It's a very very very bad idea to flush any chemicals down the toilet. Silver ions are highly toxic and organic chemicals from developer react with other bioorganic waste resulting in very toxic chemicals.
Toine On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi <godd...@mac.com> wrote: > > 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 > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
