Those CFLs have mercury
CFLs contain mercury.
You didn't know that? Just a drop you say?
How about up to 5 milligrams per CFL? If all 10000 Lacs incandescent bulbs used in every household in India, were filled with CFL’s we'd have 5000 lacs milligrams of mercury spread around every single Indian household. By the way, 50000 lacs milligrams is nearly 500,000Kg.
These 500 tonnes of mercury amongst 10000 Lacs people, if indiscriminately thrown away, will eventually find its way to your favorite landfill and public drinking water supply. Knock over a table lamp and shatter a CFL in your house, and you have a toxic waste situation on your hands right in the living room, bedroom or dining room!!
On the other hand, at least half of all mercury emissions from coal fired power plants currently are captured by scrubbers, and clean coal technologies promise to eliminate 2/3rds of what remains. Not so for CFLs-- which can’t operate without mercury?
In the 'drive' for reducing global warming, by promoting CFLs, the 'environmentalists' would spread the mercury - now concentrated only in the coal fired power plants - to EACH and EVERY household!... where there are absolutely no means to handle a 'hazardous waste situation'. Is it just what we need?
It's quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now, and will
not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. we're looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous wastes sites. Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes.
Greenpeace recommends CFL’s, while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFL’s made? Not in the U.S. or EU, which have strict environmental regulations but in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually nonexistent.
Like Greenpeace, the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFL’s, 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." Lisa finaldi, Greenpeas USA, Michael bender, ban Mercury working group, are running drives since several years against the use of mercury thermometers. These are the same people that go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Many local governments in several countries have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.
We can understand easily that in a housing unit we use at the most one piece of thermometer. Can you imagine? What will be happen when we use at least 4-5 pieces or more mercury based CFL’s in a house?
In the early 1970's a major mercury poisoning catastrophe occurred in which an estimated 10,000 people died and 100,000 were severely and permanently brain damaged.
If this 'drive' continues we'll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Some (much) of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFL’s is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives.
This entry was posted by D.C. Agarwal, on
Sunday, May 20, 2007.
You can leave your response.
May 29, 2007 at 4:51 AM
It is very sad to know that cfls are so dangerous .Despite this our Govt's & NGO'S are suporting cfls.Our children should not feel prouded that our parents had left us Earth with tons of Mercury ,becuse they want to save some units of electricity.We shold call them ELECTRIC BOMBS'.
Rajendsr-kr.
June 1, 2007 at 12:19 PM
This article is really an eye opener. Before reading this article I though cfl's were good for us but after reading it I realize that they are really very dangerous. Everybody should get together and take a stand against cfl
June 10, 2007 at 12:28 PM
You shouldn't fall victim to anti-conservation hoaxes. Really.
CFL's put out less mercury for you to come in contact with than incandescent bulbs fueled by coal-fired power plants, for the same amount of light (coal has trace amounts of mercury in it, which is vaporized and comes out as air pollution -- it's a serious problem).
I have the facts, with links to better information, posted at my blog; this link is a tiny URL version, giving you a chance to preview it to be sure it's safe: http://preview.tinyurl.com/2fgwls
Don't feed the hoax machine: WorldNet Daily, a very pro-pollution publication, is leading the campaign against cleaner, safer CFLs with hoaxed claims. Mercury in CFLs is a problem, but a tiny one compared to the energy use it prevents, and the mercury emissions from coal that would fuel the more energy-wasteful incandescent bulbs.
Get the facts. Don't spread hoaxes.
August 5, 2007 at 2:37 PM
"Perfect is the enemy of good".
In a perfect world there would be no mercury pollution, but in our world CFLs help rather than harm.
To produce the lowest amount of mercury per light hour, I can offer two suggestions to you.
#1 - Buy Neolite CFLs. These contain only 1mg of mercury as opposed to 5mg. Lifetime mercury production of such a 1400 lumen bulb with be 2.6 mg, as opposed to 6.6 mg for a conventional CFL, or 10mg for a incandescent.
See here:
http://www.1000bulbs.com/products.php?cat=Neolite-Compact-Fluorescents-2700-Kelvin
#2 - Find a industrial manufacturer of LED lights and pay $100 per bulb. They are hard to find and expensive, but will produce only 1.6 mg of mercury over a lifetime comparable to a CFL.
As far as your point about nighttime and peak usage, it's wrong. That argument would be valid in concern to CO2 production, but night time usage sets base load requirements, which is generally met through coal burning plants. Peak load is often met through natural gas and oil plants which do not produce nearly as much mercury pollution. So in effect you're argument is backwards and the night time usage is more of a mercury problem than it would be calculated another way.
A final thought is recycling. Since the bulbs last several years we do have time to put these programs in place. It's worth doing today to increase recycling for linear fluorescent bulbs which have been used for years. If CFL usage spurs increased attention in this area the mercury benefits of CFLs will be even greater.
You can read more on my blog:
http://ryan-technorabble.blogspot.com/search/label/CFL
August 5, 2007 at 2:43 PM
By the way, one more comment:
"We can understand easily that in a housing unit we use at the most one piece of thermometer. Can you imagine? What will be happen when we use at least 4-5 pieces or more mercury based CFL’s in a house?"
The answer to your question is, nothing at all. If your using a mercury thermometer, you should be worrying about that far more. They contain 100 times the mercury as a standard CFL, and 500 times a Neolite bulb. 4 or 5 standard bulbs would raise the quantity of mercury in your house by 5%.
Hopefully, however, you've already replaced that thermometer with an electronic one. If you haven't I suggest you reevaluate your priorities.
June 20, 2008 at 6:52 PM
What does "Lacs" refer to?
September 22, 2008 at 11:13 PM
There are more than 5mg of mercury in a single can of tuna fish.