Posted on 04/29/2007 1:34:30 PM PDT by John Jorsett
How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.
Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter's bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.
Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges' house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state's "safe" level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a "low-ball" estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began "gathering finances" to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn't cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.
Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as US$180 annually in energy costs -- and assuming that Bridges doesn't break any more CFLs -- it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.
The potentially hazardous CFL is being pushed by companies such as Wal-Mart, which wants to sell 100 million CFLs at five times the cost of incandescent bulbs during 2007, and, surprisingly, environmentalists.
It's quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about five billion light bulb sockets in North American households, we're looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges' bedroom.
Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.
As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a "highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children" and as "one of the most poisonous forms of pollution."
Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.
And let's not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups.
We'll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.
As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine "safety" standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to "safely" contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.
Not only are CFLs much more expensive than incandescent bulbs and emit light that many regard as inferior to incandescent bulbs, they pose a nightmare if they break and require special disposal procedures. Yet governments (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) are imposing on us such higher costs, denial of lighting choice, disposal hassles and breakage risks in the name of saving a few dollars every year on the electric bill? - Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk-science expert and advocate of free enterprise, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Ah the Democratic party is the inclusive party they say but we know them as the party on infiltration and infestation! You don’t here about any car dealerships up in flames or exclusive home up in flames because the appeasers in the Democratic party have welcomes the enviromental loonies into thier mental institution with open arms.
The mercury vapor inside the lamp ionizes when the cathodes are energized and emits UV light which reacts with the white inner coating of the lamp causing it to fluoresce in the visible spectrum. Various rare earths are used in the coating to change the color temperature of the lamp.
And househod disposal of fluorescent lamps is treated differently than commercial, each state has it's own standards but generally homeowners can just clean up the broken bits, bag and dispose in the trash. I'd be more worried about the powder from the inner coating than the mercury when the lamp breaks.
I throw mine in the trash. Quicker and easier.
ping
No I am saying - probably not as clear as I could - that ALL have it EXCEPT for the very newest ones that originate in Europe and are hard to find in the US and still very expensive.
a google search for
“mercury compact fluorescent”
provides the following link as the number one result:
http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cfl.pdf
I’m doubting anyone here has read this.
this document scientifically compares the amount of mercury released directly to the atmosphere through coal-based power production (without hope of containment) to that contained inside of CFL bulbs.
if you assumed a disastrous 100% of all CFL bulbs used were not recycled and compared that quantity of mercury to the amount that would have been released through power production for the amount of electricity saved through using CFL bulbs then you see the truth of which is the greater threat. admittedly, one broken bulb is still a pain to cleanup but the question of large-scale math and the greater good to humanity is obvious.
oh, and if mercury contamination is the subject, then why did the government recently delay regulation of mercury for decades? see this 2004 article on the subject:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001880929_mercury17.html
Should I trash it? Call the HAZMAT team in? I 'd hate to bring it back and cause a need for a DECON team to called in.
BTTT.
I wonder what a big power surge(lighting strike)would do to these things. May have some uses, any ideas? LOL
And within 5-10 years all flourescents will be banned in favor of LED which are much more efficient, can cycle many many times off and on, are cooler and last over 100,000 hours thats more than 11 years. There is many LED conversion lamps available, I have made my own as they are still a higher price than other lamps and the technology is advancing very fast as to the lumens output of them, almost all traffic signals are LED, they could not use flourescent because they die after so many cycles of on/off.
Ebay has a lot of auctions for different voltages like bulb conversions of 12vdc for boats/vehicles plus for 115vac or even european 220V.
I was a successful LED flashlight maker well before most cars had them or before any other flashlight companies made them, I even made a patented design, now of course you can buy them dirt cheap from China so I went back to truck driving and mechaniking.
As I told my husband, I don’t think we’ll call Hazmat if we break a bulb.
i just noticed that comment 12 did quote this link but only for the cleanup information. it is too bad that the primary point of the document demonstrating the net benefit of CFLs was ignored.
shallow-minded analysis on any topic with a bent towards twisting science to support a political position doesn’t help anyone. poor math and logic skills are not a conservative viewpoint and liberals are not the sole owners of all environmental causes.
when people speak as if any kind of logical pro-environment stance is really a pro-liberal pro-democrat position then they are actually smearing the good name of many sensible conservatives.
Idiocy...
But, true.
Imagine when you sell your home and the buyer has it tested for mercury vapor?
What do you believe the result will be?
Mercury is also one of the major ingredients in dental amalgam, used to fill cavities in teeth. I’ve got a mouth full of it.
I can’t say I’m not experiencing any ill side effects from it, but after all the causes I’ve given my body to have ill side effects (including my own little bottle of mercury) and besides the mercury in my fillings, I can’t really blame anything in particular. To live is to take risks, and one of these days, those risks are going to catch up with us. I like the fact that I’ve reduced my electric bills enough that I can still afford to have lights in my house, and as for the “we’re all gonna die” crowd, that would be true in any event, anyway. Life is tough, then you die. BFD.
Par for the course. I wonder how many pounds of evil CO2 were "spewed" into the atmosphere and how much energy was used by the the cars that brought the "officials" to the idiot's house (idiot for calling the government for "help")? Probably not as much as the Holy Grail of energy consumption prevented. /s
ALL florescent lights contain mercury!
People have been dealing with broken and burnt-out florescent lights for decades. How? By tossing them in the trash!
I was thinking the same thing. Just think, I could be certified by the EPA and a few local agencies, maybe even create a new beauracracy. I like “Department of Indoor Pollutant Safe Handling and Incident Tracking”.
According to an article Rush was reading on Friday, some guy wrote an article in The Nation mag about global warming and believe it or not .. he said there is -0- evidence that the earth warming is caused by humans. And .. the “carbon deposits” made by humans has -0- effect on the environment.
I’m surprised The Nation even printed it .. but some of the lefties could be trying to CYA the more Gore’s hysteria is being revealed for what it is - a fraud.
—if I have carefully picked up the big pieces and then vacuumed the rest, they won’t find any “mercury vapor”—
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