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Questions Arising On Mercury In Compact Fluorescents
Patchw0rk F0g sends in an article from MSNBC on how some environmentalists are having second thoughts on compact fluorescent bulbs. Their relative energy efficiency is unquestioned. The problem is the mercury — enough in one bulb to contaminate 1,000 gallons of water, even in newer low-mercury bulbs. The EPA has an 11-step cleanup process to follow when you break a CFL in your home. The specialized recycling facilities that are needed are thin on the ground — about one per county in California, one of seven states where it is illegal to dispose of CFLs in the general waste stream.
This was on the BBC some months ago.
They were relatively reassuring about the health implications:
Something to be aware of, but not hugely worrying.
is not requiring the stores that push CFL to set up a recycle system. Home Depot and Walmart are busy pushing cheap bulbs from GE/China. They claim that they will last 5-7 years. Half of mine have burned out within 3 years. I have 8 bulbs waiting to recycle. Worse, I saw a GE/Made in China bulb catch on fire. I now buy Phillips/made in mexico only bulbs, but it does not solve the problem of mercury recycle.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For one thing, some of us have light-induced migraines. Fluorescent-lights are often a contributing factor. Whether it's the light spectrum output, the AC frequency, or some placebo, whatever, in *my* case, fluorescent lights seem to be a *major* contributing factor. I'm all for efficiency, but this case, Incandescent light is one of the few things that I have a hard time letting go. I *need* incandescent light in order to make my living... Nary that, just to survive.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
Wikipedia has a fuller discussion on this point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp#Mercury_emissions
If you are in an office or school, look overhead and determine what type of lighting you have. There are a lot of places where it is fluorescent lighting in the long tube format.
Said tubes also contain mercury. But few, if any people, seem to consider these as part of the mercury contamination controversy.
If these tubes aren't a problem because they are disposed of properly, couldn't the CFLs be put into the same disposal chain?
And if the tubes ARE a problem because of improper disposal, shouldn't they also be mentioned along with the CFLs?
Mercury is NEVER EVER Nontoxic.
It cannot be made nontoxic (despite what the amalgum "alchemists" of dentistry will tell you.)
The ADA will lie to their graves about Mercury's toxicities in the body from the mouth and lungs the lungs. HCL acid, AKA "stomach acid", does a great job of dissolving swallowed Mercury fillings and their residues readily dispersing the Mercury into the bloodstream.
Definitions of harmless vary.
Mercury vapor is heavier than air, it will not just float away.
Please read the MSDS for Mercury..., any questions?: http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/M1599.htm
Gallium OTOH is a much more expensive and LESS toxic alternative in some devices, but not all.
500kg of mercury is less than 10 gallons and that's the same as 100,000,000 CF bulbs.
If you eat 11oz of Yellowfin each week, you'll consume the same amount of mercury as eating 1 CF lightbulb each year, or 4oz of swordfish each week.
LEDs are very sensitive to heat. Current fixtures for incandescent bulbs are designed to limit heat conduction, because all the heat coming off a bulb would damage the wires and probably cause a short. Although LEDs are far less heat-generating than incandescents, they still give off some and it needs to be taken away.
Hardly an insurmountable problem, but one that keeps LEDs from being an immediate solution.
There's also an intriguing possibility of using laser diodes for general lighting. These are even more efficient than LEDs. A lens can diffuse the beam, and they currently exist in red, green, and blue forms that could be combined into the proper color temperature. The one problem as yet is that green and blue laser diodes are still very expensive, though they're coming down.
Not a typewriter
You could make the same argument about low-flow showerheads or toilets or plumbing fixtures in general (how long to those last).
People still remodel, new houses are built, old houses are destroyed, people break them, someone will come up with a new lighting mechanism (maybe that aluminum foil micro plasma lighting will become popular), and people will go through another replacement cycle.
All it takes is 1 company not to do this, and the rest of those who do are screwed. When you buy a "bulb" every 6 months, you'll ask me what kind I buy when I tell you that I've bought one in my entire life.
Additionally, a lot of people are looking at LEDs like regular lights. They are not. They can be flexible, shock resistant, and sealed tight. They are ideal for putting light in places where we've never been able to put bulbs before. In floors. In counters. In sinks. In walkways. In door frames. As desk surfaces. You can make your slightly raised door sills out of a low-brightness LED so that they are visible to people going through. These aren't things you will ever want to replace. While very energy efficient, I think that large-scale LED production will significantly change how we light things, and those changes will necessitate "bulbs" that never burn out.
Of course, there will still be LED "bulbs" shaped like light bulbs, which fit into a standard socket. And I'm sure that some brilliant company will do as you say, and program in death. But the strips of "TruSun Dimmable"(tm) LEDs you have installed around the perimeter of your room when you re-do the ceiling won't have this "feature". They will be there for your grandkids to see.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Trade offs? But that would mean compromise. Why should they compromise on anything? The Earth is at stake!
Around here, we have the Sunrise Powerlink that local groups have been opposing. The state of California has mandated that utilities get 20% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2010. To that end, there will be a pair of massive new solar thermal powerplants (contracted to Stirling Energy Systems) developed out in the desert. Now, in order to get that power to market, for the sake of cost and transmission efficiency it needs to go as short a route as possible. But in order to do that it has to cross Borrego. The local environmentalists can't be having with that, of course.
When this happens, it's no longer NIMBYism. It's BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
I just ordered up a new LED bulb on the market yesterday. It won top awards from the US Dept. of Energy last year, and is a direct replacement for in-celing can lights. 13 watt consupmtion, 50,000 hour life. It's pretty steep to swallow the cost, at $130 a pop, but for me it's replacing a 50 watt halogen that dies every 2,000 hours and cost $20 each. It'll pay off in the long run.
http://www.wattworks.com/LED%20LR6.htm
The problem with most LED lighting to date is that they're terrible for wide area illumination, like a parking lot light. Their beams are very directional. Plus, even though they state a long life, they can begin to dim very early on. I've gone through several, albeit cheap, LED flashlights a year because of this. Even with new batteries, they are about 1/2 as bright as a new unit within a couple months. I hope this bulb is not like that.
> A lens can diffuse the beam, and they currently exist in red, green, and blue forms that could
> be combined into the proper color temperature.
That won't work. There is a good reason white LEDs aren't just tri-color LEDs without seperate leads. See the slashdot story from this weekend about the artist exploiting the monochromatic light of LEDs to produce interesting effects when illuminating paintings. If you mix primary colors to get yellow paint, paint something with it and shine a yellow LED on it you see black. Oops! Guess that is why white LEDs use a deep blue or UV LED with a fluorescent coating inside the package. A LASER diode would of course be an even more extremely monochromatic light source than a normal LED, plus the unexpected problems of illuminating ordinary scenes with coherent light.
Democrat delenda est
I never understood why there's no popular version featuring a slightly yellow coloration. It's a very simple solution to a very simple problem. Of course it would cost some efficiency, but still better if it makes more people switch from ordinary bulbs.
Right now I only use fluorescent bulbs in the basement and some places where everybody forgets to turn the light off - usually places where it doesn't matter what someone/something looks like. But still I have around 2000 W of light running in the evenings, even though my house isn't really a big place. I just love my old 80's halogen lamp pointing to the ceiling, thereby providing warm, indirect light in the entire room. This lamp sucks 1000 W alone. I would replace it if it wasn't for the fact that no other light source is able to fill this particular room with light in a better way (better as in more pleasing to the eye). I don't blame LED or fluorescent for not being able to provide similar light - it's simply because they work differently than halogen or normal light bulbs. But I think the manufacturers could do a lot more to make their products resemble the warmth and density of traditional electric light-sources. Heck even bulbs heating carbon wires are still available on the market - they were state of the art over hundred years ago and some people still buy them for their friendly red glow. They were replaced by carbon wires because they were easier to manufacture and way more efficient.
I don't read replies by ACs.
If your electricity comes from coal, the power saved by a CFB prevents a greater amount of heavy metals (including mercury) from being dumped into the air, water and ground downwind of the coal plant. I like eating fish, how about you? This argument won me over, I hope it was not a lie designed to sell me a bunch of expensive light bulbs.
The service life of CFBs and regular bulbs makes me suspicious. CFBs do not last much longer than incandescent bulbs used to. I've had 2 of 12 burn out over a year or so despite the 5 year promise on the box. Incandescent bulbs used to be that good and halogen incandescent bulbs still last longer than CFBs. Ask yourself when the last time you changed your car headlights was.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I agree with Twitter. Quote: "If your electricity comes from coal, the power saved by a CFB prevents a greater amount of heavy metals (including mercury) from being dumped into the air, water and ground downwind of the coal plant."
This is not the first time a Slashdot article has misled us about mercury in compact fluorescent light bulbs. See this comment from a year ago: Misleading article. Quote from the second link in that comment: "China is also the world's largest emitter of mercury..." China's coal-fired plants emit TONS of mercury, and the mercury travels everywhere.
Is someone at Slashdot paid to post these articles, to sell LED or other lights? Or is it just ignorance?