Salvaging Components---Where Do YOU Get Them?

Surplus Sales of Nebraska sort of looks like that, at least the floors I was on.

There was also a business called The Radio TV Laboratory in Chicago that seemed to have an infinite selection of older electronic components. They actually stocked "new" parts for antique wire recorders. The aisles were so narrow you had to sometimes back out of the store to let other customers in.

The "main" surplus place in Chicago was American Science and Surplus/Jerryco, but is really just a toy store (literally) at this point. Up until maybe 10 years ago you could think of a project, walk in and leave with all the parts.

There was? I've live in Vienna and had no clue there had been a hamfest here! How long ago was it last here? I've lived here for about 11 years now (lived down the road in Oakton before that).

Which one?

In regards to hospital salvage, you may find this interesting....

Recycling medical devices raises concerns By LINDA A. JOHNSON, AP Business Writer

For eight months during his infancy, Sean Van Duyn gagged, retched and vomited daily. Now 6, the Winter Haven, Fla., boy still can't eat or drink by mouth, instead being fed by a permanent tube in his belly.

Beset by multiple medical problems in his first months, the boy had to have a breathing tube inserted through a hole cut in his neck. The gagging began and continued until his mother, Susan, discovered the tube was misshaped at the end and had been poking the back of his throat the whole time. The tube was replaced, but by then Sean's developing brain was programmed not to swallow; he still cannot.

The family alleged the injury occurred because the plastic breathing tube's tip had been bent during "reprocessing" - cleaning and heat sterilization - done at an Orlando hospital even though the tube was labeled for single use only. They won a confidential settlement from the hospital.

The case has fueled the debate over the safety of reusing surgical blades, forceps and other medical devices. The practice was routine until a couple decades ago, when stronger plastics enabled manufacturers to start making devices designed for single use to cut costs and prevent infection spread in the era of AIDS.

Then hospitals, and eventually specialized companies, started "reprocessing" single-use devices, cutting device costs by about half

- without patients' knowledge.

Federal regulators say reprocessing is safe, but original device manufacturers say they can't guarantee recycled products will work correctly - and that they are wrongly blamed for malfunctions and patient harm caused by reprocessing.

A federal law taking effect Tuesday, requiring reprocessors to put their company name on recycled devices as well as the packaging, could help determine who's at fault when problems occur. For devices too small to mark, detachable stickers could be transferred to the patient's chart.

"That's like a 'Sue Me!' sticker," and may not be used much, said Josephine Torrente, a lawyer and biomedical engineer who consults for device manufacturers.

Dan Vukelich, executive director of the Association of Medical Device Reprocessors, argues reprocessed products are totally safe because each item is inspected before being shipped.

The device makers and their trade group have been lobbying legislators in several states for bills that protect their interests - and patients. The battle has a big - and fast-growing - financial stake for both sides. Device makers saw combined revenues jump from $48 billion in 2001 to $71 billion last year; reprocessors went from a combined $20 million in 2000 to $87 million in 2004.

Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon Endo-Surgery is suing the biggest reprocessor, Ascent Healthcare Solutions, for trademark infringement over reprocessing its single-use devices.

"It is impossible to reuse them," said Robert O'Holla, J&J's head of regulatory affairs for medical devices, because they are not designed to be taken apart for cleaning. Yet J&J gets complaints from customers about problems with devices showing excessive wear or bleach on them

- signs of reprocessing.

Ascent Healthcare's regulatory chief, Don Selvey, said only about 2 percent of medical devices - a category that ranges from MRI machines to reading glasses - are now reprocessed. He said his company's processes reduce chances of "viable organisms" surviving on devices to one in one million.

Reprocessed devices are soaked in sterilizing solutions, disassembled, blasted clean with a fine powder, reassembled and inspected, then packaged, sterilized and resealed. On average, they're reused three to six times.

"It is as safe and effective as a new device if they meet our requirements," said Larry Spears, compliance chief for medical devices at the Food and Drug Administration.

Since early 2004, when reports of problems with medical devices were first required to note if they had been reprocessed, the FDA has received 13 reports of patient deaths and 421 other trouble reports, including 130 involving serious patient harm, although some may be duplicate reports.

Reprocessors say they must meet stringent FDA standards after first proving they can safely clean and sterilize each type of device. But the manufacturers main trade group, the Advanced Medical Technology Association, notes about half of the reprocessors' applications for reprocessing of individual devices were rejected by FDA, a sign of the difficulty of properly cleaning complex devices.

Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who chairs the House Government Reform Committee, said Friday he plans a fall committee hearing to examine the issue.

"It is unclear to us at this time whether FDA is able to accurately track how often something goes wrong because a device meant to be used once was instead reused," Davis wrote in a statement.

Congress also has asked its investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, to update a June 2000 report which concluded more oversight is needed. GAO is unsure when it will begin investigating.

Ken Hanover, CEO of the seven-hospital Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, said his hospitals have used reprocessed devices for about eight years without a problem.

"There's far more risk of medication errors in a hospital than of a problem arising with a reprocessed device," he said, adding that his hospitals "probably" would honor patient requests to have only new devices used on them.

Children's National Medical Center in Washington, on the other hand, doesn't use reprocessed devices, said surgeon in chief Dr. Kurt Newman.

"We want to use the safest and most sterile equipment," he said.

University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan has "qualms" about the practice, particularly because patients don't give informed consent

- required when deviating from the standard of care raises safety or efficacy concerns.

"I just think people ought to know what's going on," Caplan said.

Susan Van Duyn, Sean's mother, agreed.

"If anybody can learn from the tragedies with Sean, it's worth telling" his story, she said.

___

On the Net:

Advanced Medical Technology Association:

Association of Medical Device Reprocessors:

pogo wrote:

It used to be at the Community Center, with the tailgating overflowing to the parking lot for behind fire department.

As for when it stopped being in the Vienna Community Center, that was something like seven years ago, at a guess.

So -- you are local to me? I'm in Vienna, still. Do you know about CAMS (Chesapeake Area Metalworking Society)? Alternate months have meetings either in Maryland (Laurel, IIRC) or Virginia (not too far from Annandale, again).

The current location is at the Northern Virginia Community College just off Rt 236, out a ways beyond Annandale. It is about the third parking lot out from 236 sometime in February.

Sunday, Feb 25th 2007 is the next Vienna hamfest. (It is simply called "Winterfest" and run by the Vienna Wireless Society.) See the following URL.

If you run into me at a hamfest, you will probably be able to identify me by the following combination of features:

1) Large white beard.

2) Fairly bushy hair -- length varies with time since last hot weather. :-)

3) Digital SLR (currently a Nikon D70) hung around my neck and shoulder.

4) Folding two-wheeled cart with a secondary pair of folding stabilizing wheels, and a white canvas bag for smaller loot hung from carabiner clips at the top of the handle.

Enjoy, DoN .

I guess I just missed them....

Yeah, I live here. I live next to Glydon Park on Ainstree Ct. I bumped into the Vienna Wireless Society in the park a few years ago having some sort of get together. I see they also meet at Vienna Elementary. I think I've seen them there before when I was there from one of the kids school events.

No, haven't heard of them. I'm not into metalworking (though I have some interest in getting into it). I'm reading and posting to this thread from the comp.robotics.misc group.

Thanks for the info.

I'll keep my eye out for you!

I've had pictures on my web site but it's been down for a few months because I've been too lazy to set it up again after a computer move. I should get it back on line and update it.

[ ... ]

Most people don't look in the town calendar for a hamfest in February. :-) (And, of course, it is no longer in the calendar, since it is no loner in the community center.

O.K. That is not far away at all. I'm on Broadleaf Drive, just off of Beulah. (Between Beulah and Glyndon.)

[ ... ]

O.K. There is a sub-group which is sort of between metalworking and robotics -- the CNC sub-group. Robotics, but very specialized robotics. :-)

There is no membership fee -- just show up. You can find a link to the CAMS website off of the dropbox site:

I tend to not remember the URL, because I get the notices on the mailing list.

[ ... ]

[ ... ]

O.K.

O.K. You can see a couple of photos of me with concertinas on the web site in my .sig -- but those photos are several years old now, and the hair has gotten more towards the gray/white than it was then. Perhaps it is time to take some new ones. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

I doubt it is the "Greenies" who cause senseless destruction of useful items.

Logic would dictate that they would rather see them recycled or reused.

My experience indicates that it is usually the fact that the item was a tax writeoff or a company fears liability, industrial spying or employee theft so they would rather destroy than have someone else benefit.

TMT

Franc Zabkar wrote:

Another reason is to avoid old, but still servicable, items from affecting the market by displacing new items. We often took old instruments such as temperature controls as 'trade ins' for new ones and permanently disabled them before trashing them.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Another reason that often happens is that no one in the chain of command cares.

i

I'm pretty sure it *was* P&D, but my 1st trip there was in the '80s, so I wouldn't be suprised if there was no P and no D in the name.

Dave

"Another reason is to avoid old, but still servicable, items from affecting the market by displacing new items. We often took old instruments such as temperature controls as 'trade ins' for new ones and permanently disabled them before trashing them. "

"Another reason that often happens is that no one in the chain of command cares. "

Ah yes...two more reasons that I had overlooked but have seen in action firsthand....thanks for contributing them

It just occcurred to me that we haven't heard from Gunner. Gunner, while I may disagree on political issues with you at times I do highly respect your scrouging abilities...care to comment where you get your pickings?

TMT

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

I'm inclined to agree with Frank here. A fair number of environmental lobbyists lose sight of reality and become so extreme that businessmen and politicians don't feel that they're the kind of people they can do business with. They would help their cause if they weren't so extreme and were, dare I suggest it, more willing to compromise sometimes.

Chris

I would agree that the "greenies" can over do it at times....but it is a very real fact that the United States is a VERY wasteful country...which means that there is a cultural tendency to toss something instead of reusing or recycling it.

Consumer electronics is a very real example of it.

I also have seen what disregard for the environment can do to the countryside and the people who live there...so I try to reduce, reuse and recycle personally. I tend to be very successful in finding salvage items to support my varied interests to where I rarely buy anything new.

Could you give me some examples of how the "greenies" have added to the reduction of recycling a product? Not trying to bait you...I am truly interested in understanding the situation.

TMT

Christ> > Franc Zabkar wrote:

Tell that to the insurance companies of all the ski resorts and housing projects the Greenies have burned to the ground.

"I think this is because of your belief in biological Marxism. As a genetic communist you feel that noticing behavioural patterns relating to race would cause a conflict with your belief in biological Marxism." Big Pete, famous Usenet Racist

My comment was in relation to "how greenies cause the destruction of surplus equipment that can be reused"....and you know it.

As for radicals, they can be found in any ideology...gun lovers seem to be having a big push on running the body count lately in the United States...does that make all gun lovers guilty?

Now gett>

That's just up the road from me in Alexandria.

Easy. ROHS (removal of hazardous substances) regulations are driving manufacturers to grind up serviceable items to insure disposal in accordance with regulations. Surplus resale is not even an option.

Based on completely unscientific observation I believe that most of the destruction prior to this factor was driven my concerns about liability and market impact.

In the case of liability concerns virtually all of the arguments I've heard have been pretty far fetched. In one case I pointed out at a former employer that the disposal program cost 10 X the projected liability, and that the projected liability was clearly grossly overstated. The risk adviser (attorney) pointed to the PR impact of Ford's financial decision on Pinto gas tanks. In this case the product was large color monitors and the worry was HV breakdown causing fires. We had **never** seen this failure with the product in several million units. Of course there is always the light aircraft industry example. Until recently they were responsible for anything associated with even

75 year old products. Even worse, that 75 year old product was measured against modern standards and knowledge.

I know of too many companies that grind up old product for fear that they will compete with current stuff. I think most of this is at least a misplaced or at worst wishfully arrogant. It's a rare application that old product competes with new. It's also a rare company that has such a dominant position in the industry, and has had it for so long that any kind of destruction program can have any significant effect on the market. I suspect the reality is that old product can meet a need that new stuff would never be applied to. I also think that old stuff can help establish applications that would not otherwise be investigated, thus opening new markets.

Sigh.

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm not suggesting that "greenies" actually reduce the extent to which products are recycled, or have any kind of negative effect on how environmentally friendly we are. I'm just suggesting that at times they are so extreme that people take little notice of them, and so they have little positive effect. Sometimes they just aren't very good at persuading people who don't share their point of view.

Best wishes,

Chris

"Easy. ROHS (removal of hazardous substances) regulations are driving manufacturers to grind up serviceable items to insure disposal in accordance with regulations. Surplus resale is not even an option. "

No, the ROHS are forcing manufacturers to clean up after themselves and to insure that proper disposal actually happens....I have been in too many junkyards in the past for anyone to BS me about how reclaimation is done without supervision.

Okay...so the business is destroying the entire item instead of taking the effort to remove the hazardous material...and the grinding process now makes the entire device hazardous. So the company take advantage of cheap dumping costs instead of properly removing the hazardous material like they should be required to do so the remainder of the device is able to be recycled. So is this saying that the dumping costs should be raised to make recycling economical?

How about designing the item properly up front so the hazardous stuff is easy to recycle/contain? Oh yeah...that would mean spending more money up front and not dumping the problem on the public downstream....and we have got to protect that profit margin, don't we?

I have little patience for people and companies who want to dump their pollution on the environment that I and my famlily live in and our children will inherit.

TMT

Rich Osman wrote: