The instruments at Salisbury Cathedral, St Paul’s in London, Worcester Cathedral, St Albans Abbey and Birmingham Town Hall are among the first that may be silenced. They are due to be refurbished or rebuilt and will fall foul of the directives, which are aimed at limiting the amount of lead in electrical items.

The regulations permit electrical equipment to have a maximum of 0.1 per cent of their weight as lead. Organ pipes have a lead content of 50 per cent or more and the Department of Trade and Industry has advised organ builders that, in the interests of directive harmony, they must “prepare to comply”. Though pipe organs are essentially mechanical devices, they use electric motors to power the blowers that move air through the pipes.

The great Harrison and Harrison organ at the South Bank, which is now in pieces in Durham as part of the refurbishment of the Royal Festival Hall, is under immediate threat. Under EU Directive 2002 95/EC RoHS and EU Directive 2002 96/EC WEEE, it will technically be illegal to reinstall it.

The Salisbury Cathedral organ, which is in pieces in Durham, where the console is being renovated, is also in danger of contravening the directive. Tim Hone, head of liturgy and music at the cathedral, said: “We were really looking forward to the return of our great Willis Harrison instrument. If this is delayed beyond July, we would could fall foul of the directive. We would have to use a piano in perpetuity.”

The directive, which seeks to minimise the amount of “hazardous waste” that finds its way into landfill after electrical products are scrapped, would also bring to an end the 1,000-year-old craft of organ building. In Britain there are about 70 companies employing about 800 people, and all their jobs are at risk.

Only straightforward repairs of old instruments, doing nothing to change or modify the organ, would be allowed.

Tony Baldry, the Tory MP for Banbury, is urging the Government to intervene to save the organ. He has tabled an early day motion giving warning that the ban will have “a serious impact on England’s cultural and liturgical life and will mean an end to English organ building”. He is calling on the Government to negotiate with the European Commission to find a way to protect traditional pipe organs.

Lead is used in organ pipes because of its malleability and the distinctive sound it produces. Organists are baffled that they have been caught up in EU red tape because when organs are rebuilt the lead is not thrown away. It is re-used in new or different pipes.

In a letter to organists nationwide, Katherine Venning, the president of the Institute of British Organ Building, said: “There is a very black cloud on the horizon. This is not a safety issue. Pipe makers live to a ripe old age, with no known damage to their health. The use of tin-lead alloy is essential. There is no known substitute that will give equivalent results. Pipe organs last indefinitely, and present no threat to the environment.”

A spokeswoman for the DTI said that the directive did apply to organs and that Britain could not deviate from a “harmonised approach”. She said: “The DTI has been working with the pipe organ industry for some time on this and is fully aware of the issue.”

She said that exemptions from directives could be granted by the EU.

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