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 Replies: 13 / Views: 4,928 |
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Valued Member
United States
404 Posts |
My mothers dental office received a phone call this morning from a gentleman who wishes to purchase all of their old used xrays. She asked what he had planned on doing with it, he said recovering the silver from the film.
Has anyone tried doing this? Not so much recovering the silver, but collecting all xrays and selling to get melted down?
I tried some quick research on this, but it wasn't getting me far. Mostly videos on how it's done and where to sell to, but nothing on how much silver is actually in it.
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Valued Member
United States
275 Posts |
If there is money to be made someone will find a way. I just hope it's safe.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4989 Posts |
A bit of research shows you can recover about 3-4 grams of silver (about 1/8'th of an ounce) per kilogram (~2.2 pounds) of used X-Ray film.
So perhaps $1.40 per pound of film. Not really something worth calling your Dentist about ...
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Valued Member
 United States
404 Posts |
Thanks fenton, when I asked how much they have there, she said boxes and boxes. They are "required" to keep them on record for 7 years before disposing of them.
I may have to relieve her office of some clutter.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2120 Posts |
Its all about cost efficiency. Same reason there is so much silver in land fills, it's not economical enough (yet) to go in and extract it.
Take the film for example. if that same 3-4 grams was worth $40 (Silver around $350/oz), I bet that dentist office could sell their old film, and there would be plenty of buyers just waiting to process the silver out of it.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4008 Posts |
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Not really something worth calling your Dentist about ... Perhaps not. But what about calling 50 or 100 dentists about it? This looks like one of those deals that works well if you can get the volume high enough. |
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Valued Member
United States
404 Posts |
Guess it's no different then the ones who roll hunt just for profit. He probably gets as excited when a dentist office says yes as a roll hunter gets when they find a silver half.
If you do it little by little, pick up 25 lbs here 50 there. Could pay for a nice little vacation at the end of the year.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
672 Posts |
Gluck with the HIPPA rules getting them to hand over charts, thats all I have to say...
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6389 Posts |
Many years ago I sold some scrap palladium to a refiner. He had a small warehouse with a big vat full of shredded X-Ray film being processed for PM recovery. He was using a dilute cyanide solution to leach out the metal. Apparently he felt it was worth the effort, even though silver was only about $5 an ounce back then.
Nothing like a huge vat of steaming cyanide in your kitchen to make you feel all warm inside!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2335 Posts |
I've got a friend that was in the refining biz back in the late 70's through the late 80's. He said they were refining something like 200,000 lbs of xray film every month.
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Valued Member
Canada
178 Posts |
The new goldrush is used electronics. Apparently the average cell phone has on average 0.034 grams of gold in it.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4008 Posts |
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Gluck with the HIPPA rules getting them to hand over charts, thats all I have to say... Not necessarily. If the x-rays are numbered and there is no way for the recycler to connect any particular person to any particular number, there is no personal information at risk. OTOH, if shredded first, perhaps a dentist would be more amenable to a recycler getting their hands on them. |
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Valued Member
United States
404 Posts |
There is no patient information on the xrays. The xrays are all over 7 years old.
100 dental xrays weigh approximately 6 oz.
so right around 250 a pound...$1.40 a pound?
That's a lot of xrays before you see any kind of money.
But you can probably fit 10 pounds into a shoe box, so you need about 20 shoe boxes to make $280.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4008 Posts |
Well, lots of people pick up aluminum beverage cans and sell them for a little pocket money, so just about anything IS possible.  |
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Replies: 13 / Views: 4,928 |
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Posted 05/21/2012 2:14 pm
