Questions Arising On Mercury In Compact Fluorescents 560
Patchw0rk F0g sends in an article from MSNBC on how some environmentalists are having second thoughts on compact fluorescent bulbs. Their relative energy efficiency is unquestioned. The problem is the mercury — enough in one bulb to contaminate 1,000 gallons of water, even in newer low-mercury bulbs. The EPA has an 11-step cleanup process to follow when you break a CFL in your home. The specialized recycling facilities that are needed are thin on the ground — about one per county in California, one of seven states where it is illegal to dispose of CFLs in the general waste stream.
I only liked CFLs because they lasted longer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise, they suck.
LED lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LED lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lateral benefits (Score:3, Insightful)
Other home dangers! (Score:5, Insightful)
And now you tell me that mercury from my breaking-lightbulbs spree will kill my family tree? Good God!
The amount of mercury in a modern lightbulb is thousands of times less than what is found in a mercury thermometer or a thermostat. And let's not even begin to discuss the amount of mercury within traditional fluorescent bulbs and the amalgam in some fillings.
Good grief (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LED lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, they're Extremely bright for the electricity consumed, very good, they can come in any wavelength of color, for multicolored lights like Christmas lights, or for 'party bulbs' that with a little circuitry could produce a flashing swirl of rainbow colored light by switching various LEDS off and on... They're very small, and that means you can make any variety of decorator bulb configurations...
On the other hand, they NEVER BURN OUT. the MTBF on a LED is 300,000+ hours http://www.iddaerospace.com/design_development/faq_transition_flight_deck.htm [iddaerospace.com]
that's over 1305% longer than Compact Fluorescent Bulbs... in truth a LED can easily last 500,000 hours of use, the MTBF is just an estimate.... and forget them burning out from being switched on and off, Myth busters tried to do it, they tested every array of lighting combinations, and the LED array was happily blinking away 3 months later, when they finally pulled the plug on trying to get them to burn out from switching them on and off...
So, now what do you do? The government assumes that by 2012 LEDs will use 1/3 the watts per lumen VS Compact fluorescent bulbs... so it's not going to take environmentalists long to promote the usage of LED lighting...
So LEDS are a double edged sword for the lighting industry, on the one hand they're the best of the best for the environment, but on the other hand there is no turnover of bulbs. you'll be giving the LED bulbs to your grandkids before they have to replace them... For instance if you use a light 3 hours a day it will last statistically nearly 274 years. if like wal-mart you run the bulb 24/7/365 the bulbs will last an average of 34.2 years. 34.2 years.... yeah you might forget how to change a light bulb, once you get used to LEDs.
Re:Not New News (Score:4, Insightful)
Like when a heavy bag of groceries smashes an entire box of new CFL's in the backseat of the car while making a sudden stop? Good thing that can never happen...
Illegal in California to dispose? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:LED lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LED lighting (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that we decided Mercury is no longer so green, lets move on to LEDs.
LEDs, one way to make them is with arsenic. Now one diode of arsenic is nothing, put billions in the dump, let the plastics rot a bit and...
Now before we jump in this time like a mad heard of bison off a cliff, and almost ban previous source of like like Canada was almost going to do, lets think about the whole life cycle of the light source...and the end outcome before we leap.
This isn't to say I am against LEDs, I think if we look at it seriously, without the mindless green hype, lets settle on a technology that is really environmental friendly and economical.
Programmed Obsolescence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Same old story (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a matter of two wrongs, it's a matter of tradeoffs (as with most things). I'm a big fan of non-coal power (including nuclear), but the existing coal plants aren't going to go away any time soon, and we seem to keep building more around the world.
For most people, artificial light is a necessity. These days, they have a choice between incandescents, CFLs/fluorescents, halogen, and maybe a few LED options. CFLs are much more efficient than incandescents or halogens. LED lights are still somewhat expensive. If you use a CFL, don't recycle it, and its total mercury emissions are less than the emissions from the power plants used to produce the extra electricity required to power an incandescent, it's clearly better to go with the CFL.
Of course, the best thing to do from an environmental perspective is to simply recycle your bulbs. I've mentioned this before on
Being a rational environmentally-conscious person means that you should take actions which require the least expense (in terms of both time and money) which cause energy/pollution reductions in the greatest quantity. That's why Blackle [blackle.com] is a total waste of time (500,000 watt hours saved over all of its users? We're talking $50 in electricity at $0.10/kWH...).
Re:LED lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on their proximity to my bedroom window.
Re:LED lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LED lighting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:LED lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, I'd add in a cost justification as well. I'll do it when they reach a cost that justifies their purchase over a incandescent or CFL bulb.
LED house lights are a lot like electric cars...
They're just too expensive at the necessary light levels for a home. Flashlights, being both dimmer on average and portable w/limited power supplies are a different justification.
For the disposal thing, I'd say to allow them into recycling trash. At the very least, properly manufactured CFLs should drop the number of bulbs tossed in the trash by a factor of 10-20.
Re:Good grief (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not just realize that "environmentalists" is just another name for a huge number of individuals, with different levels of knowlege and different goals. Making generalizations about such a large number of people - especially such amusingly wrongheaded generalizations - doesn't help much, except to identify faulty thinking processes on your part.
fluorescent tubes in use for 70 years (Score:2, Insightful)
Lamplighters, Mantles, and the Grand Scheme (Score:5, Insightful)
Gas lights did not use an open flame for lighting (well, they did, but not for long). They used a special cloth "wick" called a mantle. This mantle glowed brightly when heated by the gas flame. Over time, the mantles would disintegrate, and new ones would have to be installed.
Now there were two once vibrant sectors of the lighting industry that have been virtually eliminated by progress. Sure, a few thousand people lost jobs. There were better, cheaper, safer alternatives, so people used them. The same thing will happen with the incandescent bulb makers, and the fluorescent bulb makers. LEDs are a better, cheaper, safer alternative. A few thousand people will be put out of work, and once vibrant sectors of the lighting industry will fade away. Sure, a few companies will hang on, doing specialty work, but count on GE, Sylvania, Philips, and their ilk closing a lot of bulb factories in the future.
Re:Good grief (Score:2, Insightful)
Everything is a trade-off in this game. There's no solution that equates to perfect ecological balance and me-me-me civilization coexisting. We have crops growing in places that would otherwise be deserts. We have filled in swamps and turned them into cities (London). Even tribal societies manage and change the environment in which they live. The management/alteration of our environment and the related consequences is a recurring theme throughout human history. Its something we will live with perpetually.
Re:LED lighting (Score:2, Insightful)
CFL's (and phosphor coated LED's), however, can be made to fairly accurately produce a broadband spectrum not too dissimilar from incandescents.
-1 missing the point.... (Score:3, Insightful)
You missed the point. LEDs DO NOT GO IN THE DUMP AT ALL, because they pretty much 'never' burn out.
Re:Not New News (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Mercury from power stations? (Score:2, Insightful)
Does anyone know if the EPA still says this, or if the number are still believed to be true? If so, wouldn't that destroy this entire article? Unless of course you're worried about 5-ish year's worth of mercury being concentrated in one location. But, the article cites the waste stream, ground water, air, and landfills as the problem location, as well as localized breakage.
The fact sheet can be found at http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/Topics/Documents/9662MercuryCFL.pdf [arlingtonva.us]
Re:Good grief (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:LED lighting (Score:4, Insightful)
The price of the unit should be the simplest and most accurate answer of the three questions anyway, so I still want to know.
Re:LED lighting (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus, all of the sudden maybe the GE brand name means something again. Before the CFL craze, I was buying no-name lightbulbs at Walgreens in a package of 12 for $2. That's less than $0.17 per bulb! GE was probably really worried that they would have to compete with that, which would give them only one stinking dollar of revenue for 6 bulbs! I mean, who cares how long they last when they cost so little? On the other hand, when you are making a more expensive purchase, you might even do a little research to see what kind of bulbs are the best. You might pick up GE over the no-name brand, "just to be safe".
I think the only ones with a "net loss" are the power companies, as you are now using 5 times less electricity. That's where the cost savings is to the consumer, not in buying fewer bulbs.
Of course, if you have electric heat, then CFLs are a folly in the winter time
Re:LED lighting (Score:3, Insightful)
Theoretical Amount vs. Practical Amount (Score:3, Insightful)
The number on another scaremongering article was 6,000.
Either way...
There's a gaping flaw in the logic that if you count PPM for a safe dose, look at the volume, then multiply up. It assumes the mercury is even close to equally disolved in that water.
If a drop, the volume of which is found in a typical CFL, dropped in to a thousand gallons of water and sank to the bottom, whilst I wouldn't happily do so, I'd still be willing to drink a glass from off to the side of where that drop went in. A little more nervously, I'd still be willing to do so a few weeks later, assuming the drop was still largely intact at the bottom.
On the flip side, let that drop sink in to a million gallons of water, thus apparently a thousand times under the "safe dose"... and I challenge anyone to be willing to drink the cupfull taken from where the drop sank, original drop included.
Yes, mercury is bad for you. It turns you in to a character in Alice In Wonderland.
On the other hand, we're druming up fear by pointing to a perfect distribution and the safe level (accepting that safe levels are usually many times lower than the point at which harm is a likelihood that's why they're called "safe" not "minimal risk" levels).
If you're going to get your panties in a bunch about that, you'd better not each fish (particularly swordfish, shark, smallmouth bass and pickerel [maine.gov]). With an FDA "safe for human consumption" of 1ppm, shark ranged 0.30-3.53ppm in samples tested, averaging 0.88ppm and swordfish at 0.36-1.68ppm, averaging at 0.88 (FDA [fda.gov]).
By comparison, the mercury maybe getting out of a bulb, disolved properly in to ground water, getting in to the water supply and failing to get filtered past the safe level is somewhat less of a risk than the statistical variance that means you'll almost certainly clear the safe levels in at least one case if you have a nice swordfish steak half a dozen times at your favorite restaurant.
Neither is likely to do you much harm. In both cases, getting in to your car and driving to work is a vastly greater risk, yet it puts the silliness of the debate in context when simply eating fish is far worse for you (on that one very limited axis).
Re:-1 missing the point.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thing is, 100 years from now, they will still be hitting the dump. I don't know if the arsenic claim is true, or even worth worrying about. But I do know that "they never get thrown away" is not a very good rebuttal
Re:LED lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
MTBFs get estimated all the time. MTBFs of this size are almost always estimates.
Re:LED lighting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot sucked in again! (Score:3, Insightful)
The general idea is that a CFL/CFB uses about 5 times less power for it's light output, thus if everybody switched we wouldn't HAVE to build and operate more coal power plants, preventing the emission of said mercury. The small amount of mercury in a CFL has some people over reacting. Look up the reasons for 'mad as a hatter' to get an idea of how massive our exposure and dumping of it used to be.
If anything, all I'd call for is beefing up the bulb coatings to save the bulb from bursting on the occasional drop.
I wouldn't worry about it as much if we were looking at building more nuclear(more hydro isn't an option in my area), but the NIMBYs have shut that down.
So, instead, I practice shutting off lights in rooms that I'm not in, adjusting my heat during the night and when I'm not at home, and shutting off my computer when I'm not using it. Imagine the change to the electric bill then.
I do this as well. But I still need light, so why NOT go with power saving longer lasting CFLs than incandescents?
Personally, I've had such good luck with CFLs that I love them because once I put one in I don't have to replace it.
Re:LED lighting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good grief (Score:2, Insightful)
You have some decent points, about irrational, stupid simplistic behavior, but that's not limited to the environmental movement. (Although it might be getting worse. I can't call myself an environmentalist anymore.) The other side is very fond of ignoring progress made when environmentalists called attention to the problem. They also conveniently forget that many of the 'industry will crumble' doomsday scenarios predicted by those with monetary interest in avoiding environmental regulations also didn't come true.
Re:Same old story (Score:1, Insightful)
I can't speak for the other people who "mod-stalk" you, but I was one of the people who tried to help you with Ubuntu way back in the beginning and you have been shitting on my efforts for years now. In response, each time I get mod points (about once a week), I swing by to give you one of them. I lost interest for a while, especially since you seemed to have outgrown the trolling, but then you made that journal entry.
If you want to keep your username and UID (for what little they are worth, but the name is pretty famous, could sell it if you get your karma up), I would like an apology to the entire Ubuntu community. A sincere apology in a journal entry and linked to in your sig. I would like you to recognize that your difficulties with Ubuntu, while real, were mostly related to your overestimation of your own abilities which led you to fail to take the proper precautions. Your failure to do this was not the fault of some fictitious Canonical marketing machine. I would like you to admit that while Ubuntu did not work out for you, it does work for many people.
Like I said, I can't speak for the other enemies that you have made, but I suspect their reasons are similar to mine and that these measures would satisfy them as well.
Re:Same old story (Score:1, Insightful)
You couldn't handle it and you got upset - that's OK, it happens, but you will have to accept that you caused a fair amount of ill will to be directed towards you.
As far as I can see, you can either accept the consequences of your behaviour or say "to hell with it" and create a new UID.
Complaining about it isn't going to help.