It doesn't seem to have hit the news pages yet, but everyone is on about the "hideous danger" inherent in using CFLs because they contain Mercury.

This will not come as news to 99.999% of BR members, but how concerned should we really be?

On the one hand, there's nothing in CFLs that hasn't been in fluorescent tubes since they first appeared and you can see little blobs of mercury in the lamps of many moving lights, when in an unstruck state.

On the other hand, mercury is a deadly poison and you don't need that much of it to start causing damage.

I take the "growing problem" view; as CFLs become more widely used, levels of mercury in the environment could rise, to the detriment of public health IMO...


e2a: More old news

I think you also have to keep in mind the reductions in mercury waste from other sources thanks to RoHS and similar initives. There's also a lot more recycling and reclamation going on - when I started in the industry we used to take dead fluorescents outside and smash them into a skip but not any more. As CFLs become the norm I can only imagine recycling facilities will become much more widespread and accessible, maybe even with incentives for those that use them?

There was a guy talking about it on today (radio 4) this morning. He was entirely failing to be alarmist despite much prompting from the presenter. Said that if you broke one in a small unventilated room, make it a ventilated room and come back in 15 minutes.

He also suggested as Ike has (and in line with common sense, so probably not govt. policy) that more recycling would become available for them.

When this story first broke the concern wasn't because of the Mercury but because there are people (a very small minority) in the UK who have a sever skin reaction to UV light.

These people can't go out in daylight, can't go into buildings lit by fluorescent lights because they emmit small levels of UV as do CFLs.

The concern raised was, if the use of CFLs became compulsory in all domestic properties it would have an adverse health effect on these people.

The reply was that there would still be 100,000,000 tungsten filament lamps produced for use in such situations

I'm starting to reent all this stuff now - I'm sick of people telling me what is good, what is bad, and then expecting me to pay for the extra costs of being green. As we dig agregate and other materials out of the ground to make into building material for all sorts of things, we fill the holes up with landfill - all grassy afterwards - my local complete ones actually look quite nice now with trees and other nice features. Mercury is bad, despite playing with big globs of it at school - but all we get are the boffins arguing about what levels are harmful and what aren't. I'd love to buy eco friendly lightbulbs WHEN they light up as quickly and as bright as the ones they replace. I view all the high profile press stuff as spin, and probably wouldn't notice the real stuff hidden in between.

The owner of my theatre has a glass bulb rectifier in his office because it looks 'weird' - nopbody has told him what the silver stuff, or indeed the whole thing actually is!

IMHO two seperate issues are becoming confused here.1)If a CFL is broken in a confined space then in theory a dangerous level of mecury vapour could occor in said space.In the event that a flouresent lamp (compact or otherwise) is broken in a poorly ventilated area it would appear prudent to vacate the area for 15 or 30 miutes in order to allow the vapour to disperse. It must however be noted that mercury is a cumalative poision, and that the risks of a "one of" exposure are very small.2) When failed lamps are disposed of, they SHOULD be recycled and the mercury reclaimed, in practice many dead lamps end up in land fill. This is clearly undesirable and should be avoided as it releases mercury into the enviroment.However it must be remembered that use of flouresecent lamps saves considerable electricity, much of which is produced by burning coal. Coal contains trace amounts of mercury which is released into the air at the power plant. It is said that by reducing the mercury emitted at power plants, the use of flourescent lamps reduces the total mercury emissions, even if used lamps are dumped .Most reports in the press do not appear to make the distinction between mercury emitted in a confined space by breaking a lamp, and that emitted into the wider enviroment by disposal.

Are you saying that it was not a good idea to play with the mercury when I found a couple of broken thermometers, rolling it from hand to hand etc ?!? I haven't grown any extra limbs, or lost any for that matter.

Please note:
I do not do this regularly or anything, it was just one of those things I had to try...curiosity... As Adam2 says it is a cumulative poison, so a one-off exposure shouldn't be too bad. I do not recommend that anyone exposes themselves unnecessarily to any dangerous substance without the proper safety precautions.

For any business that uses a number of items that contain mercury then I would have thought it to be sensible for there be a suitable way to collect and dispose of them just as there is a sharps bin for needles etc. If more CFLs are to be found in the home then the council should provide a means of disposal.....and I do not mean another wheelie bin or box that fits inside them!

These items definitely need more research into them. Finding out the adverse effects (if any) to the environment and public health.

From Vic Roberts who has over 30 years experience designing fluorescent lamps:

http://www.cflfacts.com

OK, so a lot of this stuff is over reaction, but since we've been forced into removing heavy metals from domestic and industrial items (RoHS etc.), it is slightly perverse that CFLs are being pushed so hard. The Goverment knows that forcing the domestic recycling of such items is hard to do, which is why you can dump chemical and clinical waste in your home wheely bin. Having spent many years analysing effluent run off from landfills, mercury plumes from crematoria and contamination level of brownfield sites, I can say that "yes" there is a problem with environmental contamination. Just what degree of risk that presents, and what we are happy living with is another matter altogether.

Simon

I'm slightly concerned.
Mercury is a risk and a cumulative poison, however the levels are small and infrequent exposure should pose only a small risk.

Unfortunately the public seem unable to grasp the concept of "small risk", the media insists that things are either "safe" or "lethal".

And when somebody can convince me that they are actually eco friendly....


CFL - lots of plastic, electronics, mercury, whatever chemical it is fluoresces to give visible light from the UV - all fairly nasty and difficult to dispose of.
- complicated production process requiring lots of energy to produce components.
- relatively heavy - higher energy usage for transport

Tungsten lamp - glass, metal, inert gas - glass and metal are recyleable. Inert gas is, well, inert!
- much simpler to produce, less energy used
- lightweight - less energy to transport

And as the "equivalent to 100w" type statements seem to be somewhat optimistic as well (maybe they are correct at some wavelength that isn't visible to the human eye?), the energy saving in use isn't as much as they claim.

And.... for over half of a lamp's life (maybe even 75%) you'll also have the heating on so the 99% of it's energy consumption that it throws out as heat reduces your heating bill, making the tungsten lamp 100% energy efficient.

edit crap grammar...

Now take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

• Using CFLs not only reduces energy usage but reduces it most in densely populated areas where distribution losses are generally at their highest and the environmental cost of reducing them via other means is greatest.
• Heating via light bulbs is seriously inefficient, after all who needs a warm ceiling?
• One of the biggest mercury polluters is (yes, you guessed it) coal fired power stations. Less energy usage = less mercury.
• Transporting a CFL costs about the same in terms of environmental damage as a conventional lamp, weight has negligible effect compared to size. For every CFL you'd need up to half a dozen conventional therefore the cost of transporting CFLs is very favorable.
• You can easily recycle them for free if you wanted to! OK this may not be true if you live in the Outer Hebrides but in the vast majority of cases it is. If you don't know where your local collection facility is phone your council and ask.

I'm not saying everyone should make the change - I'll openly admit to not using one in my bedside lamp for example as I can't be bothered to find one the right size. I just really don't think we should hide behind silly claims that conventional lamps save on heating bills and CFLs are sooooo heavy they must be bad for the environment.

It is also worth bearing in mind that in the country that uses most electricity in the world (and has only just discovered that the environment exists) for the other 50% of the time they will be using more power to COOL the room heated by the dreadfully inefficient (<20%) lamp. So for a 1kW load in a home they run 1kW of air-con too. By changing to 20W CFL we get 400W instead of 2kW. I see that as a worthwhile saving in itself, never mind the mercury, the useless heat that the GLS do put out near the ceiling etc.

True, but we're not in that country, and air-con is very rare here so we don't have much of that problem

Edit because I quoted half the topic somehow!

Dispose would be better phrase than recycle. Standard fluro tubes can go through a lamp crusher that does a pretty good job of seperating glass, metals and phosphors.

Lot of UK electrical waste is shipped to China, strange effect of importing so much stuff from Far East is that there is a lot of nearly empty container ships heading back that way so freight costs are minimal.

Re-cycling China style can involve people working over hot plates pulling useable components from PCBs whilst breathing in the solder fumes.

Circuit boards and plastics etc are piled up and burnt in the open air after being stripped of useables.

CFLs with built in ballasts are less than enviromentally friendly, got to question why lamps with seperate ballast socket , like PL, are not getting pushed?

Domestic lighting load is minimal compared against commercial lighting load, but commercial users want tax breaks not tax increases for changing. When were you last in a daylit supermarket?

CFLs are almost impossible to recycle - next time you have a dead one, take it to bits (don't break the glass), and have a look at the inside of the base.
- Lots of plastic, a PCB, some capacitors and other silicon. On death, the cap has usually burst making it useless and a contaminant.

They also don't last anywhere near as long as the hype (10,000 hours? LEDs don't do that!), are much dimmer than the supposed equivalent tungsten and have horrible colour rendition.

Compare this to a standard tungsten bubble, which uses almost no materials:
- A few grams of glass (easily recycled using a crusher), and a minute amount of tungsten, thermoset plastic and steel.

Even if it's not recycled, a crushed tungsten lightbulb takes up almost no space at all - compare that to a crushed CFL...

All in all, CFLs with built-in ballast are pure hype and have no real benefits.

On the other hand, CFLs with a separate ballast could be good.
It's a shame almost nobody does them.