Government, manufacturers and environmentalists urge recycling programs for compact fluorescent bulbs, which contain dangerous mercury and are rapidly growing in popularity.
The story "Mercury in eco-friendly lightbulbs raises fears" published March 29, 2007 at 1:33 AM is no longer available on CNET News.
The biggest source of mercury in our world is from coal fired power plants, and 50% of the power in the US comes from coal. If a CFL light manages to live for 5 years (very possible, most are rated for 7-10 years though rarely last quite that long) then the mercury from the coal plants for the extra energy consumed by incandescent bulbs will exceed the mercury content of a CFL.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't worry about the mercury at all, indeed we should definitely recycle ALL CFL bulbs and try to reduce the mercury use when possible. However even in this regard they are still better then incandescent bulbs.
The last time we had an issue similar to this it was household smoke detectors: these devices contain minute amounts of radioactive material and need to be disposed of properly (don't believe me? read the tag on the back of yours). Government and industry did nothing to educate people about this and I would guess that 99.9% of them are being disposed of improperly. Expect it to happen again with compact fluorescent bulbs.
The silver lining is that compact fluorescent will be a short-lived interim technology if LED development can increase LED brightness. But the mercury from the CF bulbs, like the radioactive material from the smoke detectors, will kill something or somebody somewhere over time. Please consider that and make the small effort to dispose of them as best you can...
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I am thinking about using LED units instead.
One source:
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.theledlight.com/120-VAC-LEDbulbs.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.theledlight.com/120-VAC-LEDbulbs.html</a>
I don't think they have any Hg content though I suppose there is *something* nasty that would result from using them. I just don't know what it is.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't worry about the mercury at all, indeed we should definitely recycle ALL CFL bulbs and try to reduce the mercury use when possible. However even in this regard they are still better then incandescent bulbs.
It makes no difference either way what you do for led's will take over cf in time..
The silver lining is that compact fluorescent will be a short-lived interim technology if LED development can increase LED brightness. But the mercury from the CF bulbs, like the radioactive material from the smoke detectors, will kill something or somebody somewhere over time. Please consider that and make the small effort to dispose of them as best you can...