The Cellar - Compact Fluorescent Bulbs

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Just bought 4 n:vision 14w soft white bulbs at The Home Despot for $7 and change. No apparent warm-up time...bright as can be.

Only some of our compact fluorescent bulbs exhibit this warmup behavior in a manner really noticeable to the eye.

Here's a pretty good article on current "green" lighting solutions from Mother Earth News:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alter...-Lighting.aspx

Two things from Clouds link...

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Not all CFLs are manufactured to the same standards, so to get the best bulb, start by looking for an Energy Star label. Wilson says there’s a surprising variation in the bulbs’ lifetime, because the technology is simply more complicated than incandescent bulbs. In the Energy Star tests, a certain percentage of the bulbs must last a particular length of time. “It’s a pretty good assurance that you’re getting a good quality product,” he says.

So don't shop price alone or you could get screwed in the end.

Quote:

“Consumers should know that the mercury in CFLs is not going to be detrimental to them in their home,” Reed says. “But it’s important to responsibly dispose of them, as you would any product that contains mercury — batteries, old thermometers and thermostats.”

Wilson has reached the same conclusion: “The take-home message is that when fluorescents have ceased to work properly, they shouldn’t just be thrown in the trash; you should dispose of them through your local solid waste agency.”

So if everybody changes to CFLs it's good... as long as you follow through with proper disposal.

I won't use them because of the mercury in them.
There is nothing "green" about them.
Saving a few bucks on electricity is not worth contaminating the groundwater when they do go bad and end-up broken in a landfill. Many of the "proper" disposal facilities, end-up in the fill just like much of our recycling as well.
(Fun for kids to play with too)
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partner...et_Mercury.pdf

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Light Bulb Lunacy
April 26, 2007
By Steven Milloy

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About $4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about $2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favor of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) — a move already either adopted or being considered in California, Canada, the European Union and Australia.

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter.

The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of $2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the $2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as $180 annually in energy costs — and assuming that Bridges doesn’t break any more CFLs — it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.

Even if you don’t go for the full-scale panic of the $2,000 cleanup, the do-it-yourself approach is still somewhat intense, if not downright alarming.

Consider the procedure offered by the Maine DEP’s Web page entitled, “What if I accidentally break a fluorescent bulb in my home?”

Don’t vacuum bulb debris because a standard vacuum will spread mercury-containing dust throughout the area and contaminate the vacuum. Ventilate the area and reduce the temperature. Wear protective equipment like goggles, coveralls and a dust mask.

Collect the waste material into an airtight container. Pat the area with the sticky side of tape. Wipe with a damp cloth. Finally, check with local authorities to see where hazardous waste may be properly disposed.

The only step the Maine DEP left off was the final one: Hope that you did a good enough cleanup so that you, your family and pets aren’t poisoned by any mercury inadvertently dispersed or missed.

This, of course, assumes that people are even aware that breaking CFLs entails special cleanup procedures.

The potentially hazardous CFL is being pushed by companies such as Wal-Mart, which wants to sell 100 million CFLs at five times the cost of incandescent bulbs during 2007, and, surprisingly, environmentalists.

It’s quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about 4 billion lightbulb sockets in American households, we’re looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges’ bedroom.

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes.

These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.

As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a “highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children” and as “one of the most poisonous forms of pollution.”

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the U.S., under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

And let’s not forget about the regulatory nightmare known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups.

We’ll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.

As each CFL contains 5 milligrams of mercury, at the Maine “safety” standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to “safely” contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.

Not only are CFLs much more expensive than incandescent bulbs and emit light that many regard as inferior to incandescent bulbs, they pose a nightmare if they break and require special disposal procedures. Should government (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) impose on us such higher costs, denial of lighting choice, disposal hassles and breakage risks in the name of saving a few dollars every year on the electric bill?

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Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about $2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Snopes says partly true.

Great info UT, thanks.

I'm more worried about mercury in my fillings.

We have to drive to the next county to get rid of some fluorescents, fixture was in the house when we moved in, at the local landfill (hazardous home waste disposal unit). The gas, time and aggravation will cost us what the fluorescents have saved us.
They, clearly, are not worth it.
Seriously, how many of the whiny hippies do you think really do this instead of throwing them away so the mercury goes into our groundwater?

even in my poor, dusty corner of desert they have such a thing as recycling.

Not here, we spend our energy on Da' Lard!

Dumb question, is there mercury in the 4' long fluorescent tubes, or just the compact bulbs. I had never herd about the mercury before, and I need to change the tubes in my utility room

From here.

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Fluorescent lights and HID lamps have traditionally had one important drawback: relatively high environmental costs associated with their use, specifically, the disposal costs. Because they contain mercury and trace amounts of lead and other metals regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), fluorescent light tubes and HID lamps may be considered hazardous waste. Even small quantities of these metals may be potentially harmful to human health and the environment, especially when mass quantities of used tubes are landfilled. Used fluorescent light tube disposal in municipal landfills is, in fact, considered the second largest source of mercury pollution entering the environment. These pollutants can often migrate into groundwater supplies or even become airborne (due to mercury’s relatively high volatility), at which time they pose an even greater environmental threat. To combat that threat, the U.S. EPA has established separate regulations that control the collection and management of certain widely generated hazardous wastes, including fluorescent light tubes and HID lamps, known as universal wastes. Under the universal waste rule, the specified widely generated hazardous wastes remain hazardous wastes, but are not subject to the full hazardous waste management rules. Rather, EPA determined that these identified wastes can be more effectively managed under simpler rules that subject universal waste handlers (including generators) to less stringent standards for collecting, storing, and transporting the wastes. EPA's primary objective in designating hazardous waste lamps as a universal waste is to minimize releases of mercury to the environment, ensure safe handling of the lamps, and to keep the lamps out of landfills. Other major goals of the universal waste regulations are to reduce the regulatory burden on facilities that generate those wastes and to encourage facilities to recycle their universal wastes.

Facilities that wish to crush fluorescent tubes on-site prior to recycling should consult their local regulatory agency first. Crushing may be considered treatment of a hazardous waste, thereby subjecting the facility to numerous additional requirements.

Alto lamps have recently come on the market which are produced with low levels of mercury. These lamps have passed the EPA’s Toxic Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) and are considered non-hazardous waste.

I feel like I've been given a big head-fake by the compact fluorescent squad. But wait, a better alternative awaits us!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070513/...gGkswNd9IDW7oF

LEDs emerge to fight fluorescents

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Compact fluorescent bulbs are the only real alternative right now, but "bulbs" that use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are quickly emerging as a challenger.

LEDs, which are small chips usually encased in a glass dome the size of a matchstick head, have been in use in electronics for decades to indicate, for example, whether a VCR is on or off.

Those LEDs were usually red or green, but a scientific breakthrough in the 1990s paved the way for the production of LEDs that produce white light. Because they use less power than standard incandescent bulbs, white LEDs have become common in flashlights.

Established players in the lighting industry and a host of startups are now grooming LEDs to take on the reigning champion of residential lighting, the familiar pear-shaped incandescent light bulb.

Geeks have been watching the LED phenomenon... through better and better LED flashlights. The LED revolution is soon upon us... a light form that is efficient, cool, and environmentally-friendly. Already changing out your signal lamps, it's your home lighting solution any day now. ALL HAIL LED!

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[i]t defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a “highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children”.

That explains a lot! When we were kids we had a bottle of mercury, which we would pour on the floor and play with. We did this for a whole summer. Well, it didn't seem to do us any harm, and we would hold the mercury in our hands. It's really fun stuff.