The CFL Bulb: Environmental Savior or Toxic Mercury Poison device?

You can’t walk into any store selling any sort of home goods these days that isn’t agressively marketing Compact Flourescent 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 poisonous neurotoxin 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:

You could switch to CFLs, using less energy and reducing pollution…but you are buying products with mercury in them.

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!

Some CFL 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 Powerplants: The EPA states that in a 5 year period of operation the energy used to power an incandescent bulb would dispurse more mercury into the air (via coal powerplants) 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.

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 airborn 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 sealable 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 Factsheet.