do old hard drives contain toxic materials?

[askquestions123]

I was ripping apart my old hard drive (80 GB) and saw the platter and everything. I was just wondering if old hard drives contain anything toxic? Like mercury or something. Let me know, thanks!

EDIT: anybody? i did rip apart my hard drive and there was metal dust and i did touch the platters/cirut board. It's an 80GB Western Digital hard drive. Like i said before, Is there anything toxic in old hard drives? Like mercury or lead or something

 

[askquestions123]

anyone???

 

[popatim]

Not really, the magnet is usually a rare earth that's been been adhered to a permalloy bracket and nickle plated. The circuit bd is probably the most harmful so don't go cutting it up.

 

[askquestions123]

Not really, the magnet is usually a rare earth that's been been adhered to a permalloy bracket and nickle plated. The circuit bd is probably the most harmful so don't go cutting it up.

Oh ok. im really new to hard drives (i'm only 15) so i might be a bit paranoid. can you explain what the ciruit bd is and why it would be harmful? And what does the magnet being a rare earth mean? Thanks!

 

[Paperdoc]

ANY metal CAN be toxic if it is somehow dissolved and gets into your body. For that reason, if you handle metal dust you must wash your hands before using them to eat or sticking them into your mouth. But just handling that dust itself won't poison you. However, you should avoid spraying metal dust into the air you breathe!

A few metals are more troublesome because they or their oxides are slightly volatile - that is, they can actually evaporate into the air so it is possible for them to enter your body by breathing the vapours. The most common "trouble" metals for this are lead and mercury. It is highly unlikely that there is any mercury inside a HDD. However, there most certainly is lead in the solder on all the electrical joints in the system - particularly on the printed circuit board on the HDD unit. that's what popatim meant by "circuit bd". Again, just handling that is not toxic, BUT you could get a bit of lead on your fingers with a lot of handling, and you should simply wash your hands before eating, etc. It would probably take a LOT of handling and eating without washing to get enough into your body to cause a problem, though.

When people and environmental agencies worry about HDD's and their metals, the concern is not so much for individuals who handle them. It is what happens to those metals if the unit is simply thrown into a landfill site. Over time the acidic water flowing through the site could leach some metals out and carry them away in the water. LOTS of such devices scattered in a landfill site could become a problem of groundwater contamination.