything other than used dental x-ray chemistry, and their OWN B&W dental chemistry at that, but I've bought the thing, it works, and as far as I am concerned, except for the more toxic stuff like selenium toner, this stuff should do the job for all or you.

If you want to see teh MSDS for their developer and fixer, for yourself, go here:
http://www.maxill.com/products/xray-2/peri-one-fixer-developer.html

this is their own line of developer and fixer and at the bottom of the page, you can download the PDF file of the MSDS.

As a side note, no, I have not used their developer or fixer in my LF film processing, but you know, I've been tempted to try the fixer some day. the way most camera stores have dropped their darkroom supplies around, who knows... :D

I've no connection at all with the company, other than the usual "satisfied customer".

Oh, and one last thing - I've mentioned this product before - a few years ago at that I think. Anyhow my point is, almost like the seasons, the topic of "what to do with my B&W chemistry" comes up on a regular basis, and too many people run around saying there's no solution. Bullcrap.

There is a solution, and it works. So sorry it was us dumb Canadians who came up with it (betcha dollars to donuts had this been an American or German developed product, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now :) ), so either try the stuff or just move on already, will you?
:D

joe

[jnantz]

thanks joe !

[Sal Santamaura]

If any of you are really worried, a company here in Canada, that has a product that will solve your problem
http://www.maxill.com/products/green-treat.html...so either try the stuff or just move on...Looks like an interesting product. However, I just loaded a shopping cart at that Web site and requested a shipping estimate to my possible new location in the northeast US.

For one each of the jug, Trigger Solution and Activator Solution, product total is CA$25.87. The only shipping method offered is Canada Post Xpresspost USA at an additional cost of CA$71.46.

Guess I'll be moving on to steel wool in a bucket and/or dropping off fixer at a local household hazardous waste collection site. :)

[Joseph O'Neil]

For one each of the jug, Trigger Solution and Activator Solution, product total is CA$25.87. The only shipping method offered is Canada Post Xpresspost USA at an additional cost of CA$71.46.

Guess I'll be moving on to steel wool in a bucket and/or dropping off fixer at a local household hazardous waste collection site. :)


I hear you. I have the exact same issue shipping from the USA to Canada. I live a 60 minute drive from the border, and last week I ordered some items from the USA. Inside the USA, free shipping, but to Canada, it was just over $73 US.

Ran into the same situation too years ago with a good, used Berlbach tripod I wanted for my 4x5. Bought it used out of NYC. Shipping to my buddy in Ohio- $15 US. Shipping to Canada (actually a shorter distance) - estimated about $80, give or take. Guess where I had it sent too?
:)