You can’t walk into any store selling any sort of home goods these days that isn’t aggressively marketing Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs). By now most people know that CFLs use much less energy than regular incandescent bulbs and give out the equivalent amount of light. And the bulbs are getting more convenient and easier to use everyday with better designs and taking up less space. But no matter how well designed they are, they still contain small amounts of the poisonous chemical mercury. Exposure to enough mercury can have some pretty dangerous and life-threatening affects on your central nervous system.
That means that as a homeowner you’re faced with a difficult choice:
The CFL Bulb: Environmental Savior or Toxic Mercury Poison device?
You could switch to CFLs, using less energy and reducing pollution…but you are buying products with mercury in them.
You could begin to use more CFL light bulbs, but continue to be afraid of breaking one.
or
You could keep using incandescent bulbs, avoiding the mercury issue, but using more energy and causing more pollution.
Not an easy choice! This entire mercury issue has been brought to the forefront lately by some news reports about a mother named Brandy Bridges who accidentally broke one of these CFL bulbs in her daughter’s room and ended up with a $2000 bill for poisonous environmental cleanup! The story itself is a bit of an exaggeration and really, ANY cleanup from a professional agency will cost that much. You know those oil spots on your driveway? Heck, those will probably cost $3000 to clean up if you hire an environmental agency to do it. But the core of the story remains: CFL bulbs do contain small amounts of poisonous mercury.
So what’s the solution?
Most experts say that Ms. Bridges’ case was an extreme example that got out of hand. A number of experts have explained that you generally need to be careful about cleaning up a broken CFL bulb, but if you do it properly you should be safe. The mercury in CFL bulbs is the same mercury that can be found in old thermometers and even old thermostats in a lot of homes. The difference is that the mercury in the bulbs are in powder form, which make them more likely to be airborne and more likely to be inhaled. Touching mercury is bad, inhaling mercury is very, very bad!
Compact Fluorescent Light Facts
- Put CFLs in perspective: a CFL has about 4mg of mercury. And old dial thermostat (c’mon, you know someone who has one of these still) has about 3000mg of mercury in it. Old thermometer? About 500mg of mercury.
- Mercury from Power Plants: The EPA states that in a 5 year period of operation the energy used to power an incandescent bulb would disperse more mercury into the air (via coal power plants) than is contained in a CFL. So even if you break the CFL, there’s still less mercury in the atmosphere than it takes to power a regular bulb.
- Broken Bulbs: If you do have a broken bulb, remember that 4mg is the total amount of mercury in the bulb. If you limit your exposure and clean it up properly then you should be exposed to dangerous levels of mercury.
You Will Only Be Able to Buy Compact Fluorescent Bulbs Soon
The United States government has made it a goal to slowly phase out the more energy intensive incandescent light bulbs. This deadline has been pushed back several times due to public sentiment about the lack of alternative bulbs that give off the same quality of light as incandescent bulbs. CFL’s are generally not as popular as incandescent bulbs because their light is not as “warm” as traditional bulbs.
Many people are now beginning to think LED light bulbs may actually be the future of lighting in homes and businesses. LED bulbs provide warm light and still use very little energy, though they are still rather expensive at the moment. It is predicted that as incandescent bulbs begin to be phased out that more people will turn to LED bulbs over CLF bulbs and the price will drop dramatically.
Incandescent bulbs over 75 watts will cease to be manufactured as of January 1, 2013 and incandescent bulbs over 40 watts will not be allowed to be manufactured in the United States by 2014. Despite rumors of light bulb hoarding, most stores continue to be well-stocked with incandescent bulbs. If LED bulbs continue to evolve and grow in popularity the CFL bulb may actually be the next light bulb technology to be phased out.
Disposing Of Broken Compact Fluorescent Bulbs
Finally, lets look at what the experts and EPA says about dealing with broken or burned out CFL bulbs:
- Don’t Panic! Hysteria won’t help anyone.
- Fresh Air: For a broken bulb it’s recommended that you leave the area and try to open any windows in your house, allowing the little bit of mercury released into the air to be mixed with fresh air, reducing the amount of airborne mercury particles to air ratio. Wait an hour or so before going back in the room if you want to be extra safe.
- Do NOT use a vacuum to clean up CFL bulbs. The vacuum would just thrust all that mercury dust into the air.
- To clean up a broken bulb: Wear gloves and use a damp throw-away rag or paper towels to clean up the glass and powder, putting all the debris in a zip top bag. Try not to touch any of the debris with your gloves if you can avoid it. My idea: wet a towel, place it on the mess and then pull the towel together, tucking most of the glass and powder into the towel. Place it in a bag and repeat until everything is gone.
- To dispose of a burned out or broken bulb: Again, use that sealed bag! Some stores will accept the bulbs back, but you can also call your local recycling center to see if they’ll take them. You can also try earth911.org to find a recycling center near you. Some of these recycling centers will even take in bulbs sent to them via FedEx or other carrier service.
A many of the facts about CFLs can be found in a document put out by the National Electronics Manufacturing Association. Here is the PDF version of this Mercury in CFLs Fact sheet. Of course, if you like the warmth of incandescent bulbs and you want the energy savings of a CFL bulb then you might want to look into LED light bulbs as well!
