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Interesting article on the front page of The Daily Sentinel July 10. The first paragraph sums it up: “Mesa County is one of seven locations around the United States being considered for storing mercury, an element deemed by Congress too hazardous to export.” The Last sentence in the seventh paragraph says, “Mercury is classified as a hazardous material.”
These are the same clowns inside the Beltway who passed a law that requires all of us
to use mercury-filled light bulbs in our homes, offices, hospitals and churches starting in 2012. If mercury is so hazardous, why are we being forced to use these lights?
Check to see how you are supposed to dispose of a broken one. In most cases, you can’t just throw them away like you can the incandescent ones most of us use now. Broken mercury-filled bulbs, for the most part, have to be taken to a disposal unit, and guess who pays for that.
It is time to throw these bums out and we have the perfect opportunity next year. Who are they trying to protect, the taxpayers or the companies who manufacture and sell these bulbs?
PATRICIA BEAUCHAMP
Grand Junction
8 Responses to “Mercury is a problem in flourescent light bulbs”
Posted July 10th, 2009 at 5:09 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Our lives are going to get ever more complicated as we enter the era of “Peak Oil,” “Global Warming,” and “Food Contamination.” We owe it to ourselves to become knowledgeable about “Hot Button” issues and separate the ideological chaff from the science.
Most of the mercury contamination in our environment comes from coal burning power plants. The electricity saved over the life of a CFL bulb compared to incandescent bulbs greatly reduces the amount of Mercury released into the atmosphere. There are recycling centers where the bulbs can safely be disposed of at no cost. This is no different then having to properly dispose of electronic equipment and batteries. Particularly NiCad batteries which contain Cadmium. The 2012 law does not ban incandescent light bulbs, just inefficient ones. The bulb manufacturers expect to have incandescent bulbs that are as efficient as CFL bulbs by 2012.
Posted July 10th, 2009 at 5:25 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Actually, if you live in Mesa County and you are not a business, you can dispose of your CFLs and fluorescent light tubes free of charge at the Mesa County Household Hazardous Waste facility. However, if you are a business entity, you are regulated and must manage your fluorescent tubes and CFLs as universal waste and send them to the appropriate recycler or dispose of as hazardous waste. Again, for a nominal charge, the MCHHW can accept your florescent light tubes or CFLs for a nominal charge which is tax deductible. However, most business entities in Grand Junction are either unaware, or do not care, such as Mesa Mall which throws all of their mercury containing bulbs into the trash, which ends up in the landfill. So what you say? It is only a pinhead amount of mercury per bulb, however, if we put a million pinheads of mercury into our landfill, we are hereby concentrating mercury, mercury is a heavy metal and migrates to the bottom of the landfill, all landfills eventually leak. Our landfill is by the Gunnison River……
Posted July 10th, 2009 at 5:26 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
rm: “Our lives are going to get ever more complicated as we enter the era of “Peak Oil,” “Global Warming,” and “Food Contamination.””
Our lives have always been complicated. The problem is really that, in an atttempt to keep it simple some choose to ignore reality. And, in many ways, we all delude ourselves into doing so in the false belief that ignoring them will make them go away. They don’t, and when ignored most “problems” only get worse. That is as true in society as it is with our own human body.
I am always fascinated when people say “Life was simpler then” (when they were young). Actually it may have appeared to us that it was, but that is because, at that time in our lives, we were not called upon to deal with the problems of the day. For our parents, grandparents, etc., those who had to make the decisions, it was not at all that simple.
Posted July 10th, 2009 at 5:37 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
drunky,
Here is a good explanation, with numbers, of the CFL mercury tradeoffs.
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf
And the good news is that incandescent bulbs are not finished yet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/business/energy-environment/06bulbs.html
And then there is LED lighting which offers longer life then CFL’s with less disposal problems. The downside is the high price.
Posted July 11th, 2009 at 3:48 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
instead of using mercury filled cfl’s, which supposedly last 2-5 times longer then incandesant bulbs and heat up just as much, why not use LEDs which last ten times longer then cfl’s and do not heat up and contain no mercury.
Posted July 11th, 2009 at 7:34 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
festered,
Compared to incandescent light bulbs CFL’s use between 1/3 and 1/5 the power for a given light output hence operate considerably cooler. Also their life span is 8-15 times as long as incancesdents.
LED’s are not quite ready for prime time and are expensive.
http://www.amazon.com/Maxxima-BR40-LED-Light-Bulb/dp/B002FX6Z9A/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1247318538&sr=1-8
Here is an incandescent bulb that meets the 2012 standards and is dimmable.
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-70-Watt-Halogena-Energy-Saver/dp/B001FA07UW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1247319054&sr=8-3
Posted July 11th, 2009 at 6:19 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
rm,
the next time you turn on one of your cfl bulbs, please grab the bulb with your bare hand after it has been on for 15 minutes or more and then tell me how cool it is. aslo it is true LEDs are expensive in the USA; however, I travel extensively in Asian countries throughout the year and the LEDs there are considerable less expensive and comparable in price to CFLs.
Posted July 11th, 2009 at 8:35 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
festered,
“the next time you turn on one of your cfl bulbs, please grab the bulb with your bare hand after it has been on for 15 minutes or more and then tell me how cool it is.”
Much cooler. I check every night when I turn on my reading lamp while reading “What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”
Tungsten filament incandescent bulb 17 per cent efficiency
CFl bulb 80 percent efficiency
With a 100 watt incandescent light bulb 83 watts of energy are converted to heat.
For the equivalent amount of light from a CFL only 20 watts of energy are converted to heat.
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