Comments on: Mercury is a problem in flourescent light bulbs

By: rm

rm — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:35:34 +0000

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.

By: festered

festered — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:19:51 +0000

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.

By: rm

rm — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:34:57 +0000

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

By: festered

festered — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:48:46 +0000

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.

By: rm

rm — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:37:31 +0000

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.

By: RLaitres

RLaitres — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:26:08 +0000

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.

By: drunky

drunky — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:25:40 +0000

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……

By: rm

rm — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:09:01 +0000

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.