From Mr. Green’s Mailbag
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200707/mrgreen_mailbag.asp
Hey Mr. Green, My whole family had embraced the concept of compact fluorescent bulbs (because they are so efficient), but a negative report from Fox News about their mercury hazards has us a little confused. Can you respond to our concern? --Carl in Center Moriches, New York |
Hey Carl,
Thank you for calling my attention to this hatchet job, which I never would have noticed because I try to avoid the right-wing contrivances that Fox peddles as fair and balanced.
The people at Fox News are either brain-damaged from huffing mercury (they do seem to have a fondness for the highly toxic) or they have unscrupulously cherry-picked their facts. (In their sniping about the rules to replace incandescents with compact fluorescents [CFLs] "either adopted or being considered in California, Canada, the European Union and Australia," it's surprising that they overlooked the bulb-replacement programs in Cuba and Venezuela. That would've given them a fine opportunity to present compact fluorescent bulbs as part of a communist takeover.)
This classic example of enviro-bashing is full of flaws. First, the Fox writer trots out one report of one environmental bureaucrat's overreaction to a bulb breakage to make it sound like a busted CFL will turn a house into a Superfund site. The fact is, CFLs do contain mercury, but nowhere near enough to provoke panic or evacuation. If you break a bulb, you can do the cleanup yourself, without renting a moon suit or contacting authorities.
The EPA advises the following treatment:
So much for that part of Fox's story, but I'm not quite done with calling them on their hokum. So read on, if you wish. The Fox piece chides environmentalists for contradicting themselves by promoting fluorescent lightbulbs while having "whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs" and going "berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants."
Yes, as Fox notes, a fluorescent bulb contains around 5 milligrams of mercury (although some brands, such as Philips Lighting, claim their bulbs have as little as 1.23 to 3 milligrams). What Fox conveniently doesn't bother to mention is that a thermometer can contain 140 times as much mercury as a fluorescent lightbulb, making concern about these instruments eminently reasonable. Nor is it exactly going "berserk" to worry about mercury from power plants. Coal-burning power plants emit 50 tons of the stuff every year, around 40 percent of the total mercury emissions in the United States.
Since residential lighting accounts for about 5.7 percent of our total national electricity consumption--about half of which is generated by coal--creating power for home lighting releases about 1.4 tons of mercury every year. And since incandescent bulbs account for about 88 percent of all bulbs, they are responsible for emitting around 1.2 tons of mercury a year.
Let's imagine for a moment that all 4 billion residential lightbulbs have become CFLs, each one with an average life span of 5.5 years (the minimum for EPA-approved bulbs). That means we'd have to change about 727 million fluorescent bulbs a year. At five milligrams of mercury per bulb, that adds up to about four tons of mercury. Since fluorescents use only 25 percent as much energy as incandescents, installing them in all houses would decrease mercury emissions from power plants by 0.9 tons a year.
So even in the incredibly unlikely scenario that every single dead bulb were smashed, and its contents released into the environment, switching to CFLs would yield a maximum 3.1 tons of mercury each year--the 4 tons in them minus the 0.9 tons of emissions they offset. (If all bulbs used were the longer-lived models, with a life span of nine years, the net emission would drop to 1.9 tons annually even if not a single bulb got recycled. And as lower-mercury bulbs came online, the net release would drop even more.)
Fox simply ignores the fact that people don't have to throw away all those burned-out fluorescents in the first place. About 25 percent are already being recycled, just because the government requires businesses to do so. If consumers were better educated about compact fluorescents, they would recycle more of them, as they have learned to do with other materials. If we created an economic incentive--a stiff deposit on CFLs, for example--recycling rates would vastly increase, just as they have with cans and bottles in states where container deposits are required.
Of course, by focusing on mercury, Fox also fails to note that even the shorter-lived fluorescents would eliminate about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants alone, and an equivalent amount of other pollutants. That's something to weigh heavily even against the heavy metal mercury.
Environmentally,
Mr. Green
Beating a Dead Bulb
Hey Mr. Green, I've been told that although compact fluorescent lightbulbs require much less electricity than incandescents to stay lit--making them generally more energy efficient--the surge of electric current they draw to light up can make incandescents the thriftier choice where lights are left on only briefly (such as in a stairway). True? And if so, roughly how long does a light need to stay on for a fluorescent bulb to be the better option? --Richard in Trumansburg, New York |
Hey Richard,
I've addressed this question before, but will do so again and again until the entire world understands that the power surge needed to ignite a compact fluorescent lightbulb is very brief and uses only as much electricity as that bulb would require in five seconds of regular operation. Since a fluorescent uses only one-fourth to one-third as much energy as an incandescent, this means that it takes less than two seconds for the fluorescent to surpass the incandescent in efficiency.
One technicality, however (darn these exceptions): If you leave a room and are going to return in less than 15 minutes, it's probably best to leave the fluorescent on. This is because turning fluorescents off and on at short intervals can decrease the life of the bulb. So, for brief intervals, as in your stairwell example, an incandescent could possibly be the better choice, not because of the energy savings, but because you'd want your more expensive fluorescents to live long enough to make them cost-effective and give you the maximum possible return on your investment.
Speaking of fluorescents' life spans, when they do burn out, make sure you recycle them properly (again, try Earth 911 or 800-CLEAN-UP), because, as detailed above, fluorescents contain tiny amounts of mercury, which is very toxic. Just don't make a special trip in a car to recycle a bulb, or you might offset its energy savings!
Environmentally,
Mr. Green
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