Depending on where you live, you may receive a health warning when purchasing some hardware components online for your computer. Is this something you should be worried about or not? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post discusses one such incident to help answer a curious reader’s question.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
Photo courtesy of Nic Mcphee (Flickr).
The Question
SuperUser reader Shawn Eary wants to know if S-Video cables cause cancer:
Do S-Video cables cause cancer?
Unsure which product had triggered the warning, I called the retailer on the phone. According to them, it was the S-Video cable. Sure enough, the warning went away when I removed the S-Video cable from the cart.
Then I tried adding several other S-Video cables from different companies. All of the S-Video cables I picked seemed to trigger the cancer warning.
Is there something in most S-Video cables that causes cancer?
The Answer
SuperUser contributors Zeiss Ikon and Alex Atkinson have the answer for us. First up, Zeiss Ikon:
Followed by the answer from Alex Atkinson:
By the way, it is not just S-Video cables. You should find this warning for any product with solder in it that is not made for European Union compliance.
Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.
