New Fluorescent Bulbs Not so Environmentally Friendly, After All
We, like millions of other consumers, decided to heed the call and buy the new fluorescent lightbulbs that last longer and are supposedly environmentally friendly. But shocking
new facts
have emerged about the bulbs. They are full of mercury. And if you break one, it's so toxic that you have to turn off your A/C or heating, open a window and leave the room for hours afterward. No, really. And you have practically have to wear a hazmat suit to dispose of the darn things. Then, all that mercury from the old lightbulbs is going to end up in our groundwater, then in us. That's really, really bad.
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.
Fluorescents - the squiggly, coiled bulbs that generate light by heating gases in a glass tube - are generally considered to use more than 50 percent less energy and to last several times longer than incandescent bulbs.
When fluorescent bulbs first hit store shelves several years ago, consumers complained about the loud noise they made, their harsh light, their bluish color, their clunky shape and the long time it took for them to warm up.
Since then, the bulbs - known as CFLs - have been revamped, and strict government guidelines have alleviated most of those problems. But while the bulbs are extremely energy-efficient, one problem hasn't gone away: All CFLs contain mercury, a neurotoxin that can cause kidney and brain damage.
The amount is tiny - about 5 milligrams, or barely enough to cover the tip of a pen - but that is enough to contaminate up to 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe drinking levels, extrapolated from Stanford University research on mercury. Even the latest lamps promoted as "low-mercury" can contaminate more than 1,000 gallons of water beyond safe levels.
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In fact, qualified places to recycle CFLs are so few that the largest recycler of of fluorescent bulbs in America is Ikea, the furniture chain.
"I think there's going to be hundreds of millions of [CFLs] in landfills all over the country," said Leonard Worth, head of Fluorecycle Inc. of Ingleside, Ill., a certified facility.
Once in a landfill, bulbs are likely to shatter even if they’re packaged properly, said the Solid Waste Association of North America. From there, mercury can leach into soil and groundwater and its vapors can spread through the air, potentially exposing workers to toxic levels of the poison.
We have not noticed any improvement in the "slow to heat up" and "flickering" issues. In fact, we've been reading reports in the British press that many people are complaining of migraine headaches after being around the bulbs -- the flickering can trigger migraines and possibly epileptic fits. They still emit a high pitched hum that some people can hear and it drives them nuts.
We think this whole lightbulb thing needs to be re-thought out before the federal ban on old lightbulbs kicks in in 2009. Facts, people. We need facts. And scientifically valid, green solutions. If you break one of these toxic bulbs, do follow the lengthy cleanup procedures recommended by the EPA here. And be sure not to let your children or pets anywhere near them.
Or, you could just switch back to the old kind until they remove the mercury from our lightbulbs.
