Posted on 01/13/2011 9:14:34 PM PST by george76
As incandescent bulbs are phased out across America in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescents (CFL), a Philadelphia environment expert is warning of a potential danger in the bulbs especially if they are accidentally broken... you need to take special precautions if a CFL bulb breaks.
Open up the windows, Prof. Ryan advises. Leave the room for 15 to 20 minutes and let the room air out. There will be a little bit of mercury that will vaporize. Mercury is a toxin and you dont want to breathe it in...
He says if a bulb breaks you should also turn off your central air or heat for about 20 minutes if you have a forced-air system.
(Excerpt) Read more at philadelphia.cbslocal.com ...
dont like them at all & esp the way they are being forced on us
“reducing oil dependence”...not the way it is being portrayed. There may be some reduced usage of usage of oil generated electricity but the biggest reduction in the use of energy will come after some die from being contaminated by this crap.
I think that your post is interesting but it would be helpful if you would show what your abbreviations stand for. I know that RGB stands for red-green-blue but don’t know what the other abbreviations mean.
Liberal policies are full of unintended consequences!!
This is just one more example.
Incandescent light bulbs are not banned, but regulated to death starting next year. Bush signed the centralized power grab.
bflr
I’ve done a little research on these bulbs, and the amount of mercury in them is much smaller than I realized. Typically, a bulb will contain about 4 mg of mercury. As the bulb is used, much of the mercury bonds with the inside of the bulb (I haven’t been able to find out what compound is formed).
So, you could evaporate the mercury in a reasonable amount of time provided you circulate air over the mercury. The assumption seems to be that opening the windows will create a draft over the spilled mercury. If the mercury was in a recessed area, this might not work. It would seem to be more effective to set up a fan to gently blow air over the area where the mercury is spilled, keeping the windows open.
It would take about ten times as long to evaporate the mercury from a new bulb as it would the mercury from a bulb which has been used for a long time. I wonder whether the professor’s 20 minutes is for a new or used bulb?
As much as I hate to admit it, that has not been the case inside my house. They are lasting WAY longer than any incandescent bulbs I’ve ever used.
But are they ready for outdoor fixtures? Anyone know?
Buy bulbs with a low color temperature, not high.
Playing really fast and loose with numbers, that means in about 190 more years I will have released as much mercury as those two thermometers. In reality it's a bt less than this -- but I expect LEDs to take over within the decade.
Not my experience at all. They last much longer.
Maybe you should check with your electric utility - a poor power-quality factor might be to blame (guessing).
True enough, but the rate at which the mercury evaporates is also affected by the surface area of the sample.
A cup of mercury sitting on the table exposes only its top surface to the air, and very little vapor comes off. But tip that cup over and spill it on the floor and you have a different situation.
Mercury splatters enthusiastically, much more so than water, for ex., and it forms lots of tiny droplets that scatter everywhere. Each one of those has its own (approximately) spherical surface which ramps up the evaporation rate quite a lot.
One solution that I have heard of is to keep flowers of sulfur handy and scatter that over the spill. It reacts with the mercury to form the harmless sulfide, which you can sweep up later.
The mercury in a CFL is miniscule, but if that bulb shatters it splatters, and if it was lit at the time, the stuff is already vaporized. So you will get a snootful from it if you're in the area.
I don't get the resistance to this bulb, except for the eventual loss of choice to buy incandescents, which I agree sucks and is unnecessary. As for this hysterical crap about disposing of cfl's safely, I ignore it. That's what wastebaskets are for.
“They dont even save energy. All the CFLs Ive thus far bought have burnt out much more quickly on average than incandescents.”
Not actually correct. I’ve cut my electric bill in half, and held it there, despite the normal inflationary price increases of the past five years or so.
Admittedly, I haven’t kept track of my cost for new bulbs, but I also haven’t had to buy one in the past two years, at least. I had never gone as much as three months without having to replace a lamp before I got the CFL’s.
I have three teenagers who seem to have a religious dedication to not turning off light switches. ;)
Naturally, YMMV.
OS
Thanks for the info.
Sure and thanks for requesting more info. I find this stuff interesting, not all want to hear about this stuff.
A better, cheap alternative to incands would be LEDs. LEDs are more efficient than CFLs, but not as cheap. LEDs are slightly more efficient, provide more light where you want it,
more directional, and have better light. CFLs are almost as efficient as LEDs, the light isn’t as good, but are much cheaper. LEDs are about $2 a watt - CFLs are about $2 for a 26 watt bulb. This is a fairly standard, but sufficiently
bright, 3watt white LED bulb for $5.
http://cgi.ebay.com/E27-White-3-LED-Bulb-Spotlight-Light-Lamp-3W-Save-Power-/290522215729?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43a4793531
Here by the way is a link to colored cfls. These are similar to “party bulbs”, but with an important difference.
http://cgi.ebay.com/6w-30w-Purple-accent-bar-night-light-fluorescent-bulb-/360332183677?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53e578c87d
CFL party bulbs are typically standard cfls with a coating on them. Red, green or blue. They aren’t efficient, because that coating blocks other colors. These bulbs here appear to be somewhat rare. No coating. I believe that these are single (or dual) phosphor bulbs. They make red, green and blue single phosphor bulbs, as well as purple, which is red and blue phosphors.
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