American Thinker has the story.
Perhaps we should start an ad campaign...Got Mercury?
Feel free to pass the above image along, if you're so inclined.
UPDATE: I wanted to add a link to the Wikipedia article on CFLs, which confirms the 5mg figure cited in the graphic I created, and which is referred to in the article I link to. Note that the Wikipedia article also claims that the overall output of mercury from a CFL should be less, given the theoretical reduction in emissions from coal-fired power plants, than using incandescents. I find this conclusion dubious both in its merits and in its applicability to me personally.
On the merits, the conclusion assumes a direct reduction of emissions from coal-fired power plants, an assumption that isn't necessarily justifiable, as it may not take into account the percentage of US power being generated by non-coal sources, the additional power requirements in China due to the need to add manufacturing capacity for more CFLs, and other issues. And given that China is hardly a paragon of environmental responsibility, one would reasonably assume that both manufacturing of CFLs and powering of the plants are likely to be dirtier there than they would be here in the US.
On applicability, even if one accepts the argument that the overall mercury load represented by CFLs is less than that of incandescents, one has to look at the problem of waste handling. If an incandescent bulb in my home breaks, I need only worry about finding and cleaning up all the sharp glass. If a CFL breaks, I have to worry about toxic heavy metals. If the mercury load from incandescents is largely or entirely based on emissions from coal-fired plants, it's much easier to deal with by improving scrubbers or other emissions technologies, compared to figuring out what to do with potentially millions upon millions of spent CFLs, not to mention educating consumers that they cannot safely just throw them into the trash.
So it seems to me that even granting the best possible assumptions for CFL supporters we are going to end up trading mercury emissions in US coal-fired plants for:
- Mercury emissions from Chinese coal-fired plants
- Mercury pollution at CFL facilities in China
- Mercury pollution in the US waste stream
This just doesn't seem like a wise trade-off to me.
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