Posted on 04/04/2011 7:53:00 AM PDT by SmithL
The nation's accelerating shift from incandescent bulbs to a new generation of energy-efficient lighting is raising an environmental concern -- the release of tons of mercury every year.
The most popular new light -- the curly cue, compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs -- account for a quarter of new bulb sales and each contains up to 5 milligrams of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that's on the worst-offending list of environmental contaminants.
Demand for the bulbs is growing as federal and state mandates for energy-efficient lighting take effect, yet only about 2 percent of residential consumers and one-third of businesses recycle them, according to the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers.
"If the recycling rate remains as abysmally low as it is, then there will certainly be more mercury released into the environment," said Paul Abernathy, executive director of the Napa-based recycling association. "Until the public really has some kind of convenient way to take them back, it's going to be an issue."
As a result of discarded fluorescent lights, including CFLs, U.S. landfills release into the atmosphere and in stormwater runoff upward of 4 tons of mercury annually, according to a study in the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association.
A San Francisco hardware store owner sees the recycling dilemma firsthand.
"They're promoting them and giving them away, but there's nowhere to drop them off," said Tom Tognetti, co-owner of Fredricksen's Hardware.
(Excerpt) Read more at contracostatimes.com ...
If 300,000,000 Americans discard 300,000,000 bulbs containing 0.005 grams of mercury every year that would result in 1,500 long tons (called "tonnes") of mercury being released into the environment every year.
Our rulers are buffoons.
Normal fluorescent lamps are even worse mercury polluters when broken than the typical modern CFL. As long as the CFL is the darling du jour, you can bet that most people will turn a blind eye to its mercury content.
I was in Costco with my acupuncturist yesterday and she pointed to the CFLs and said STAY AWAY and go back to the old ones.
GE lobbied to screw us out of perfectly good lightbulbs to enhance their sharholder value and I can’t believe they didn’t think of the secondary market for recycling and reclaiming.
Immelt should go tomorrow for missing the big picture!
It is my understanding that 100 Watt incandescents will be outlawed as of 12/31/2011. I’ve already stocked up.
I’m wondering if that will actually happen...
The whole point of this was to pay off the dems’ cronies at GE, and that might have already been accomplished.
I do, however, have a huge stockpile.
If incandescents are made illegal, I’m in for multiple simultaneous death penalties.
Once we get rid of this monstrousity, next is the low flush toilet and low flow shower head.
Radon, a gas that normal healthy people breathe back out as readily as they breathe it in, is virtually harmless except to smokers. In their case, the radon and the smoke pack a one-two punch by adsorbing the radon and making it linger for days in the lungs until expelled by smoker’s cough.
I wonder if the situation will get so bad that we will have to throw all our stockpiled lightbulbs in the ocean like we did with those guns we used to own....
Barry and Harry would want to add an additional... Ahem.... - Zero - to that number. We have to organize the communities to get them to recycle those things dontchaknow.
I just bought a case of those 95 watters made by Sylvania.
4 bulbs for $1.
I now have at least a couple hundred 100 and 95 watters to last probably my lifetime and I’ll buy more before the years is over.
A free people ought to be able to choose any or all of these items for their personal use if they wish. They purport to save on bills, and if they work as advertised they do. However they probably will never work quite as well as they would had market competition been the only reason for their existence.
I DO have a few of the cfl bulbs—one in my hallway, one in the bathroom and two outside,—one over the garage and one for the porch. (ALL of my outside lights are “green”-being cfl and sodium vapor—because it costs LESS to run them, and they last a LOT longer—NOT because of any “green” concerns..). These are all “heavy use and hard to get at” lamps—that I do not want to have to change too often.
The rest are—and will continue to be—old fashioned “100 watt and such “normal” bulbs.
“would result in 1,500 long tons (called “tonnes”) of mercury being released into the environment every year.”
Pretty soon, we’ll have mercury in our food supply just like China. Oh goodie!
From the earth, back to earth.
While there are neighborhood effects from energy and water consumption, the case is not made. I have private water and sewer in a relatively rural area. My water usage has no neighborhood effect, I and all my neighbors could use all the water we wanted without affecting the environment. The amount of effluent we produce is negibly affected by the amount of ground water we mix it with before returning the water back to the ground. In a septic system, rainwater mixes with the wastewater in the leaching feild regardless. We are just pre-mixing a little more or less rainwater.
Ingesting elemental or metallic mercury is pretty harmless, it’s very poorly absorbed by the digestive system. The real danger is mercury compounds, especially halogens. Who’s to say what mercury sitting in dumps, reacting with other discarded chemicals and leaching into ground water will get up to.
Our rulers are buffoons.
Don’t worry. as soon as the incandescent bulb has stopped being manufactured, the Greene’s will call for legislation criminalizing the “Improper Disposal†of CFLs.
Prior to mining and extraction, mercury is pretty well isolated from drinking water and food supply. Most landfills are shallow and leach into water supplies for drinking and irrigation. I’m not overly alarmed, but I’m not sanguine either.
Even here in the great recycling state of Vermont, there doesn’t seem to be any way to dispose of them.
We put out our recyle stuff—paper, plastic, glass, returnables—and it’s picked up separately. But it’s all mashed up together in one truck. And no provision to separate out stuff like TVs or light bulbs.
You can make a special trip and take them to the dump, but I’m not too sure that they have the means to dispose of them properly, either.
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