Posted on 09/23/2010 11:58:18 AM PDT by American Dream 246
If not disposed of properly, CFL light bulbs, which Congress is pushing as a preferable and energy efficient alternative to incandescent bulbs, may poison you, contaminate your food and water supply, destroy the environment and kill your children.
If light bulbs were regulated like cigarettes, this is what it might say on the side of the box of “environmentally friendly” bulbs that you just picked up at Target.
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 banned almost all use of incandescent bulbs (the normal looking ones that pop up over cartoon characters’ heads in moments of brilliance) by 2014. They are to be replaced by more energy efficient bulbs. Currently, for lack of better technology, CFLs are the heir apparent.
According to the EPA’s website, CFLs “[use] about 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and [last] up to 10 times longer.” So if you still secretly want to be Captain Planet — which, let’s face it, we all do — it seems like the right product choice to go about being a hero and taking pollution down to zero.
Here’s the problem: CFLs contain mercury, which, in high concentrations, is poisonous. When a bulb is in use, it’s a non-issue, since the mercury is safely contained in the glass tubes. But when a light bulb comes to the end of its life, whether by natural or violent causes, things get tricky.
If a light bulb breaks, as The Daily Caller reported last week, you basically have to call out the HAZMAT team. Sometimes, light bulbs simply fizzle out and die. At which point you probably climb up on a ladder, unscrew the bulb, replace it with another one, and dump the old one in a trash can.
No matter how careful you are, somewhere between your kitchen and the landfill, breakage is inevitable. Says Rick Cochrane of Waste Management, “it’s going to break in an uncontrolled environment somewhere,” and that puts people in danger — the garbage man, the janitor, your dog who sticks its head in the trash can looking for food — and it also contaminates the environment. According to the EPA, “Even very small amounts … can accumulate and cause environmental problems. Such environmental contamination can linger for decades”
“Because the amount in each bulb is so low,” Paul Abernathy, executive director of Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers, says, “people tend to not really think of that as a huge environmental crisis. However, because there are so many bulbs that are broken that way — we have estimated that there may be more than 500 million bulbs that are broken that way — so it does add up to a significant amount of mercury.”
The takeaway is that, if you like to eat fish, drink water or breathe in areas where there are trash cans, it’s in your best interest to recycle a CFL. If you don’t know how, there websites that can help you out. Earth 911comes highly recommended: The website functions as a database that can help you locate the nearest recycling facility that takes CFLs. Recycle-a-bulb has a similar feature.
Did you know any of those sites existed? Neither did we. More importantly, what would have motivated you to go look for them?
This is the fundamental problem with CFL disposal: The information is there, but it has not been adequately publicized, and there’s no motivation to go out and find it.
According to the EPA, they have been working with manufacturers and vendors to promote CFL recycling, as well as providing for the “development and implementation of mercury lamp recycling outreach programs. Grant recipients implemented highly visible outreach programs to promote proper recycling of mercury-containing lamps.”
While praise for CFLs is easy to find on the EPA’s website instructions on how to dispose of them are not on the CFL page; rather, they can be found in the “Mercury” section of the EPA’s website, a placement that requires you to know that CFLs contain mercury in the first place.
Manufacturers post warnings on the boxes of bulbs, but who actually reads instructions — especially on something as self-explanatory as a light bulb? Besides, Abernathy points out, even if you do, are you really going to remember them five years down the line when the bulb finally burns out?
Perhaps as a result, the danger posed by exposure to mercury simply doesn’t seem to be on the radar. Thom Metzger, director of communications at NSWMA, the trade association representing people who collect garbage, told TheDC, “I’m somewhat less concerned about a mercury release; I’m more concerned about someone getting cut [by glass].”
As if there weren’t enough problems already, recycling CFLs is expensive, both for the consumer, who has to go out and find a recycling drop off, or shell out $16.95 for Waste Management’s Think Green Home Recycling Kit, and for the people who do the recycling. “There’s not enough value in the recovered materials,” says Cochrane. “In fact there’s a net cost.”
Lastly, there is simply no way to force people to recycle CFLs. Even if there’s a law requiring it, as in California, how can you make sure people comply, short of installing hidden cameras and picking through people’s trash?
At what point do the costs outweigh the benefits? How many people does it take throwing CFL bulbs into landfills before the amount of mercury contamination is so harmful that the energy savings aren’t worth it?
It’s a question no one seems to be able answer. Until they can, pick your poison.
Oh I’ll bet the discharge effluent HG levels at the Chinese factory are at least 10e6 higher than safe levels.
I would NOT want to breather the air OR drink the water anywhere near those plants.
so... I thought I kept up on all the leftist/new age/cosmic humanist crap in our culture,
but I haven’t heard of this 10-10-10...
How many Kennedys does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two.
One to hold the bulb, and one to drink booze until the room starts spinning.
but I haven’t heard of this 10-10-10...*
Yep. they're working hand in hand with the hideous 350 YouTube spammers:
http://www.350.org/campaigns/1010
“With your help, 10/10/10 is going to be the biggest day of practical action to cut carbon that the world has ever seen.
We're calling it “A Day to Celebrate Climate Solutions”—together we'll get to work in our communities on projects that can cut carbon and build the clean energy future.
But we won't stop there—we'll be using the day to pressure our leaders to Get To Work themselves by passing strong climate policies promoting clean energy and reducing emissions”
Sorry if anyone was having dinner.
Please alert the flight attendant that my paper bag did not drop from the ceiling when I read this!
but I haven’t heard of this 10-10-10...*
Yep. they're working hand in hand with the hideous 350 YouTube spammers:
http://www.350.org/campaigns/1010
“With your help, 10/10/10 is going to be the biggest day of practical action to cut carbon that the world has ever seen.
We're calling it “A Day to Celebrate Climate Solutions”—together we'll get to work in our communities on projects that can cut carbon and build the clean energy future.
But we won't stop there—we'll be using the day to pressure our leaders to Get To Work themselves by passing strong climate policies promoting clean energy and reducing emissions”
Sorry if anyone was having dinner.
Please alert the flight attendant that my paper bag did not drop from the ceiling when I read this!
Don’t forget the Michelson - Morley experiment. To damp out vibrations they floated a 5 foot square block of sandstone 10 inches thick in a pool of mercury. At 120 lbs. / sq. foot x 25 sq foot they needed enough mercury to displace roughly 3000 lbs.
The despots at the EPA insisted that MBTE be used as a gasoline additive, discovering too late that it was poisoning the ground water all over the country. These bureaucrats are too ignorant to be fooling with chemistry.
None. They prefer to remain in the dark.
It's a plausible question, but the answer will be a large number. Of course, one might argue that a billion or several billion flourescents is a much larger number than we were talking about. In that case we're talking about 1/2 a ton per billion flourescents, or maybe a tractorload volume of mercury.
Maybe the right conclusion is that recycling is a good idea since there are so many, but panicking over the 5 mg in a single busted bulb in the house is idiotic.
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 banned almost all use of incandescent bulbs (the normal looking ones that pop up over cartoon characters’ heads in moments of brilliance) by 2014. They are to be replaced by more energy efficient bulbs.
They won't be replaced in my house. I've been buying extra incandescents whenever I find them on sale. I have enough to last at least 15 years. And if they don't repeal this stupidity, then I'll buy even more.
The EPA, DOE, and the rest of the federal wonks can shove their 2014 deadline up their asses.
Liberals don’t care about danger to our children - they care about feeling good about themselves. And forcing all of us to use something we hate makes the little control freaks feel good about themselves...
If the CFL that is causing your problems is fairly old, you might want to try a newer one. You can tell if it uses the old style electromagnetic ballast by seeing if it takes time for the light to come up to full intensity. The old types take up to 1 minute. The new electronic ballasts should provide full intensity within 1 second. The electronic ballasts flicker at about 60,000 Hz, although poor filter capacitors can cause there to be some 120Hz modulation on this from the input power.
LEDs flicker a lot more than any CFLs do. There are 2 reasons for this. One is that the phospher in a CFL doesn’t respond as quickly to power changes as an LED does. If you could turn off all three types in slow motion, you would see that the incandescent takes the longest to go from bright to dim, while the LED dims out almost immediately. This is why you never notice the 60Hz flicker from an incandescent light. The changeover in your AC line polarity is too fast for the flourescing element to respond to in any great degree. Also, LEDs operate on DC power that is usually not current regulated. (It can be regulated; but unlike flourescents, LEDs don’t require a filtered DC input.) That means the DC power supply will completely switch at twice the input line frequency. For the US that means they’ll flicker at 120Hz, but the flicker itself will be much more abrupt than it is with the other 2 types.
Some people still report getting headaches even with the new CFLs though. If the cause of the headaches actually is the flicker, I can pretty much promise you that LEDs will make it worse. The headaches could also be caused by the light temperature (color,) a hum from the ballast, or a change in the lighting conditions (brighter or dimmer than it used to be.)
Anyway, I hope this helps.
Especially since the household thermometer that we used to stick directly in our kids’ mouths actually has about 100 times as much mercury.
Even if every single lightbulb in the US is replaced with a CFL, and every single one of them is thrown in the regular trash, we will still have less mercury released into the environment than if we stuck to regular incandescents. (Power plants generating electricy for old bulbs create much more mercury pollution than could be released through CFLs in landfills.)
Environutalists get way too focused on the small stuff and never look at the big picture.
I'm not sure that's true. Lessee... the average 100 watt litebulb lasts 1000 hours, so it uses 100 kw-hr of electricity. According to Google, there's 1700 kw-hr in a gallon of oil, and assuming 30% efficiency (burning to electricity), that would mean that it takes 1/5 of a gallon of oil to run a lightbulb for its average life. Does anyone know how many mg of mercury there are in oil?
The first google link I found suggested it was from .001 to .004 ppm (1 to 4 parts per billion). The amount in a 1/5 of a gallon of oil would be measured in micrograms. So, the mercury released from the extra energy used by an incandescent lightbulb is neglible compared to that contained in a CFL (which is stated as 5 mg).
Environutalists get way too focused on the small stuff and never look at the big picture.
I couldn't agree more, but it doesn't hurt to demonstrate that by calculation.
We bought enough light bulbs to last us the rest of our lives and the lives and the lives of at least 2 future generations. When they are on sale of buy one get one free, I get cases of them. They can take those new bulbs and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. I tried them. Hate them.
When you landfill a used CFL, you aren’t landfilling 5mg of mercury. You are only landfilling what is left when the bulb goes out. Most of the mercury will be bonded to the glass by then. EPA says 14% of the mercury will eventually escape from the bulb if used up, broken, and in a landfill.
And not all of our power is generated from oil. Coal causes at least twice as much mercury pollution escape. Here in Wisconsin, oil is only 1.4% of our electricity. Coal is 65%.
5mg * 14% = 0.7mg of Hg released in a landfill.
8,000 hours use * 13W CFL = 104kWh of electricity.
national average Hg released per kWh produced from all sources of power nationwide is .012mg (EPA)
104kWh * .012mg Hg = 1.25mg Hg released through power consumption.
1.25mg + .7mg = 1.95mg of mercury pollution for 8000 hours of CFL use.
Incandescent bulb contains no mercury.
8,000 hours * 60W incandescent bulb, (equivalent to 13W CFL,) = 480 kWh of electricity.
480kWh * .012 mg Hg = 5.76mg Hg
There you have it. In 8,000 hours of use, (typical lifespan of a CFL,) you will get 1.95mg of mercury pollution from a CFL and 5.76mg mercury pollution from incandescents even if you dump the CFL into a landfill.
Note that some municipalities incinerate trash and this will certainly result in the release of more mercury from a broken CFL when the glass melts I would guess.
As I’ve said, I don’t think the environutalists have done this type of math before. Painting signs is much easier.
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