Those CFLs have mercury

2007-05-20T07:22:00.000-07:00

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.

CFL - Devil in Disguise

Those CFLs have mercury