Jon, my logic is that we should worry about the dangers that most people will encounter, not one that might affect very few members. And so far all we have shown for a real product is a patent text.
It's like during the anthrax attacks in USA a few people died, causing an irrational fear among office workers. Many people were so afraid they didn't go to work for several days or even weeks. At the time I made an approximation that it probably saved more people from dying in car crashes than died in anthrax attacks, still people were afraid for a very unlikely scenario of dying from anthrax while no one thinks about the dangers of commuting to work.
The real dangers I see is inclusion of mercury, arsenic, bromated fire retardant, phosphate, various organic molecules... the stuff we know could end up among incinerated IC:s and that we are a lot more probable to encounter.
Beryllium oxide is a nasty ceramic and should be avoided as far as possible. It's thermal properties is fantastic though and therefore it is used in a few critical applications as for example power transistors in radio transmitters. People working with this kind of equipment should be aware of the dangers and take precautions. Often the equipment is marked with a warning triangle and Be or beryllia.
But for Joe the scrapman who picks up a computer at the curb, the risk of processing it is not in beryllium but in other things.
This is the one time I've run into beryllia since my days in the army, servicing radio equipment.
UncleBenBen, if you see a beryllium warning I would thread very carefully at that point. The main danger is dust and since it usually is a white or pink ceramic component I would treat every one I encounter at that point as lethal. The one above I left as is and took it to a recycling center in a closed container.
Still, I would not be concerned for any black IC containing beryllium filled plastics. There are a lot of other techniques where good thermal contact can be achieved without using beryllia.
Göran
