[morzh]

I agree. Written by a person who sounds like a newspaper rookie girl who got her first assignment and want to impress uneducated reader.

1.Capacitors contained PCB's;

- INDUSTRIAL caps and transformers. As a coolant. Plus added to wire insulation - hence in bound form.
So F..g what! Even if regular caps did contin it, which they did not, did repairing radios involve opening caps? Bad caps are removed and tossed.
Morons.

2. cabinets had asbestos insulation;
- Ron has elaborated on it, but GENERATIONS grew with asbestos around, most of us did. Do we see all of us coughing with asbestosis? No.
Very few radios had asbestos. In fact there was more of it in those dissipative power cords, than in cabinets. Also irons contained it. The repair men were not in the business of demolishing asbestos laiden cabinets

3. the solder contained lead;
- This one takes the cake. Led was banned only about 10 years ago. in Europe. Here it is still not banned, except maybe in CA. We do not eat it, do not inhale it. Leaching to waters from discarded equipment is a fantasy of idiots polititians, most lead in waters is naturally occuing from chelation through minerals.

4. wire insulation was often poor -

- Bold faced lie. Excelent insulation, cloth wraped today most often than not needs no replacement. And rubber, well, if it is nor cracked it is good, and if it is, you see it and repace it. How is this dangerous?

5. - and on top of this, the internal operating voltages often exceeded 350 volts!

True.
And today we have plenty of it in all kinds of equipment. Even in flat displays CCFL inverters poduce high volts. And?

Living is dangerous. Especially if you are an imbecile.

[Chuck Schwark]

   

“Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.”
― Robert A. Heinlein


Well said.

[Paul Philco322]

It may have been a feel good type of action. If you were considered a threat who is to say you would not find a nice red blooded upstanding good American friend to bring the radio in for repair and then give back to you the fifth columnist.

A radio is and was portable, bring to a neighbors house and plug in there. Simple to go around this and it makes me wonder if it is an Urban radio Myth. A concerted effort to disable SW seems a bit of a stretch.

Paul

[Arran]

 The only sort of capacitors that would have used PCBs would have been oil filled capacitors, and most of those were used in motor run or motor start applications. What's more, as I understand it, PCBs didn't exist before the war, and even if it did oil filled capacitors cost at least twice as much per unit then your garden variety wax paper cap made by Sprague, Aerovox, or Cornell Dubilier, for example. In mass production costs matter, if they could trim 1/2 a cent per unit by buying one type of cap over another they would because those 1/2 cents very quickly add up to 100s of dollars in the scale that Philco produced radios.
  The insulation on the wiring was more then adequate for it's purpose when these sets were new, and probably for the bulk of their service life. The expectation, from market research in the 1930s and 40s, was that it was very rare for someone to keep a set in service for more then 15 years, certainly there was no expectation of anyone keeping one going for longer then 20. What sort of slanted things in favor of people like me, who happen to like early AC sets from the late 1920s through mid 1930s, was the war, because of shortages of many of the newer types of tubes beasts like Philco 96s and Atwater Kent 60s were kept around longer then they otherwise would have.
  As for the asbestos some radios had, it was quite common in Canada at least for the manufacturers to staple a sheet of asbestos paper to the chassis shelf inside the cabinet, some did this some used a steel plate, this was in wood cabinet sets of course. As for it being a health hazard, not likely, the variety of asbestos they used was chrysotile asbestos, the white kind, which was among the most benign, the ones that got sick from it were primarily men that worked in mines that received a very high exposure. Curiously in Great Britain chrysotile asbestos is considered a form of talc and a moderate health hazard, mainly because they didn't have class action injury lawyers and clean up contractors fanning the hysteria to make themselves millionaires. Now they are making the same pitch with mold. Given the non stop commercials that they run on some channels looking for mesothelioma victims I have to think that the well must be running dry by now since it was banned from the market in 1979, but the lawyers have to get their cut of the trust fun monies somehow.
  The hysteria surrounding lead is just baffling, lead is everywhere, they used it in the millions of pounds, as an anti knock additive in gasoline for decades. It was also used in paint, I can understand the potential problems in children eating lead paint if it is flaking, but it's pretty cut and dry as to how to deal with it. I never did understand the impetus with banning lead based solder being used in electronics, nobody eats electronics, and it's very unlikely that a child or anyone else would have occasion to lick the traces on a printed circuit board. I know that they banned lead based solder in Europe, that's where that RoHS garbage came from, but they are two faced about it, lead free solder is actually banned in three areas over there medical, aviation, and military equipment, because of tin whiskers of course. As Mike suggested, there is lead in rocks, lead in the soil, the idea that lead "contamination" is leaching from junk TV sets and radios is absolutely laughable.
 Of course knowing the way business operates in certain Asian countries they probably label things as being RoHS compliant and use lead based solder in it anyhow. Which is also how they sidestep any questions about how things like I-Phones and solar panels are made.
Regards
Arrab

[Phlogiston]

I am working on one of the larger Zeniths from before the war now. The band switch had been locked to broadcast by a loop of wire which prevented movement. I thought it must have broken and the tech settled for broadcast rather than fixing the switch, but, no. The switch is fine. This is one of the only other reasons I can think of for rigging it in such a way. I wish I knew who owned it at the time.

[wa2ise]

My father knew an American born Japanese guy back in WW2. They lived in New York City (they didn't round up the Japanese there like they did on the West coast).  Seems he was required to disable the SW feature in his radio, so my father shorted the osc coils.  But the local army inspector(?) guy said that that wasn't enough, that the coiuls had to be removed.  So my father did that, and kept the coils.  After the war was over, my father piad his friend a visit, bringing the coils with him, to restore the radio.  But the friend was still leery of the whole thing, and declined, at least for some time.

[klondike98]

Great info and story! First hand data is always the best.

[BrendaAnnD]

This was all covered by the umbrella Executive Order 9066, wherein they started excluding Japanese immigrants from several "sensitive areas", and moved on to confiscating property, disabling radios, relocation and internment.

[PhilcoMike]

This was all covered by the umbrella Executive Order 9066, wherein they started excluding Japanese immigrants from several "sensitive areas", and moved on to confiscating property, disabling radios, relocation and internment.

Yet in Western NC where I live they brought German prisoners here to recover in our hospitals, camps....

Mike

[Paul Philco322]

Some Italian prisoners were interned at a facility right in South Boston. Local Italians would bring food, books, magzines cigarettes and throw them in the camp. It gave the autorities a headache. But I have never had an Italian in Boston mention the shortwave thing to me.

Paul