Freon is a brand name that covers a bunch of refridgerants, but when people talk about freon with negative connotations they are usually referring to the original CFC-based Freon products such as the widely-used refridgerant R-12. Fridges haven’t used CFCs since the early 90s, when they were banned and phased out world-wide due to their ozone-depleting potential.
They were replaced by R-134a (tetrafluoroethane) which is less harmful, and other non-CFC refridgerants but those have since also being phased out for even better options. Modern fridges of the last 10-20 years use butane (R600a) and alternatives which are the current least-harmful options for both health and the environment. Butane is burned as a fuel by the millions of tonnes every year, so an ounce or two leaking from a refrigerator is of truly minimal concern.
In short, if you have bought a fridge since circa 1994 you don’t have to worry about it “leaking freon”, that is a non issue.
I never said they don’t leak, all those systems have leaks with enough time and a certain failure rate right?
If they have increased their failure rate since being offshored largely to China and SEA I would not be surprised, as the manufacturing standards there are infamously lower than USA/EU/etc, but it seems like something where evidence is scant - I can’t find anything in my searches. I’m not saying your experience is not valuable, I believe you when you say you service more of the new ones than the old ones, but there may be other reasons for that than those models having a higher failure rate.
For example, it could be that people are buying fridges more often nowadays (like every 7-8 years instead of every 15+ in the 90s) because so many components on them are made cheaper and fail earlier… Everything is made to me more disposable nowadays (for the worse, IMO). If there are surviving models around from the 90s and earlier then you get survivor’s bias - you don’t see all the ones that failed as they went to scrapyards 25 years ago, etc.
Freon is a brand name that covers a bunch of refridgerants, but when people talk about freon with negative connotations they are usually referring to the original CFC-based Freon products such as the widely-used refridgerant R-12. Fridges haven’t used CFCs since the early 90s, when they were banned and phased out world-wide due to their ozone-depleting potential.
They were replaced by R-134a (tetrafluoroethane) which is less harmful, and other non-CFC refridgerants but those have since also being phased out for even better options. Modern fridges of the last 10-20 years use butane (R600a) and alternatives which are the current least-harmful options for both health and the environment. Butane is burned as a fuel by the millions of tonnes every year, so an ounce or two leaking from a refrigerator is of truly minimal concern.
In short, if you have bought a fridge since circa 1994 you don’t have to worry about it “leaking freon”, that is a non issue.
The ozone hole is being actively & closely monitored and has been closing since the ban, projected to completely close & return to 1980 levels by 2075. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ozone_depletion&wprov=rarw1
Tell that to the thousands of clients I service every year with no r134a left if their sealed systems.
There’s a reason appliance repair techs that work on sealed systems are in such high demand.
Dude. I literally recharge two refrigerators yesterday that were less than ten years old.
I never said they don’t leak, all those systems have leaks with enough time and a certain failure rate right?
If they have increased their failure rate since being offshored largely to China and SEA I would not be surprised, as the manufacturing standards there are infamously lower than USA/EU/etc, but it seems like something where evidence is scant - I can’t find anything in my searches. I’m not saying your experience is not valuable, I believe you when you say you service more of the new ones than the old ones, but there may be other reasons for that than those models having a higher failure rate.
For example, it could be that people are buying fridges more often nowadays (like every 7-8 years instead of every 15+ in the 90s) because so many components on them are made cheaper and fail earlier… Everything is made to me more disposable nowadays (for the worse, IMO). If there are surviving models around from the 90s and earlier then you get survivor’s bias - you don’t see all the ones that failed as they went to scrapyards 25 years ago, etc.