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Truth and laughter re: mercury and compact fluorescent light bulbs

May 11, 2007

Posted by Nathanael Greene in Curbing Pollution , Green Enterprise , Solving Global Warming

Tags:

efficiency, energy

Back on April 30, the Washington Post ran an article titled "Fluorescent Bulbs Are Know to Zap Domestic Tranquillity - Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives." The articles was emailed around here within NRDC's Air&Energy program and provoked a hail storm of emails some agreeing, some bemoaning the sexist slant of the article, some arguing that there is no discernable difference in the quality of light between a good compact fluorescent and a regular old incandescent. I promise you that only people that care very deeply about saving energy could spent that much time emailing about one article.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that there are certain lights in my home that my wife as put off limits for CFLs. But I've been slowly winning her over as I've learned more about how to buy the right CFLs. Turns out that different CFLs emit different color light and if you want a dim moody light, you have to go for a very low watt CFL. Even for an energy geek like myself, it's hard after a life time of buying 40, 60, or 100 watt bulbs to accept that 5, 10, and 15 will do the trick. I found this article from Popular Mechanics to be helpful.

In some sort of strange coincidence, that same day here in the office we showed a promotional vedio for Relight New York, an effort by high school students to fight global warming and raise awareness of energy efficiency by giving CFLs to low income families here in the city. Yours turely did a little interview to help the inspirational effort along, some of which can be seen in the WNBC story here. I was glad to be able to help, but I'll confess working with high school students made me feel old.

In all the hubbub, someone circulated the story about a Maine woman who broke a CFL in her room, called around to find out how to clean it up, was told that CFL's contain murcury, and was eventually given an estimate of $2000 to have a haz-mat team come in and clean it up. Of course the article goes on to point out that she could alternatively just use her vacum and that the level of murcury, while high over the remains of the CFL, posed no health threat unless the woman kept her face within 3 feet of the remains for a very long time. But that didn't stop the right wing talkers from claiming that CFLs are going to kill us all and how this was an other example of how environmentalists are misguided or maybe even evil.

Turns out that CFL's contain about 5mg of murcury compared to a thermometer which contains about 500-3000 mg. Also by reducing the amount of electricity that we waste and thereby reducing the amount of coal that we burn, CFL's avoid much more murcury pollution than they could ever cause even if they were all disposed of improperly.

Now it turns out (see here and here) that Wal-Mart (irony is not the right word for what I feel writing that, more like hope), is going to make the CFL decision even easier. Working with their suppliers in a way that only Wal-Mart ca, they're going to reduce the murcury in the CFLs that they sell by about one-third.

As my colleague and friend Noah Horwitz is quoted as saying about this move: "People concerned about the environment and their health can buy these CFLs with a clear conscience."

Bottom line, we should all dispose of our old CFLs at loc

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