Mercury falling with the rise of CFL bulbs
Broke Your CFL? Don't Panic!
The typical dose of mercury in a CFL is about the size
of a pen tip (circled in red), and these doses
have been getting smaller and smaller.
(Photo provided by EPA.)Australia has already begun to phase out the incandescent light bulb, and the energy legislation recently signed by President Bush has begun that process in the United States. Every time I turn around, it seems, someone is handing me a brand new compact fluorescent light (CFL) to advance the cause of energy efficiency and help save the planet. CFLs are becoming ubiquitous in households all over California. We taught them in the pages of Home Energy all the time. And that's a good thing, right?
Brandy Bridges, of Ellsworth, Maine may not think so. A cleaning company quoted her a price of $2,000 to clean her house after she broke a CFL.
The benefits of CFLs are many–they use about 75% less energy than incandescents and last up to ten times longer. Replacing a 75W incandescent with an 18W CFL will save you about $46 in electricity costs over the life of the bulb, and that is at current electricity prices, which no doubt will go up, making today's CFLs an even better deal. Energy Star CFLs (www.energystar.gov/cfls) won't flicker, give warmer light, and there are a variety of them, from the ubiquitous A-line bulb, to candelabras.
But, and it's a big but, CFLs won't give light without mercury. The average CFL on the shelf at your local hardware store has about 4 mg of mercury in it. Mercury vapor is harmful to humans, and there is enough mercury accumulated in some of the fish we eat to make this Californian think twice about ordering salmon for dinner.
Thankfully, there are ways to clean up a broken CFL that don't involve an overly frightened and/or greedy cleaning company (www.epa.gov/CFLcleanup), and recycling centers are available, if not yet ubiquitous (that word again!) (www.lamprecycle.org).
Even if the worst happens and you break a CFL bulb, the EPA estimates that at most only 6.8% of the 4 mg of mercury will be released, or about 0.27 mg, since most of it is in the glass, electrodes, and in the phosphor coating on the inside of the glass. Incinerating a bulb will potentially release more mercury vapor, if there are no pollution controls on the incinerator.
But even if the CFL released all of it’s mercury–according to Richard Benware, a graduate student at Cornell who researched CFLs last summer for EPA's Energy Star program–it would still be a better choice than an incandescent, because over its lifetime, the 15W CFL will have prevented the release of 5.67 mg of mercury from an average power plant.
Of course, recycling is best, and that is still a problem. Alan Meier, Home Energy's senior executive editor, admits to turning part of his garage into a "temporary hazardous waste holding facility" to hold his family’s used CFLs, since the nearest CFL recycling center is 13 miles away from his home in Berkeley, through "one of the worst traffic jams in the United States." There is help in finding those recycling centers, near and far (www.earth911.org). But we need to put the same effort used in making CFLs ubiquitous into making disposing of them in a clean safe manner just as ubiquitously easy.
You know what I mean.
Jim Gunshinan is Managing Editor of Home Energy Magazine. He holds an M.S. in Bioengineering from Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, and a Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree from University of Notre Dame.
latitude 37.8686, longitude -122.267
13 Comments
Here’s a short critique of the bogus argument that there will be a reduction in toxic mercury into the environment with CFL’s due to the energy reduction from coal plants.
(1) The old Government and other figures most often cited are incorrect for several reasons. The basic one is that they assume 100% of electricity in the US is from coal plants. Not true. 50% of electricity does not come from coal plants in the US and coal plants are now being mandated to reduce their mercury emissions by between 70% and 90% over the next several years. The most recent calculations from the DOE indicate that, on the average, CFL’s are worse than incandescent bulbs in terms of mercury.
(2) Places like California produce little energy from coal plants, and several states produce none. So any CFL energy reductions will not cut much, if any, mercury there.
(3) The 5mg of mercury generally claimed for CFL’s is largely a goal and not the current reality which is 200% to 600% higher for some major manufacturers according to suppliers of CFL’s to the State of New Jersey.
(4) CFL’s are made in China with energy from mostly very dirty coal plants that emit much more mercury than US coal plants. And since China gets about 80% from coal and the US only about 50%, the comparison is even worse. It likely takes the equivalent of about 25% of the CFL’s energy savings to produce them there, plus the extra energy for the packaging and shipping compared to incandescent bulbs which are almost all made here. That represents a lot more mercury per CFL. Oh, since fuel and power in China emit twice as much CO2 as in the US, on average, there may go up to half the CO2 savings. And since places like California are twice as clean in terms of CO2 as the rest of the US, there may be no CO2 savings realized from CFL’s in some states. The same holds for SO2 and the Nitrogen Oxides.
(5) As much mercury is spilled into the environment in the production of CFL’s in China as goes into the CFL’s according to recent statements from industry representatives.
(6) CFL’s are delivered here on ships using bunker oil, the worst mercury and CO2 producer of the fuel oils. Again, incandescent bulbs are still almost all made in the US.
(7) There is no recycling program in place or planned that could handle the number of CFL’s proposed. Only 2% of CFL’s are recycled. And after many years, even the industrial recycling programs only handle about 25% of the mercury from fluorescent lights.
(8) It is likely that if any major recycling program is set up, the CFL’s will be shipped back to China for reprocessing.
Thus, when an objective and realistic lifecycle analysis is made, it is clear that a massive CFL program will put a great deal of additional toxic mercury into the environment and very likely into our kid’s bodies. And the EPA says that a sixth of them already have too much mercury in them.
Hello Ed,
You make some very interesting points, thanks for the response. I do agree that when you bring in the fact that most CFLs are made in Asia and that power production there is much dirtier than here, and that shipping by sea produces it's own emissions problems, it complicates the question of which is the best choice, CFLs or sticking with incandescents.
I still think CFLs are a better choice and getting better. As to your argument:
The study I referred to, by Richard Benware, used the emissions of an average power plant in the United States, not a coal-burning plant (data is from The emissions and Generation Resource Integrated Database, or eGRID).
CFLs are very lightweight compared to most other items that are shipped by sea, and so CFLs represent a miniscule amount of mercury emitted from ships.
Dirty Asian power plants are a big problem, period. I say we work on that problem at it's roots, and not let it be an excuse for us to fall back in other areas. If no CFLs were made in China, I don't think that would reduce the amount of mercury emissions in that country by any measurable amount.
I haven't seen the DOE data that you mentioned, and don't know where you came up with the "real" amount of mercury in CFLs on store shelves. Part of the problem is a general problem having to do with the current Administration in the country tending to rely on voluntary industry measures to curb emissions, and lax, to say the least, enforcement. That could change soon.
I do agree that our recycling efforts are not adequate. Again, that is no reason to go backwards. We need to work on beefing up our recycling efforts. A new administration could go a long way in this regard.
I know that my optimism depends on some things changing on the national or international level. Fact is, if things don't change, we're in big trouble no matter what light source we use.
And there is the next thing down the road in lighting to consider—light emitting diodes, which don't require mercury to give light. That makes me optimistic!
Ed, I had another thought:
Your assumption that the energy embodied in the CFL bulb equals
25% of the savings seems way off to me. I don't have the right number but I suspect it's closer to 1% or perhaps even less. If it was 25% of, say, 100 kWh, then it would be 25 kWh, which (even in China) costs more than the bulb sells for!
Getting a bit worried here.I am 23 weeks pregnant I was going into the hardware shop to buy some cfl bulbs today,I decided to bring a spent one in.There is a product recycling fee on such items so you can return used products when buying new in Ireland.However I broke the bulb in the car I don't know where the powder went either over me or in my bag i just emptied out my bag when I got home but was completely unaware of the mercury content.Also left my 5 yr old inthe car when i went into the shop for the few mins so was she at risk??I cant believe the bulbs are not labelled with precautions.Even the new ones I got have no mention of disposing methods or what to do if one breaks.
Some of the criticisms above from Ed are quite correct. I'd go further, however.
Only 50% of the electricity produced uses coal- the rest is natural gas (19%), nuclear (20%), hydro (6%), oil (3%), and other, including renewables (2%). The figures cited by CFL proponents claims that the reduction in energy use by a CFL more than offsets the intrinsic mercury used in the bulbs; thus a conventional bulb would use about 10mg of mercury in the same time a CFL might use around 5.5mg. This figure (and it has been noted exhaustively) assumes the mercury contribution comes from 100% coal power. The actual figures for a nationwide comparison should be about 5mg or so for incandescents and about 5.25mg for CFL's given this energy mix and simple calculations. I accept that non-coal energy production also has mercury indirectly on its hands, and if we make the wild guess that the impact is roughly 25% of the contribution of coal, then CFL's use 5.6mg and incandescents use about 6.25mg of mercury.
The story doesn't end there, however. The mercury in the CFL's has been purified. Worldwide, production of mercury is only about 70% efficient. In other words, every milligram of mercury produced means 1.4mg of mercury is actually put into the environment. The extra .4 mg is the portion that is thought to enter the watersheds and atmosphere, not sequestered in any way. This means the mercury scorecard becomes incandescents: 6.25mg; CFL's: 7.2mg.
The story doesn't even end there, unfortunately. A Lawrence Livermore Labs study concluded that the lifetime of the average CFL on the consumer market had a median life well short of its reputation or rating. In fact, for realistic household use where a light would be used for an hour before being turned off would suffer a 50% reduction in its rated lifetime. The loss to incandescent lifetimes was about 20%. Even worse, if the use of the light is only a half hour, the life of a CFL is reduced by 85%, whereas incandescent bulb lifetimes suffer only 25%. This is a devastating blow to CFL's that is completely overlooked. This means that for a one hour usage model, the CFL will use 13mg of mercury compared to only 6.25mg for the incandescents.
CFL's use over 2x the mercury of conventional bulbs.
A light should go off in your head about the real impacts of CFL's. A lot of articles on this subject chide the naysayers of CFL's. The answer is easily arrived at however if you care to look.
As for energy use, CFL's will use less. Given the realistic life of a CFL bulb being 50% of its promise on the box, the financial payback is still pretty good. Then again, an LED bulb will be a better bet yet, with no mercury hangover.
Thanks Lee for your response. I think it is key to improve our recycling efforts to make sure that less mercury enters the atmosphere and water from the manufacture, use, and disposal of CFLs.
Also note that a recent study by the State of Maine shows that mercury releases from broken bulbs are worse then previously suspected. See the report at http://www.maine.gov/dep/rwm/homeowner/fluorescent.htm. The EPA guidelines for how to clean up a broken CFL bulb are being revised.
The point is that when a CFL breaks, the mercury is in YOUR house or in YOUR car, not dispersed all over North America. A 22-cal bullet has a negligible amount of lead unless it is fired into YOUR head. Then it becomes personally significant. Arguments about the ratio of that bullet to the lead emitted by power plants or oil refineries are obviously idiotic. So why are people missing the point about mercury?
People dump fluorescent tubes into dumpsters by the armload.
They shouldn't, but they do, and I'm willing to bet that they will continue to do so in overwhelming numbers.
If you could replace the mercury with plutonium, along with a
vigorous PR campaign urging responsible recycling, because it would be much more energy efficient than mercury, would you
endorse it? I seriously wonder.
I am interested in pursuing CFL life cycle research. Would you all mind posting your references? I've been having trouble finding critical information and would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks.
Hello Elizabeth,
I've copied and pasted some text about CFL life cycle research from a recent Home Energy article below. The articles was written by Richard Benware, a Cornell graduate student and former intern at EPA. Most of the research he cites was done by EPA.
Hope this helps!
"When CFLs are created, manufacturers dose the bulb with a small amount of mercury. This mercury, when electrically stimulated, releases UV light, which subsequently reacts with a phosphor coating to create visible light. Thus mercury is an essential part of every CFL; without it, the bulbs would not produce light. The typical dose of mercury is about the size of a pen tip, and these doses have been getting smaller and smaller. One reason for this is that the laws resulting from the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive have made it illegal for CFLs in Europe to contain more than 5 milligrams (mg) of mercury."
"In the United States, there are no such laws limiting the amount of mercury in lightbulbs as yet, but members of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) have voluntarily agreed to limit the amount of mercury in the CFLs that they produce to 5 mg for bulbs of up to 25 watts and 6 mg for bulbs of 25 to 40 watts. The average CFL on store shelves today contains about 4 mg of mercury, and nearly all the CFLs in production contain less than 5 mg. The mercury used in all the CFLs produced in the United States represents 0.18% of the mercury used in all U.S. products and industrial processes."
"CFLs do not release mercury as long as they are intact. In fact, they reduce net mercury emissions in the environment by conserving energy. For every kWh of electricity used by consumers, the average power plant emits over 1.5 lb of pollutants. If a 75W incandescent is replaced by an 18W CFL, the CFL will use 456 kWh less energy than the incandescent over its 8,000 hour lifetime. The Emissions and Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) contains data on the emissions of the average power plant. Using eGRID’s information to calculate the average emissions per kWh, we find that this single CFL has prevented the release of 2.72 lb of sulfur dioxide, 1.05 lb of nitrogen oxide, 5.67 mg of mercury, and over 700 lb of CO2."
"It is important to note that these are the reductions from the average U.S. power plant. The eGRID data show that, on average, nonbaseload emissions tend to be dirtier. And in addition to reducing emissions, CFLs save money for the consumer. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) gives a 2006 average residential electricity cost of 10.08¢/kWh. Using the example given above, and basing our calculation on this figure, we find that a consumer would save about $46 on energy over the lifetime of the CFL."
"When these bulbs finally do reach the end of their useful life, there are several pathways they can take. In the best-case scenario, the bulbs are recycled. Recycling rates are increasing, thanks to state regulations—California and Minnesota have banned altogether throwing CFLs in the trash—and improved consumer awareness. In 1999, it was estimated that only 15% of all fluorescent lightbulbs were recycled. Currently, that number has increased to around 25%, with higher levels in commercial applications. Since an average of 98.9% of the mercury is successfully recovered in the recycling process, this pathway generates minimal emissions."
"Even the CFLs that are discarded in the trash are unlikely to release much of their mercury. Although most of them break under current trash disposal methods, some remain unbroken, and will not release any mercury. But those that do break are not likely to release much mercury. EPA estimates that only 0.2% of the remaining mercury in a spent bulb is elemental vapor. The rest of the mercury is in the glass, the phosphor coating, and the electrodes of the bulb. Mercury absorbed in these areas is not readily released. In fact, an EPA study found that only 6.8% of the total mercury in a broken bulb will be released. Since the average bulb on the market today contains only 4 mg of mercury, it will release only about 0.27 mg, even if it breaks when it is thrown in the trash."
"The only disposal option that could lead to the release of any significant amount of mercury is incineration. Today, many incinerators have advanced mercury control technologies. CFLs disposed of in such incinerators would release up to 90% of their mercury, but those emissions would then be removed by these technologies. Incinerators without these technologies are not capable of removing the mercury. But even after accounting for all of the emissions that occur via all of the routes listed above, CFLs represent a mere 0.01% of total U.S. mercury emissions annually."
"It is important to note that even if CFLs released all of their mercury, the environment would still be better off than it would be if nobody used CFLs. This is true because the average power plant releases 5.67 mg of mercury to power each 75W incandescent bulb. In short, replacing incandescents with CFLs is a great way to save energy, reduce mercury emissions, and save money."
New CFL bulbs do not last anywhere near as long as advertised. Also, after 90 days even Wal-mart will make you send them back to the manufacturer for your warranty. My experience has been as follows:
I replaced most of the bulbs in my home over a 2 month period starting about 8 months ago (34 cfl bulbs total). 12 of these bulbs (34%) were defective out of the box. Either they did not work at all or only 1/2 the bulb lit up or they made a very loud buzzing sound. As of today (8 months later) I have had to replace 10 more for the same problems as noted before. I almost never got a defective ‘old style’ bulb out of the box and most of them lasted between 12 months to 36 months depending on usage. They also cost 1/5th as much. Since the advertised longevity of these bulbs seems to be exaggerated I’m not sure if we can be sure the energy savings estimates are true either. For example, where the energy savings based on real life usage patterns or on side by side continuous use?
TO Zinzindor:
Happy to see your posting, I thought you were gone.
Old friend LAR
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