Plumber silver-brazing cadmium exposure and metal fume fever

Silver solders are actually braze alloys, with different amounts of copper and zinc. Again, you have to keep the zinc out if you're going to use it in a vacuum application. Down here we've got cadmium. Cadmium's a problem. Why is cadmium a problem? Cadmium's toxic. Just like mercury or lead, and it's very volatile. It'll come off. If you were doing cadmium torch brazing in a factory, or you're a plumber doing silver brazing for a critical plumbing application, you could get what they call metal fume fever. Metal fume fever is when you breathe in certain types of metal. Zinc is one of these. Zinc is not really that harmful — if you work in a brass foundry without good ventilation and you breathe in a bunch of zinc oxide, zinc oxide is not really that harmful. You go to the health food store, they'll sell you zinc supplements. You just pop a few zinc pills in your mouth. If you don't want to do that, go eat some oysters — about one and a half percent zinc.