New lightbulbs contain Mercury!!!!

[Bill58]

This story http://www.slate.com/id/2183606/ extolls the virtues of the new "green" CFL lightbulbs that also happen to contain deadly Mercury. Am I missing something here? Isn't this the reason our beloved, old camera batteries were outlawed?

 

[rxmd]

Am I missing something here?

Um, the first sentence of the article you quoted, maybe?

"The case against CFLs is built largely on half-truths and innuendo."

Or the last paragraph on the first page of the article?

"The irony of CFLs is that they actually reduce overall mercury emissions in the long run. Despite recent improvements in the industry's technology, the burning of coal to produce electricity emits roughly 0.023 milligrams of mercury per kilowatt-hour. Over a year, then, using a 26-watt CFL in the average American home (where half of the electricity comes from coal) will result in the emission of 0.66 milligrams of mercury. For 100-watt incandescent bulbs, which produce the identical amount of light, the figure is 2.52 milligrams."

Philipp

 

[Bryce]

My household is waiting for LED lighting to replace incandescent bulbs. We tried CFL's and found that they:
•Seem to produce less light than advertised, i.e. barely more per actual watt than incandescant ones;
•Last less long than incandescant bulbs;
•Tend to catch on fire when they burn out and are a fire hazard;
•Produce a yucky green light that presumably will fade your best photos (all flourescent lights produce a lot of UV to my knowledge).

Just our experience. As a qualifier, this was a couple of years ago, when the local Utilities District was giving them out on the cheap. We got 24 bulbs at that time; not one is still working and as I mentioned one caught fire when it failed.

 

[myoptic3]

I agree, the older bulbs were crap. Dim as a cave. But the newer ones are fine, and the light bill has gone down nicely. The light is not green anymore. Fluorescent bulbs have come a long way. You can now get the tubular ones in diferent degrees of coolness or warmth. Some utilitiy companies will give you a discount if you go to them too, which sounds suspicious as they use less electricity, but I'll bet they get it back in some sort of government kickback.

 

[jlw]

Isn't this the reason our beloved, old camera batteries were outlawed?

Also, the reason mercury batteries were outlawed was specifically the risk of infants swallowing them (numerous actual incidents recorded) and absorbing the mercury as the seals deteriorated.

Granted, a baby will put almost anything in its mouth, but the likelihood of one swalliowing a CFL has to be pretty remote...

 

[sepiareverb]

I thought mercury in products was banned period in the EU? Thus the demise of the XPAN. Interested to hear from some folks in the know from there.

 

[aad]

Warning-do not eat your light bulbs.

 

[foto_fool]

AFAIK all fluorescent bulbs use a whiff of mercury vapor in them. Energize it and it turns into a UV-emitting plasma, which causes the coating on the inside of the tube to fluoresce. Very efficient.

In terms of footprint, I read somewhere that one mercury-filled thermometer equals something like 200 - 500 standard 48" fluorescent tubes.

 

[titrisol]

and the news are?
this has been known for a long time, but since global warmimg is a politcal issue and not a sceintific issue anymore a lot of scum bags have been making lots of money

 

[Bryce]

Sounds like it is time to look into CFL's again!
Sadly, LED's aren't a real option yet. I'm hoping they are the solution in the long run, being more efficient, durable and otherwise pleasant to be around than CFL's.

 

[bsdunek]

and the news are?
this has been known for a long time, but since global warmimg is a politcal issue and not a sceintific issue anymore a lot of scum bags have been making lots of money

So true! The real reason is to control the economy and take over control of the world!

 

[Bryce]

Hey, in the winter time all that waste heat from incandescent bulbs is just that much less "waste heat" an electric heater has to put out.
So fluorescent bulbs are only more efficient in the summertime anyway. And since the days are long in the summer, I use less light then.
Right?
So the <real> energy savings using cfl's over tungsten bulbs is perhaps 1/3 as great as advertised.
Then there is the U.V. exposure issue (melanoma risk) and deterioration of plastics, art, etc.
And mercury contamination...
By the way, we generate hydropower in this part of the U.S., so no mercury is being released from coal in the writing of this message.
I've almost got myself convinced cfl's ARE a conspiracy.

 

[Al Patterson]

Hey, in the winter time all that waste heat from incandescent bulbs is just that much less "waste heat" an electric heater has to put out.
So fluorescent bulbs are only more efficient in the summertime anyway. And since the days are long in the summer, I use less light then.
Right?
So the <real> energy savings using cfl's over tungsten bulbs is perhaps 1/3 as great as advertised.
Then there is the U.V. exposure issue (melanoma risk) and deterioration of plastics, art, etc.
And mercury contamination...
By the way, we generate hydropower in this part of the U.S., so no mercury is being released from coal in the writing of this message.
I've almost got myself convinced cfl's ARE a conspiracy.

Of course they are a conspiracy. GE goes to Congress, and in the name of "saving the planet" forces us to replace our 50 cent bulbs with $4.00 ones filled with deadly poison. And they make MORE money in the process! What a crock...

 

[rxmd]

Hey, in the winter time all that waste heat from incandescent bulbs is just that much less "waste heat" an electric heater has to put out.
So fluorescent bulbs are only more efficient in the summertime anyway. And since the days are long in the summer, I use less light then.
Right?
So the <real> energy savings using cfl's over tungsten bulbs is perhaps 1/3 as great as advertised.
Then there is the U.V. exposure issue (melanoma risk) and deterioration of plastics, art, etc.
And mercury contamination...

I feel this urge to read the first sentence of the article again.

- Heating with electricity is not particularly efficient anyway. In inefficiency it's probably second only to heating with tungsten bulbs, or maybe to kicking the walls repeatedly until they heat up.

- You use less light in summer anyway regardless of what bulbs you use, so you cannot use that statistic to talk about which kind of bulbs is more efficient.

- Regarding UV exposure: I don't remember people getting lots of melanoma from working in offices, shopping malls etc. lit with fluorescent tubes; UV is not UV, no more than red is blue. If you're concerned about melanoma risk and the deterioration of art, a better idea is to keep your window shutters firmly shut during the day in summer, because the sun is the biggest source of UV in your household.

- Mercury contamination from coal is averaged over the whole population, just like energy use in fact. If you say that mercury contamination is not a problem because you are using hydroelectricity, you could also say that mercury batteries are not a problem because you aren't swallowing them, or that plutonium is not a problem because you have none in your household. (In fact nothing is a problem that you don't happen to do.) It's not like your hydroelectric dam gives you a free ticket to waste energy as you choose.

Philipp

 

[Bryce]

Quote-
"It's not like your hydroelectric dam gives you a free ticket to waste energy as you choose."

Sure it does! We've been doing it for years! And we've got more than one dam, by the way.

My post was mostly in jest, but seriously, electric heaters are by nature 100% efficient. And so by nature, 100% of lost energy in a tungsten bulb becomes heat. So in the winter, there is no loss of energy with tungsten bulbs.
So, do you know of some form of heat that is better than 100% efficient?

Since much less electric lighting is used in the summer (when CFL's are are actually less wasteful than tungsten bulbs) I guesstimated that the actual difference between tungsten and cfl usage is roughly 1/3 the amount that the advertising on the packaging would have us believe.

So any attempt to reduce our impact is good, but let's get a little more serious about patting ourselves on the back. CFL's are a trivial improvement at the very best, and only that when you are ONLY thinking in terms of energy consumption.
They do produce toxic waste, they do produce UV radiation, and they are produced only in countries with no significant environmental controls.

 

[Roger Hicks]

CFL's have come a long way. I have a lot of them around the house. My wife wouldn't have them for a long time because of the light quality, but the newest ones pretty much solved this problem. Light output has greatly improved as well.

How new is 'newest'?

I've not bought any for maybe a year, and when the dim, expensive little b*stards die I replace 'em with real bulbs.

Yes, the last half-dozen I bought were better than the first half-dozen (the whole dozen across maybe 4 years) but they do seem to me to have been oversold.

Addressing other replies than yours: It's not the 'deadly mercury' that worries me -- anyone remember dental amalgalm? -- but all the other disadvantages.

Also, surely, mercury in batteries was banned for the same reasons as cadmium. The risk to the user is trivial, but the pollution during manufacture was inevitably high, and at the other end of the life-cycle the problem is leaching from dumps into ground-water. I could well be wrong on this, but I really don't think it was babies swallowing batteries.

Cheers,

R.

 

[varjag]

I thought mercury in products was banned period in the EU? Thus the demise of the XPAN. Interested to hear from some folks in the know from there.

You probably mean RoHS directive (Restriction of Hazardous Substances): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive

In case of XPAN though, most likely cause is lead-free solder mandated by the directive. Many older components can not withstand extra heat required for mounting.

 

[rxmd]

My post was mostly in jest, but seriously, electric heaters are by nature 100% efficient. And so by nature, 100% of lost energy in a tungsten bulb becomes heat. So in the winter, there is no loss of energy with tungsten bulbs.

So, do you know of some form of heat that is better than 100% efficient?

Well of course electric heaters are 100% efficient in the technical sense that they convert all energy to heat, but this is not really a sensible way to talk about efficiency at home, because you need to take the whole process into account, how much energy goes in and how efficiently it uses the energy to where the heat is wanted.

Your definition is flawed. Try to do a little experiment one day. Next winter go into a room at 10°C. Put an electric heater in there. By your definition, your heater is 100% efficient. Wait until the room is at 20°C and write down the amount of time and electricity that the heater needs. Now put your heater inside a thick insulated wooden box. Put some extra tungsten bulbs in there as well if you like. Wait until the room is at 20°C and write down the amount of time and electricity that the heater needs. It will take longer and a lot more energy, even though by your definition, the box is still 100% efficient.

Do you get electricity for free? If not, your criterion is flawed. Heating the ceiling and the air directly under it with a tungsten bulb is about as efficient as doing the same with a Bunsen burner, if what you're interested in is a cosy room instead of a room with a warm spot in the middle of the ceiling.

In general, electric heaters are inefficient because of where the electricity comes from. The heater is not an isolated system. The efficiency of the heater itself is close to 100%, but if you put the heater in a room and run a cable from the wall to it you have to look at the thermal characteristics of the wall (heaters are more efficient in well-insulated houses) and at where the cable comes from. Most electricity comes from processes that involve heat somehow. It's usually much more efficient to use this heat directly instead of converting it to electricity first and back. You are lucky because you got hydroelectric dams; yours is one of the few situations where electric heating may make some sense. There is a reason why some countries are gradually restricting or outlawing electric heating on environmental grounds, including, for example, Sweden, which is strongly interested in renewable energy.

If all energy came from hydroelectric dams, there would be no energy problem. Tungsten bulbs would be OK, and everybody could get hydrogen-powered cars. Unfortunately not all energy comes from dams. You are simply just as representative as someone who gets all his energy from photovoltaic panels on his roof and then says "I don't know why everybody else is talking about the problem of nuclear energy, I'm not using it."

Philipp

 

[Roger Hicks]

It would be interesting to know the dust-to-dust energy and pollution costs of incandescent vs. low-energy bulbs. I suspect that a good low-energy bulb (two of three out of the dozen or so I have bought) beats tungsten, but that the immediate power savings are offset to quite a high extent by extra production and pollution costs.

In this sense, low-energy bulbs are rather like hybrid motor cars, where the dust-to-dust cost of (say) a Prius is higher than that of (say) a Land Rover, and the pollution (thanks to several sets of lead-acid batteries) is almost certainly higher. I'm not suggesting that the dust-to-dust cost of a low-energy bulb is higher than that of an incandescent bulb; merely that energy usage figures are a good deal less than the whole story.

Cheers,

R.

 

[jamiewakeham]

At 6mg per bulb, you're going to have to eat quite a few to get any real effect upon the body. And unless you go around breaking them and inhaling deeply, your exposure will be nil. OK, once in a while you might drop one and break it, but once in a while people step in front of buses; we don't clamour for buses to be banned or come up with government bus conspiracies. UV exposure is absolutely negligible, assuming you ever go outside on a sunny day.

I'm not too sure of how America's power supply works, but in the UK the interconnectivity of the national grid makes it utterly meaningless to claim all your electricity 'comes' from the nearest power station. In fact, the hook-up with the continent means it's not entirely correct even to consider only the UK's power stations. Unless your grid is connected solely to hydro plants (which have their own massive environmental implications) or other renewables, you have to take the coal being used into account.

The tone of alarm here reminds me of people who are against nuclear power, with no rationale or understanding of it beyond the fact that they know "nucular = bad". My attempts to explain to such people that they have a greater exposure to radioactivity from the output of coal-fired stations than from nuclear stations frequently fail...

It's also worth pointing out that yes, the very first CFLs were a bit crap but then that happens with most products. Early cars were derided for being slower than a horse, but they were a necessary step along the route to the modern car. I have CFLs throughout my house and woudn't consider buying an incandescent again. I'm interested to see how LED and induction bulbs turn out (remember the induction bulbs contain mercury!!!! too) but they seem a long way off yet.

Cheers
Jamie