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chasbmw wrote: Just to be pedantic, Cadmium has been banned as a metal plating substance since at least the early 1990s, the few uses still allowed are in the use of cadmium based colouring of various plastics and paints used in aerospace and other safety related items, but in general it's use is much diminished. It's Carcinogenic and it's use was banned due it's effect on the people employed in the plating industry, plus the downstream effects of the metal in the environment.

As long as you want to be pedantic (and who of us doesn't), could you offer any evidence of these statements about the ban? I'm not saying it isn't true, I'm saying I can find zero evidence that it is, so I'd love to know where I could find this information. As far as being a carcinogen, in the U.S. it is considered to be a "suspected carcinogen," as the evidence is very incomplete, even in California where seemingly everything is considered a carcinogen. Can you point me to the evidence that it clearly is a carcinogen?
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/cadmium.html

P.S. I am NOT saying it's not bad for you, as it can cause a number of conditions, including death. I'm only asking where the evidence is of your statements so I can be better informed. As two of us have discussed here, the "ban on cadmium" here in the U.S. was a well known fact, and it turns out we were completely wrong.

From memory it was the plating process which was the major risk - it was once possible, and probably still is, to buy DIY nickel plating kits, but the site explained that they were unable to sell Cad plating kits due to the dangerous chemicals used in the process, which could not be sold to the general public, in the UK at least.

Nickel plating left dull is a pretty good approximation of cad anyway.
It also polishes up nice if you want that, and it can be used to build up worn parts too, so most old Brit bike restorers had a kit bubbling away somewhere - the saving on replating the fasteners alone usually more than covered the cost - some of the obscure and obsolete Brit fasteners are real pricy!

My source was my local plater, who back in 1994, agreed to do some under the counter cad plating for me as he still had some of the materials left, then a few years later I asked to do some more and he refused, treating me as if I had tried to Pimp my daughter to him.
Looking at the euro links you kindly provided it seems that cadmium use is heavily restricted, various papers on how removing cadmium from anti fouling paints would reduce the amount of the metal in the North Sea and whether this was a drop in the ocean or not! Given that Cadmium is a much better plating than zinc in resisting salt corrosion, I'm sure that BMW would have continued to use it if they had been able.

Googling around I found this link to a company in the UK that claims that it's one of the few left in the EU that is still allowed to Cad plate. Use limited to defence and some aerospace companies.