On Mar 11, 2009, at 4:35 PM, Nick Wright wrote:
I would like to start developing my own black and whites here soon. But I wonder what to do with the used fixer? So I thought I'd email and see what y'all do?
As others have said, the amount of silver in a typical hobbyist darkroom setup is too small to worry about and the other chemicals used in a b&w photography have only small amounts of heavy metals and only in some cases, well under the threshold of what constitutes environmental concerns. Film developers like XTOL are much like a very strong solution of Vitamin C ... easily biodegradable.
I used to pour my spent B&W chemistry into the toilet bowl and flush the bowl a couple of times. I haven't printed in a wet lab in over a decade and a half.
Color chemistry is a little more worrisome. I recall that spent Cibachrome chemistry was designed to be mixed together ... the various components would neutralize each other ... and then could be flushed with water, diluted 5:1.
Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
