Efficient light bulbs can pollute your house … and kill you

Filed under: Amusements, Climate change, Energy, Unintended consequences, pollution — Ray Ring at 10:51 am on Thursday, February 7, 2008
Ray Ring

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

They’re all the rage, because:

They use less energy. They save you money on your electricity bill. And they kind of save the planet, or at least, they reduce the upward trend of global warming.

So we’re all installing compact fluorescent bulbs in all the light fixtures in our houses.

Turns out, “there’s a catch.”

That’s the warning from the new Santa Barbara-based Miller-McCune think tank:

Low-energy bulbs — also known as compact fluorescent lamps — contain small amounts of mercury. … (And) when you break a bulb with mercury in it, the mercury instantly vaporizes in the air and poses a health risk to people who inhale it. The U.S. National Institutes of Health warns: “Exposures to very small amounts of mercury can result in devastating neurological damage and death.”

One country — the United Kingdom — has begun alerting the public:

So this month, as stores throughout the United Kingdom began pulling traditional tungsten bulbs from their shelves as part of a government mandate to completely replace them by 2011, ministers at the Environment Agency were simultaneously calling for more public education — including warnings printed on bulb labels — about the health and environment risks presented by low-energy lights.

As a sober BBC report put it: “Official advice from the Department of the Environment states that if a low-energy bulb is smashed, the room needs to be vacated for at least 15 minutes. A vacuum cleaner should not be used to clear up the debris, and care should be taken not to inhale the dust. Instead, rubber gloves should be used, and the broken bulb put into a sealed plastic bag, which should be taken to the local council for disposal.”

Sheesh. The Miller-McCune story is here. Is no type of progress completely safe?

7 Comments »

6324

Comment by Sneaux

February 7, 2008 @ 1:01 pm

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I broke any kind of a lightbulb. I’ve been replacing my regular ones with the compact flourescents as they need replacing - and it seems like the glass on the CF bulbs is thicker than the old traditional bulbs. Like, what would you have to do to break it? And would breaking one bulb cause *that* much neurological damage? How much mercury is in these things???

6326

Comment by Ryan Foster

February 7, 2008 @ 2:13 pm

Many laptops have mercury in the display. The next time you just want to take a sledgehammer to your computer consider the health effects and wear a good mask.

6329

Comment by Matt Mallery

February 7, 2008 @ 3:49 pm

I can’t believe how readily the environmetally concerned public has bought into these toxic bulbs. Wait 20 years when our landfills are full of mercury and then we will realize what a mistake we have made.

6334

Comment by Gerrie Leinfelder

February 8, 2008 @ 1:09 pm

That’s why I plan to throw my computer out the window, Ryan.

6340

Comment by Ryan Foster

February 8, 2008 @ 4:29 pm

There are health risks involved with that strategy as well! Laptop to head may be more damaging even than mercury. Though I suppose it wouldn’t be an injury to self. Coal power seems to be based on a similar premise.

6344

Comment by Ed Quillen

February 9, 2008 @ 4:00 pm

Since electricity often comes from burning coal, and coal combustion releases some mercury, I was going to run some numbers as to whether the reduced consumption of CFLs means that they actually put less mercury into the environment.

But somebody beat me to it. See the excellent piece in Slate, an online magazine, at http://www.slate.com/id/2183606

6385

Comment by SocraticGadfly

February 15, 2008 @ 6:17 pm

LED lights may well turn out to be an even better alternative to the old incandescent bulb than fluorescent bulbs are.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Comment spam protected by SpamBam