Posted on 09/11/2008 8:54:53 PM PDT by hiho hiho
When it comes to light bulbs, the message has been blindingly clear. Environmentalists, energy experts, government agencies and pretty much everyone but the pope all say it’s high time you replaced your old incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. Last year, Congress passed a law banning incandescents by 2014.
The long-lasting CFLs generate the same amount of light with less energy, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving you money at the same time — and if you haven’t heard this pitch, it may be time for fresh batteries in your hearing aid.
Away from the glowing spotlight, however, a rising number of environmentally minded folks say the War on Bulbs is being waged with false or incomplete information by groups who ought to know better.
Specifically, these green skeptics say the mercury hazards of CFLs have been downplayed in the name of energy conservation.
While few say CFLs should be banned, new research highlights a stark contradiction between two cherished green goals: fighting global warming and ridding the environment of toxic pollution.
This dilemma puts conservationists in a bind. How do they warn consumers about the hazards of mercury, while at the same time promoting CFLs as a weapon against climate change?
“Energy is an important issue, and we need to get serious about conservation. But using fluorescent lamps is not a simple question,” says John Gilkeson, a principal planner with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency who is considered a national expert on mercury. “This is a very politically charged issue. Everybody’s got an agenda: it’s money, it’s energy, or it’s whatever.”
When it comes to informing the public, many government agencies haven’t figured out how to balance the different agendas, says Deborah Rice, a mercury expert at the Maine Center for Disease Control who headed an EPA panel on environmental toxicology.
“The folks I talk to in other states are struggling with it,” she says. “You’re almost in a position of saying, ‘Yeah, you’re taking on some personal risk, but it’s better for everybody.’ ”
In the 1990s, government agencies, under pressure from enviros, launched a campaign against mercury based on studies showing the toxic metal can trigger mental retardation.
As the U.S. National Institutes of Health puts it, “Exposures to very small amounts of (mercury) can result in devastating neurological damage and death.”
Mercury thermometers? Gone. Mercury switches? Off. Mercury fillings? Bite your tongue.
Now, however, those same groups are uniting behind a light bulb that contains tiny amounts of — you guessed it — mercury.
What happened? First and foremost, the American public woke up to the inconvenient fact that global temperatures have been steadily rising. Faced with the possibility of planetary catastrophe, issues like energy conservation took on new urgency.
CFLs are a good illustration of how anxiety about global warming has pushed other environmental concerns, such as toxic risks, out of the limelight.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has joined with the U.S. Department of Energy in an energy efficiency program called Energy Star that promotes CFLs.
But its promotional campaign makes scant mention that the bulbs contain mercury and should be properly recycled. “There were (some) people in … the EPA that were very upset about it,” Gilkeson says.
Exactly how big is the risk of mercury in CFLs? And in what way is their marketing disingenuous? Here are four questionable statements often made by CFL proponents.
1) The mercury in CFLs is not enough to hurt you.
CFL advocates say each bulb contains less than 5 milligrams of mercury — less than the tip of a ballpoint pen.
While that much is true, a recent study by the state of Maine found that the mercury vapor released by a broken bulb is enough to pose a health hazard if the room is not evacuated and aired out for 15 minutes.
Rice, who assisted with the study, says that while a single exposure isn’t much of a danger, you don’t want children sniffing around the breakage. The real concern, she says, would be with families who break several bulbs in a room over a couple of years — and, unaware of the dangers, don’t clean up properly.
Then there is the issue of long-term mercury exposure. Most CFLs are thrown in the trash and wind up in a landfill. Once fractured, the metallic mercury they contain eventually will be transformed by bacteria into the more dangerous methyl mercury. That’s the kind that contaminates water, climbs the food chain, poisons fish and accumulates in the human fetus. This explains why many states (though not Oregon) ban dumping CFLs in your trash, instead treating them as hazardous waste.
Michael Read, a Milwaukie sanitation district official and former president of the national Water Environment Federation, calls the mass dumping of bulbs into landfills “a potential environmental nightmare.”
2) To clean up a broken bulb, just vacuum and toss it in a bag.
The EPA and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality say that if you break a bulb, you should clean up by opening the windows for at least 15 minutes, evacuating the room, putting the breakage in a glass jar or plastic bag, and vacuuming your carpet.
But the Maine study found that mercury leaks right through plastic bags.
“It’s just going to go right through the plastic bag and back out in the room,” says Rice, the Maine mercury expert.
The study also found that vacuuming after breakage is a bad idea — and that the only way to eliminate the mercury hazard is to cut out the contaminated section of carpet.
“As soon as you start vacuuming you just bring this stuff out of the carpet,” Rice says. “And it’s ridiculous to think that nobody’s never going to vacuum their floor again, so what do you do? Well, we say, ‘Cut out that part of that carpet.’ Well, that’s ridiculous too.”
3) CFLs actually cut down on mercury in the environment.
Proponents say CFLs actually reduce the amount of mercury in the environment, because coal-fired power plants are a major source of mercury emissions. More efficient bulbs mean burning less coal and releasing less mercury — or so the theory goes.
Unfortunately, the argument is bogus, says Robert McCullough, a former Portland General Electric executive. That’s because using less electricity does not mean less coal is burned. Since coal is cheap, power companies tend to keep their coal-fired plants running day and night; when demand for electricity ebbs, they cut back on more expensive natural gas, not coal.
Gilkeson says proponents’ power plant argument was discredited more than a decade ago by a largely forgotten EPA study.
“It’s a diversion,” he says of the argument. “In my opinion, that’s a red herring.”
4) You should replace all your bulbs with CFLs.
Federal law decrees that old-fashioned incandescents should be replaced with energy efficient bulbs by 2014. But experts warn against using CFLs everywhere.
“The advice is: Don’t put these bulbs in children’s rooms where they are likely to be tipped over,” Rice says. “I use them in my house, but I use them in ceiling fixtures and fixtures that are out of the way where I know the kittens are not going to knock over a lamp and spill it.”
Will bulbs blow green credibility?
Despite the gloom about CFLs, there is a glimmer of hope. Home Depot recently instituted a take-back program where consumers can drop off their spent bulbs. Shareholders are pressing Wal-Mart to follow suit. There’s even talk of setting up disposal centers in your local post office.
Meanwhile, technological advances in LEDs ultimately may yield bright, efficient bulbs that don’t rely on mercury.
Still, CFL supporter Michael Bender of the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project thinks that his fellow proponents need to be more honest. about the “small risk” that comes with CFLs — or risk a consumer backlash.
“There needs to be a balance,” he says.
None! Darkness is the new standard!
Thanks, I'm here all week...
And what about the poor people who get migraines from CFLs?
I guess they don’t count?
The leftist libs’ cure is always worse than the disease. Especially here, where the disease is nonexistent.
And what scarce resource do LEDs rely upon?
I suppose when all the fish get mercury poisoning it will be man’s fault.
With LED technology improving so rapidly, it seems counter productive to mandate fluorescents by 2014. By that time we will have LEDs that are more efficient, cheaper to produce, and much safer. Typical political blundering.
LED’s are the way to go they last 100,000 of hours of use.
Oh for cryin’ out loud. Something as simple as a light bulb has Americans talking about conspiracy theories and toxic waste hazard.
I’ve been using them for 15 years now and have never had a problem with them. Only 2 have died, and they didn’t explode and force me to call hazmat.
Not only do they save a lot of money on the electric bill, they save a lot of money having to constantly replace burned out incandescent bulbs.
There isn’t globs of mercury in these bulbs, the starter circuit has a tiny amount the size of a pin head. And it does not leak out if the glass breaks. It remains in the starter circuit. All that could leak out is a tiny amount of mercury gas vapor, which is miniscule.
There is more natural mercury in the dirt all around you than what there is to ‘worry” about in a CFB.
And no, mercury does not leak through plastic bags unless the bag has a hole in it. Not that you’d have any to pick up from a broken bulb. The person who made that statement in this article is a complete idiot, as is the rest of his fear mongering.
There was an article linked here a while ago about research into CFLs which was truly frightening. They are bringing in these laws here (Australia) and I sent a copy to my member of parliament, and the Leader of the Opposition. Not only are they toxic in the home if broken, they are a huge environment risk when disposed of. Ironic, isn’t it.
No, darkness has been the lifeblood of Microsoft. Keep us in the dark, force us to accept their updates, only because thy wish us to …
LEDs are just a different form of semiconductor (computer chip) and made out of silicon and germanium, two common minerals.
Leave it to the Dembulb Congress to outlaw the wrong bulbs.
The local store had them for $1-$2, with the difference payed by the California tax payer and the power company, so I bought up a bunch. After all, it was a good deal at that price, and they are “supposed to” last a long time.
So, I have a total of ten about my apartment. The first one to go nearly caught fire. Smoke was pouring out of it. After that I have had 6 die within a years time.
The only satisfaction was fulfilling the law of unintended consequences by sending them to the land fill.
Oh.
I will use any bulb I choose. Not anyone’s business. I am stockpiling. Will they send the “light-bulb police?”
“And what scarce resource do LEDs rely upon?”
Light Emitting Diodes rely on basically the same construction as a transistor, which is cheap and much safer to produce. IIRC, the trick has been to get the light color and diffusion right.
A LED is just a diode made from Gallium and Indium if I remember right. Other not light emmitting diodes use metals less exotic than that even.
I have LED flashlights and use them for other purposes too, and the only problem I see with them as a source for lighting rooms is that the light does not difuse well. I’m not sure if its the wavelength of the light or what but it creates a very focused beam and does not fill a room with light well (but makes a wicked flashlight).
Oh.
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