New lightbulbs contain Mercury!!!!

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Jamie,

All points fully taken, and of course, the EU hookups mean that Britain imports a lot of electricity from France, where there are LOTS of nuclear power stations.

The only thing I'd argue with is about early low-energy bulbs being a bit crap. No, they were VERY crap 5-10 years ago.

But I've had such bad luck with low-energy bulbs (at least one failed in minutes, several in hours, very slow warm-ups -- 10-20 minutes for full power, about 1 stop...) that I remain to be convinced.

People say that new ones are good: how new? And can you recommend any manufacturers?

Finally, a story that will amuse you and depress you in equal parts. Someone once came to Bob Shell's door asking him to sign a petition to 'ban chemicals'.

Understandably, he asked, "Which chemicals?"

"All chemicals!" came the reply...

Cheers,

R.

 

[kshapero]

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...

Here is the main problem:
If a bulb is dropped and breaks(explodes), you have Mercury contamanation and the EPA estimates that the cleanup costs would hover around $2000!!!

 

[varjag]

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...

Comparisons like this are a bit deceptive uses of numbers, very much like average patient's body temperature over a whole hospital. The thing here to consider is dispersion, the magnitude of effects. While emissions from coal burning are indeed higher, it is hard to imagine a coal power station incident providing health hazard to millions of people.

It is easy to throw around selective statistical comparisons and dismiss anti-nuclear crowd as irrational. However, in April 1986 I lived in Belarus, Chernobyl's primary fallout zone due to then combination of wind and rain. For years after we had microrentgen/hr displays on prominent buildings, much like you have current time/temperature displays in the rest of the world. A Geiger counter (or rather its digital implementation) was a household object, for checking your groceries. We had advertisement campaigns for iodine-enriched salt on TV, to prevent radioactive isotope from accumulating in body, spanning for years.

Not to say that nuclear energy is without perspectives, but it has its own huge bunch of problems to be solved. Plenty of people who have an idea about half-decay time and know what breeder reactor is still can remain unsold on idea of nuclear power.

 

[tritiated]

It’s strange to think that one might heat their home with light-bulbs, since that is not what they were designed for.


Depending on the model, a CFL contains ~ 5 mg (elemental) mercury; they are not dangerous when disposed of in the correct manner (the mercury is reclaimed). I think it is important to appreciate the amounts contained and the relative hazards of mercury compounds compared to elemental mercury.


CFLs are not 'filled with deadly poison' - I think someone must have been thinking of dimethyl mercury (extremely toxic at very low levels). Hg is still toxic, and some pathways for Hg intake are hazardous, i.e. ingestion, inhalation of vapour, thankfully the risk of this happening by accident is minimal wrt. CFLs. If one is particularly worried about ingesting small doses of mercury, perhaps they should consider not eating certain fish which are likely to have bioaccumulated methyl mercury derived from coal power station emissions.

As long as there is an appreciation of the life cycle of CFLs, i.e. manufacturers, authorities invest in/insist on schemes to be put in place for safe disposal, the environmental risk is minimal. Public awareness is another issue that requires addressing. Of course this will vary between countries/counties etc. e.g. in the UK, I doubt that many people have heard of the WEEE directive. This thread illustrates how effective reliable information is disseminated across the world, and worryingly that availability of disposal schemes is limited.

The outputs; colour temp, perceived brightness; Hg content, vary between model and manufacturer, and for some people they may not be fit for purpose, or a suitable model is hard to find. Incandescent light bulbs are much more predictable.

Ideally the important issues will eventually be addressed by governments and manufacturers, problems will be ironed out and the benefits of this relatively young technology will be felt worldwide. However, by that time LED arrays could become a strong competitor for more efficient lighting!​

 

[Bryce]

Fred-
So your lighting and heating bills are not one and the same. What has happened to your heating bill in the same time? And how are you heating?

RXMD-
I don't see the point in comparing heating the inside of a small, insulated box in a large room with heating the room. I guess if you heated the inside of the box with a bunsen burner it would eventually put itself out once it had consumed all the oxygen?
Heat is heat; it is convected around your living space more or less the same regardless of its source.
And my comments about hydropower- obviously my area is fortunate to have natural resources like it does, though we as a race are getting craftier about finding energy. Wind and ocean current generation hold at least some promise for the future, as does nuclear. We would, though, need a LOT more clean power available to make hydrogen powered cars a sensible choice!

Roger Hicks-
Your experiences with CFL's correspond well with mine. With one exception that is- one of them caught fire when its transformer (?) failed and might have burned my house down were I not there to turn it off when it happened!

Sitemistic-
I'll try them again. If they have improved THAT much in the last few years, I'll be very impressed. So as Roger asked, what brands do you recommend trying?

varjag- Couldn't agree more about nuclear. There are very real problems to solve before we consider nuclear power a very good solution. You mentioned the likelihood- er, inevitability of large scale accidents, but there are others:
Waste disposal. In the U.S. anyway, the current scheme is a dangerous joke. It gets stockpiled on the surface, all over the country. Vitrification is just something we're planning on doing someday.
Waste heat disposal- heating passing rivers near power plants has proven very destructive and nobody seems to have a better plan. Maybe geothermal?
Mine cleanup. See my gallery.

jamiewakeham-
The power grid here in the states is basically the same, though the bulk of power doesn't actually travel all that far as a practical matter. Regardless, there is no excuse for waste.

Personally, I'll stress (again) that I hope LED's become a viable solution in the near term. They are getting close now, and actually have very long lives.
And as for the rest of the environmental story, well... that will continue to be swept under the rug. Of course, only a small fraction of used CFL's will escape being thrown in the landfills and be "recovered". Recovery will probably be the same as computer component recovery has been so far: sent to a country with no meaningful environmental or human rights standards, where they will be processed by desperately poor people whose health is "expendable". And we in the developed world will congratulate ourselves for being SO green, and forward thinking.

 

[jamiewakeham]

KShapero - what's your source for the $2000 estimate? That sounds really quite incredible. As Tritiated points out, there are only about 5 thousandths of a gram of mercury in a bulb, and it's in its far less toxic and volatile elemental form, not as one of the nasty and hard-to-contain compunds. 5mg diffused into a room of (say) 25 cubic metres is a tiny, tiny amount and my reaction would be to open the windows for half an hour, not call in a clean-up team...

Bryce - that's a well-reasoned post. It's worth pointing out that with a grid it's not really correct to think of the power 'travelling' as such, and you're just as connected to the power station at the far end of it as you are the nearest. I'm going to disagree about nuclear power, on the basis that our understanding of what caused the big nuclear accidents of the past is sufficient that they wouldn't happen again, and anything is better than continuing with coal! Sure, I'd love to see wind and solar arrays providing the bulk of our electricity needs but I can't see it happening soon enough.

Roger - apologies if you've seen this, but a site dedicated to the eradication of the all-pervasive and insidious dihydrogen monoxide is here: http://www.dhmo.org/

This is a compound that has been proved to be fatal to humans in many ways, including immersion and inhalation, yet it's so incredibly addictive that deprivation of it is also fatal. Despite this we unwittingly feed it to our children. It's been found in the bodies of every criminal ever arrested. And so on...

 

[tritiated]

[FONT=&quot]I am confused by the point about hydrogen powered cars and ‘clean power’, do you refer to hydrogen fuel cells? Also with respect to nuclear waste disposal, remember the majority of waste is stored on the surface, because no nuclear waste repositories have been opened yet – the current scheme is unfortunately a slow process, perhaps not a ‘dangerous joke’.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Also if you are waiting for LEDs, in the mean time why not test out and use the next best alternative (in terms of efficiency)? Remember that LEDs arrays would be even less efficient at heating your house in winter than CFLs..[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Roger, I expect that regarding the life cycle assessment of a particular CFL, logically, at the very least the manufacturing costs (including energy and materials) are borne by the consumer upon purchase, hence the high price relative to incandescent bulbs (cradle to gate). Ideally the manufacturer would be responsible for a bulb’s cradle to grave (or dust to dust) lifetime, with perhaps a portion of the retail price being allocated for the provision of disposal facilities by the manufacturer. The latter is less likely since this means a higher unit price, reducing product competitiveness, and manufacturers would prefer less responsibility (wrt Potentially hazardous waste) with governments providing the required facilities. [/FONT]

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger - apologies if you've seen this, but a site dedicated to the eradication of the all-pervasive and insidious dihydrogen monoxide is here: http://www.dhmo.org/

This is a compound that has been proved to be fatal to humans in many ways, including immersion and inhalation, yet it's so incredibly addictive that deprivation of it is also fatal. Despite this we unwittingly feed it to our children. It's been found in the bodies of every criminal ever arrested. And so on...

Dear Jamie,

Indeed I have, but I commend it to everyone on the thread: no apologies needed!

A similar correlation has been shown in the War on Drugs: well over 80 percent of hard drug users were known to have used of both mothers' milk and instant coffee (at different stages in their lives, one hopes).

Cheers,

R.

 

[Iskra 2]

In the world of energy use, residential lighting is insignificant. 😕 Of course, we all want to do our part. 😱 When they turn off the lights and heating/cooling in the glass office buildings I might consider using less tungsten lighting. 😀 Regards.

 

[OldNick]

KShapero - what's your source for the $2000 estimate? That sounds really quite incredible. As Tritiated points out, there are only about 5 thousandths of a gram of mercury in a bulb, and it's in its far less toxic and volatile elemental form, not as one of the nasty and hard-to-contain compunds. 5mg diffused into a room of (say) 25 cubic metres is a tiny, tiny amount and my reaction would be to open the windows for half an hour, not call in a clean-up team....

I think some of the quotes on clean-up costs are generated by government guidelines on levels of toxic material that are left after the clean-up. In many cases, these levels are much lower than what existed before the incident.

The one thing to remember is, never try to vacuum up the residue. Most household vacuum cleaners spread the problem into the room air. I have a built-in vacuum that exhausts outside the house, so, for me, that is not a problem. Clean up carefully and dispose of the residue in a plastic bag.

Jim N.

 

[ChadHahn]

My house is lighted by CFLs most of them over 7 years old and taken from one house, transported across the country and put into a new house. I think I've had to replace two. I think that their light is comparable to incandescent. Most of my bulbs are GE bought at Sam's Club.

Isn't there a box you can get in England that changes color as you power consumption goes down? Also, isn't' there a website you can access to see how your usage compares to other peoples? The point being that you can see how much difference one person can make.

Sure nuclear power may be safer than it was during 3 Mile Island or Chernobyl, but where is all the nuclear waste going to go? What is going to keep it out of the environment for the next few thousand years. And how about transporting it from the nuclear power plant to the storage facility? I used to live near a NPP and they removed waste by train. The train went down tracks that were under water every spring when the Missouri river flooded and the tracks looked like a pair of snakes meandering along. Not the best maintained rail line in the country.

 

[Trius]

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...

You're kidding, right?

We are using CFLs in most fixtures in our house now, the only exception being a fixture that is on a dimmer, and maybe one or two other fixtures that are used very, very little.

The light quality of newer bulbs is indeed much improved, I have had no failures and so far only one burn-out due to age, and that is over a period of several years.

They're fine for Tri-X and TMY-2 but I'm not sure about K14. Just trying to keep it RFF related. 😉

 

[Bryce]

ChadHahn-
You're serious about the bulbs having lasted longer than incandescent ones? Thanks for the brand name.

Trius-
What brand are yours?

I'll go try a couple more.

 

[Trius]

Bryce: We've had several brands, I can't remember them all, but no real cheapos. The last batch is Sylvania, 13w (60w incandescent equivalent, bought in a 6-pack at BJ's Wholesale for ~$16 or less) and they give a slightly cool light, but that is fine for the kitchen where we placed 3 of them in an overhead fan fixture. My wife likes BRIGHT in the kitchen. Three of them at that wattage are a bit much for me, but it keeps SWMBO happy. 😉

I have recently looked at LCDs as well, but they are much more expensive than CFLs. I'd like to try one or two and then make a judgment.

I am not making any records as to how these are affecting our electricity bill; my wife pays the bills, so I'll ask her, but I think it's hard to track as the rates change annually and we haven't kept records as to when we started installing the CFLs.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Thanks to those who have named brands; I'll give them a try. I'm really not prejudiced against the things; I've just found that the claims made aren't true, above all, the claims for longer life. I must have had at least one-quarter of the damn' things pack up, and maybe half, since I moved into my current house five years ago. I've probably had about a dozen, a non-trivial expenditure compared with incandescent.

Cheers,

R.

 

[sepiareverb]

We've been using the newer compact flourescents in most of our fixtures, with no burnout in years. Westinghouse brand here, Vermont practically gave a bunch of them to us, we went to the hardware store, filled out a coupon and got them for 25¢ each. Another box of 5 was on sale for $6 at another hardware store.

These are the coiled ones that fit into most incandescent-type fixtures.

 

[cmedin]

Sure nuclear power may be safer than it was during 3 Mile Island or Chernobyl, but where is all the nuclear waste going to go? What is going to keep it out of the environment for the next few thousand years. And how about transporting it from the nuclear power plant to the storage facility? I used to live near a NPP and they removed waste by train. The train went down tracks that were under water every spring when the Missouri river flooded and the tracks looked like a pair of snakes meandering along. Not the best maintained rail line in the country.

Not to start a whole new topic, but a couple of comments:

1) What happened in Chernobyl can not happen in a western style reactor due to their design.

2) If we reprocessed nuclear waste as would be a sensible thing to do there wouldnt be so much of it.