It's fairly safe to handle an intact board.
It raises dust anytime you are doing cutting, chiseling, and grinding work. It's a fine dust that you can't really see ... but it's there. There are all kinds of exotic metals used in the manufacture of the electronic components that are soldered on to the board. One of the worst is chromium. Also ... the solder is sometimes lead or a mix of silver, antimony, and other metals. Lead in particular is one you want to stay away from.
So anyway .... this fine metallic dust gets up in the air and you breathe it in. The microscopic metal particles either get lodged in your lungs or absorbed into the bloodstream.
It's all tiny doses but they add up after awhile and affect your health. We had one guy here awhile back, a really good fulla, that was really into breaking down the boards. He wasn't feeling well so he went to the doctor. The doctor ran his tests and they showed the fulla had lead poisoning. We haven't heard from him in awhile.
It probably doesn't hurt to break down a board once in awhile but i wouldn't recommend making a regular habit of it.
When you think of just how many IC's & BGA's it takes to make a pound ... it hardly seems worth doing anyway. Most of the aluminum heat sinks don't have to be cut off do they ? The little bit of copper you might get off a ferrite weighs hardly anything. The metal tops usually pry off without having to be cut. Maybe leave the rest ?
All around though ... it's just different jobs. One fulla does the dismantling and removes the whole boards. He sends the boards off to a professional refiner who processes them by the ton. It's the refiner's economy of scale that makes it worthwhile to break down the boards for all of their different parts & pieces.
Anyhow .... i'm running on here. It's just random stuff that i've picked up here and there.
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