CFLs more hazardous than previously believed
Who would have predicted this:
Compact fluorescent light bulbs, long touted by environmentalists as a more efficient and longer-lasting alternative to the incandescent bulbs that have lighted homes for more than a century, are running into resistance from waste industry officials and some environmental scientists, who warn that the bulbs’ poisonous innards pose a bigger threat to health and the environment than previously thought.
Oh yeah, that's right...I did, almost a year ago:
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.
The article notes:
As long as the mercury is contained in the bulb, CFLs are perfectly safe. But eventually, any bulbs — even CFLs — break or burn out, and most consumers simply throw them out in the trash, said Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University and editor of the journal Environmental Research.
“This is an enormous amount of mercury that’s going to enter the waste stream at present with no preparation for it,” she said.
Welcome to the party, folks.
Oh, and make sure to read the sidebar to the article, too, which contains the 11-step process the EPA recommends for cleanup after a CFL breaks. Thanks, but not in this house, at least not until the federal ban on incandescent bulbs kicks in.
One last thing...the article doesn't do the math, but here's an interesting quote:
Consumers bought more than 300 million CFLs last year, according to industry figures, but they may be simply trading one problem (low energy-efficiency) for another (hazardous materials by the millions of pounds going right into the earth).
Let's see...5 milligrams of mercury per bulb (.005 grams) x 300,000,000 bulbs is about 1.5 million grams of mercury, or 1,500 kilograms. That's one and a half tons of mercury that may potentially enter the waste stream or end up elsewhere in the environment. And that's before the federal ban on incandescent bulbs takes effect. That's a lot of mercury to trade for warming that may not even be happening anymore.
Shining a light on fluorescent bulbs - Environment- msnbc.com