You have confused steam with small water droplets, akin to what emerges from an ultrasonic mister. If it were steam, you would be shrieking and then dead.
But it's still water, and it's still moving up and about of its own accord in the local air which is the point. That it isn't technically steam doesn't disprove the point the person you're responding to is trying to make…
The commenter's point isn't that the lead has technically been boiled, it's that, if we analogize to "steam" in a shower, I don't have to reach water's boiling point before I'm breathing in water. Does that translate to lead: i.e., even if I'm below lead's boiling point, could I be nonetheless breathing in lead vapor, or something like that? (I don't know the answer here, which would push me towards lead-free solder. I.e., I don't know if the precautions I'd take with lead would actually suffice.)
That's the reason I was being persnickety and "science-y" about terms: analogies can lead you astray. You don't know the answer here, and so your options are: 1) do some experiments, 2) reason by science, not analogy.
I have some weightlifting plates. Pure iron. Can I forego iron in my diet and just ... sit next to them? Now, by analogy, sure. Practically? Probably not.
Here's one for you: what do you think happens if you drank a glass of pure liquid mercury?
Most people think you'd die on the spot. Wrong! That mercury hasn't sublimated into mercury vapor. Instead, it barrels through your alimentary canal like a shot and was used to treat constipation, of all things. It is poorly absorbed by digestion and just runs right through you.
No, soldering doesn't send streams of liquid solder through the air. And if an occasional drip of solder does splash, it is so heavy, and has so much surface tension, that it doesn't go far and doesn't stay in the air like water droplets do.
I thought everyone did the experiment of leaving a saucer of water out and seeing it evaporates over time, despite being significantly lower than 100c.
And "Steam" is wooly term for high enough density of water vapor that you see condensation - often caused by higher temperatures in the majority of cases people experience it in day to day life. So it doesn't really have a precise definition. At what temperature point does "mist" become "steam?" What %age of the volume of air needs to be water vapor? If you lowered the pressure water "boils" at a lower temperature - is that still steam?
