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New light bulb promises energy savings, but at what price?
The compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) is the new “green” darling, and it has come to save the day.
The fluorescent bulbs are touted as a critical element in the efforts aimed at reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.
CFLs use less energy to produce light than their incandescent counterparts, as much as 75 percent less is the claim. Although the up-front cost of a CFL is around $3 vs. 50 cents for an incandescent bulb, advocates say that CFLs will last as much as five years longer.
Proponents are urging consumers to switch from incandescent bulbs to CFLs to cut their electric bills.
CFL advocates have engaged in a such a vigorous campaign to elevate the twisted little devices to heroic status in the battle to save energy and save the environment, that much of the public has been encouraged to believe it’s their “social responsibility” to discard what is perhaps one of history’s most significant technological developments – Thomas Alva Edison’s great invention, the incandescent light bulb – and replace it with the fluorescent miracle.
To assure that Americans made the switch, last year Congress and the Bush administration passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The bill imposes a host of regulations on American businesses and individuals intended to curb the nation’s overall energy use, including an effective ban on the incandescent light bulb – in favor of the CFL – by 2014.
But critics say the push to replace incandescent light bulbs with CFLs is based on faulty assumptions and unproven theories; that the law will send
American jobs to China; that CFLs are a health hazard; that CFLs are actually harmful to the environment; and that such a law may very well be unconstitutional.
The incandescent light bulb is drawing scrutiny because it consumes energy generated at coal-fired power plants. But unlike their incandescent counterparts, CFLs contain poisonous liquid mercury in varying amounts. A study by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection determined that it ranges from .9 to 18 milligrams.
A report from the Mercury Policy Project puts the range at anywhere from 1 mg to 30 mg. The mercury content level is inconsequential, though, as long as it stays in the bulb. However, the level of mercury vapor released into the air when a bulb breaks is far beyond the Environmental Protection Agency’s “accepted safety levels,” the Maine DEP study concluded.
In fact, the Maine study found that a single broken CFL can drive a room’s mercury vapor levels to over 300 times the EPA’s standard accepted safety level. It also found that for several days after cleaning up a broken CFL on a carpeted area, vacuuming or crawling across the area can cause the vapor levels to exceed EPA safety standards by 100 times.
The investigation was prompted by a 2007 incident in which a Prospect, Maine, woman was quoted a cost of $2,000 by an environmental cleanup firm to handle a broken CFL in her home. The Maine DEP went so far as to recommend that the bulbs not be used at all in carpeted rooms where children, infants, or pregnant women live.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reports that Brown University has published a similar study confirming the Maine results.
A statement on the NIEHS Web site (niehs. nih.gov/) says: “Mercury toxicity and lethality is old news; its detrimental effects have been apparent since the 1930s. Todays CFLs underscore mercury’s volatile vapor form, which is still a significant health concern — ventilation reduces but does not eliminate this toxicant. Mercury vapor inhalation can cause significant neural damage in developing fetuses and children.”
The Environmental Protection Agency, on its Energy Star Web site, says that when a bulb is broken, the room must be evacuated for 15 minutes and aired out - after all of the glass is removed and placed in a sealed glass jar and disposed of outside. Remaining glass should be picked up with tape. Central heating or air conditioning must also be turned off. It even suggests that you turn off heating and air conditioning the next several times you vacuum the room.
But while acknowledging the dangers, EPA still enthusiastically recommends replacing all of your incandescent bulbs with CFLs.
