Mercury Falling with the Rise of CFL Bulbs
December 28th, 2007 by Jim Gunshinan
Broke Your CFL? Don’t Panic!
The typical dose of mercury in a CFL is about the sizeof a pen tip
(circled in red), and these doses have been getting smaller and smaller.
(Photo provided by EPA.)
Australia has already begun to phase out the incandescent light bulb,
and the energy legislation recently signed by President Bush has
begun that process in the United States. Every time I turnaround,
it seems, someone is handing me a brand new
compact fluorescent light (CFL) to advance the cause of energy
efficiency and help save the planet. CFLs are becoming ubiquitous
in households all over California. We taught them in the pages of
Home Energy all the time. And that’s a goodthing, right?
Brandy Bridges, of Ellsworth, Maine may not think so. A cleaning
company quoted her a price of $2,000 to clean her house after
she broke a CFL.The benefits of CFLs are many–they use about75%
less energy than incandescents and last up to ten times longer.
Replacing a 75W incandescent with an 18W CFL will save you about $46
in electricity costs over the life of the bulb, and thatis at current
electricity prices, which no doubt will go up, making today’s CFLs an
even better deal. Energy Star CFLs (www.energystar.gov/cfls) won’t
flicker, give warmer light, and there area variety of them, from
the ubiquitous A-line bulb, to candelabras.
But, and it’s a big but, CFLs won’t give light without mercury.
The average CFL on the shelf at your local hardware store has about
4 mg of mercury in it. Mercury vapor is harmful to humans,and there
is enough mercury accumulated in some of the fish we eat
to make this Californian think twice about ordering salmon for dinner.
Thankfully, there are ways to clean up a broken CFL thatdon’t involve
an overly frightened and/or greedy cleaning company
(www.epa.gov/CFLcleanup), and recycling centers are available, if not
yet ubiquitous (that word again!) (www.lamprecycle.org).
Even if the worst happens and you break a CFL bulb, the EPA estimates
that at most only 6.8% of the 4 mg of mercury will be released, or about
0.27 mg, since most of it is in the glass, electrodes, and in the phosphor
coating on the inside of the glass. Incinerating a bulb willpotentially
release more mercury vapor, if there are no pollution controls on the incinerator.
But even if the CFL released all of it’s mercury–according to Richard Benware,
a graduate student at Cornell who researched CFLs last summer for EPA’s
Energy Star program–it would still be a better choice than an incandescent,
because over its lifetime, the 15W CFL will have preventedthe release of 5.67 mg
of mercury from an average power plant.
Of course, recycling is best, and that is still a problem. Alan Meier,
Home Energy’s senior executive editor, admits to turning
part of his garage into a “temporary hazardous waste holding facility” to
hold his family’s used CFLs, since the nearest CFL recycling center is
13 miles away from his home in Berkeley, through “one of the worst traffic
jams in the United States.” There is help in finding those recycling centers,
near and far (www.earth911.org).
But we need to put the same effort used in making CFLs ubiquitous into making
disposing of them in a clean safe manner just as ubiquitously easy.
You know what I mean.
Tags: cfls, energy efficiency, lighting, mercury
Posted in:
January 5th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I really like my CFLs, and have been using them for about two years now. They last and last and last and produce good-quality light to my eyes. Do you know of any that are instant-on? The ones I’ve tried come on slowly and in the cold they come on really slowly.
January 7th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Do you think the benefits out weigh the risks? I wonder if this surge is CFL’s will be a crisis in the future when they all need replacing?
January 7th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Hello Garga,
I’d look for the Energy Star label. The latest CFLs rated Energy Star-quality are rated for start time, lumens/watt, flicker, noise, and other features that were annoying negatives in the earlier models. Unfortunately, they last so long that it takes a while to replace them! But I think it’s worth it switching out to the new bulbs if it means better lighting quality.
January 7th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Hello Noelle,
You are right on with your question! Most thoughtful people who have studied the benefits and risks of using CFL bulbs instead of incandescents find that the benefits outweigh the risks, including the person I mentioned in my blog entry. But recycling is still a very big problem, especially as long as manufacturers use mercury in CFL bulbs.
In the future, it would be best if 1.) recycling options increase, 2.) CFLs are made with less mercury, and 3.) another technology, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDS) take the place of CFL bulbs. LEDs use no mercury and are very efficient. They don’t yet produce the kind of light (lumens per watt) that would make them common in households, but that could change soon.
Like always, I think, reason to worry, and reason to hope!
January 8th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Perhaps the technology for LEDs will improve — wait, it has to improve. Regardless of new technology in bulbs, we need new technology with recycling!
Thanks for your response Jim!
January 10th, 2008 at 3:05 am
[...] To read more on the issue of mercury in CFLs, visit Mercury Falling with the Rise of CFL Bulbs. [...]
January 10th, 2008 at 3:07 am
In particular, I like the “natural light” CFLs. Almost a necessity in cloudy places like Seattle, where I was living. The cost a little more, but they’re worth it.
January 12th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I’ve been using CFL since 2005 and found them especially useful in the summer since they don’t heat up the room and thus cut down on air conditioning.
It’s true that recycling is limited, so is knowledge about recycling in general. One point in particular: I discovered that http://www.lamprecycle.org, the one site that’s even printed on CFL packaging, isn’t useful at all — at least that’s my case as a NJ resident. It gives me a link to state DEP! Anyone can say “ask your state DEP”.
http://www.earth911.org is much better site. You just enter what you want to recycle, and enter your zipcode to get the results. Hard to understand why earth911 site isn’t listed on bulb packagings in the first place.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Hi Grace. I live in NJ and most county recycling take CFLs. In my county, you either have to make an appointment or wait twice a year when they have hazardous and electronic waste drives at certain locations. I know, not very convenient.
However, Grace, I do agree with you that simply listing call your dep is not very helpful. This is one of my pet peeves. I find the recycling is not very accessible. In order to dispose of my CFL, I have to drive about 30 minutes or wait for those drives. The ordinary person just throws them out.
What about businesses? Do the average business recycle their tubes or CFLs?
Don’t get me started on that I think Home Depot, Lowes, Wal-mart, and all the other big boys should have collection centers. They are pushing the CFLs. Let them recycle them!
By the way, Ikea takes CFLs.
Check out the Phillips Alto bulbs with a lower mercury content. Anna http://www.green-talk.com