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CFL Warning

Junk Science: Light Bulb Lunacy
Sunday, April 29, 2007

By Steven Milloy


How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About $4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about $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 favor of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) — a move already either adopted or being considered in California, Canada, the European Union and Australia.

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 $2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the $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 $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.

Even if you don’t go for the full-scale panic of the $2,000 cleanup, the do-it-yourself approach is still somewhat intense, if not downright alarming.

Consider the procedure offered by the Maine DEP’s Web page entitled, “What if I accidentally break a fluorescent bulb in my home?”

Don’t vacuum bulb debris because a standard vacuum will spread mercury-containing dust throughout the area and contaminate the vacuum. Ventilate the area and reduce the temperature. Wear protective equipment like goggles, coveralls and a dust mask.

Collect the waste material into an airtight container. Pat the area with the sticky side of tape. Wipe with a damp cloth. Finally, check with local authorities to see where hazardous waste may be properly disposed.

The only step the Maine DEP left off was the final one: Hope that you did a good enough cleanup so that you, your family and pets aren’t poisoned by any mercury inadvertently dispersed or missed.

This, of course, assumes that people are even aware that breaking CFLs entails special cleanup procedures.

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 4 billion lightbulb sockets in 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 U.S., 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 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 5 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. Should government (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) impose 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?
 
then again, the highest source of environmental mercury contamination is from the burning of fossil fuels, which are used to generate electricity in power plants. Even though there's mercury in CFLs, the combined mercury from the bulb and the pollution from the electricity used to run it results in less combined mercury than the electricity alone for normal bulbs. It's too bad there isn't a mercury-free energy-efficient alternative. Damned if you do, Damned if you don't.
 
yeah, im not going to stop using them just yet but i wasnt aware just how much mercury is in them........going to be a bit more careful with them. your right "damned if yah do, damned if yah dont"..................going to be ALOT of these bulbs hitting the landfills in the next few years.......since they supposedly last 7 years and ive been using some for over 5 years now.........
 
We can't get them to last for more than a week in our cieling fans. The man said a 60 watt equivalent would work in a 60 watt socket. I guess not since we tried like 3 sets of bulbs and they all went out and are not in a landfill somewhere.

Have you SEEN a 60 watt CFL? It's like a grapefruit!
 
A sixty watt equivalent CFL bulb has an actual rating of like ten watts, Clint. That's why it's called "sixty watt equivalent" and not "sixty watt" - they're built to work in place of sixty watt incandescent bulbs, at a lower power cost.
~Joe
 
Thats what I said but nooooo my mother thinks the guy who works at homedepot knows more about it than me. He's the expert.
 
*looks over at CP stand* OK... I'm not breaking one of those.
 
*looks over at CP stand* OK... I'm not breaking one of those.

you too? i cant imagine how much mercury is in my house at the moment..................and i need more light yet :grin:
 
Heh, I've broken a few CFLs in my house...at least one that I know of on my carpet just a foot from me...

-Ben
 
  • #10
Ben.............please evacuate your house immediatly.....the guys in the hazmat suits are on their way.............please place your head between your knees and kiss your butt good bye till they arrive :grin:
 
  • #11
So do CFLs have more or less mercury than fluorescent tubes?
 
  • #12
i use CFLs :( i like them but one thing has happened and its the only problem. i bought a lamp fixture not unlike any other and it keeps burning new bulbs within a few weeks. the other fixture is perfect no flaws. but the other... anywho ill be getting rid of them for a bit.
Alex
 
  • #13
Don't forget you can't use a dimmer switch with fluorescents. That isn't an issue for regular tubes, but I bet plenty of people put CFLs in fixtures having a dimmer. Maybe that's causing the short life span problem.
 
  • #14
flourecents have way more mercury, not too mention they're unsafe. I can't belive people are falling for this garbage. don't get me wrong, I love the enviroment but that doesn't mean we can destroy ourselves in the meantime!
 
  • #15
Ben.............please evacuate your house immediatly.....the guys in the hazmat suits are on their way.............please place your head between your knees and kiss your butt good bye till they arrive :grin:

Should I seriously be worried about this? I told my dad about the broken bulb, but he thought nothing of it. This happened several months ago, almost a year maybe.

-Ben
 
  • #16
LED Lights. They're not too bad, and getting better. Some problems with limited frequencies and prics (last I checked.)

Fact sheet about mercury and CFLs. Still, I can see the point: at least all of the mercury from the power plant isn't SITTING ON MY BEDROOM FLOOR.

Still, it's important to keep things in perspective in a localized manner. Old flourescent tubes had, what, 10-100 times the amount of mercury than modern CFLs. Anyone else not hearing horror stories about those?

The larger problem yet may come when more people start using CFLs and need to dispose old ones. More and more CFL disposal programs are being started, but who knows how many will end up in landfills?
 
  • #17
Ben i was being a smart arse. i wouldnt worry about one or even a couple bulbs..........main reason i am interested in them is i use them over frog tanks and if one breaks over top one of the tanks(more than likely do to my clumsiness than anything) its enough mercury in with the frogs that there could be issues.....................one or two broken bulbs over a year prolly wont mean much at all....................also brought this up as an FYI when all these bulbs start hitting the dump over the next few years............when most households in the US start using them it could definatly be a potential problem
 
  • #18
If your seriously that worried get this clean up kit if you're not worried enough to spend $37, then it's obviously not a big deal.
 
  • #19
I've broken light bulbs before and just look at me, I'm fine!

On second thought you better order that clean up kit.
 
  • #20
Forget the kit. It's actually pretty easy to do yourself. All you need is some sulphur powder which is easily found in drugstores.

Pick up the glass shards (probably wearing gloves or so.) Sprinkle the powder wherever the mercury went or may have gone. The sulphur power is non-toxic, non-flammable, so it's ok if you go overboard (zinc powder, the alternative, IS flammable.) While watching out for shards of glass, use a disposable towel to work it in to the affected area then wipe it up (it's bright yellow, so it's easy to see.) Sulphur is of no danger to the environment, and the mercury picked up by the sulphur is a) also rendered pretty inert, and b) there's only a small amount. Though you may be able to just throw it away, it would be worth calling the hazardous waste place nearest to you to see if they'll pick it up or are available for drop off.

After that, just open up some windows and you should be fine. It works for labs, and I've heard of it working in homes just fine.



.... On second thought *looks at Clint*... I'll take seven, please! :D
 
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