Which is worse for you, a can of tuna or a broken CFL bulb? Sorry, Charlie… image by Dave Lifson

The researchers point out that there is a distinction between the kind of mercury that you are exposed to from broken CFLs—elemental mercury—and the mercury emitted from power plant smokestacks after it finds it’s way into waterways and oceans, where it becomes methyl mercury. Methyl mercury accumulates all up the food chain, so that large fish like tuna can contain a lot of it. Methyl mercury crosses the blood-brain barrier and passes through a pregnant woman’s placenta to her fetus. Methyl mercury is responsible for developmental problems, while elemental mercury, which is inhaled, appears to be more of a hazard for adults and children, and only then in the case of severe or prolonged exposures. In most mild cases, when the elemental mercury exposure ends, the bad effects diminish and go away. This is unfortunately not true for the developmental problems caused by methyl mercury.

The startling conclusion of the paper is that in a worse case scenario—you break a CFL in a closed, unventilated room; you vacuum the carpet, throwing mercury into the air; you set the vacuum in a corner; and then sit in the room breathing for eight hours—the amount of mercury exposure is about equivalent to the exposure you’d get from eating a can of Albacore tuna.

Eating a can of tuna has positive health effects as well as the negative health effects from the mercury. There are no positive health effects from a broken CFL, and you can reduce your exposure. The researchers suggest that in the case of a broken CFL, you should immediately open a nearby window. You can limit contamination by gathering up the large pieces of the broken bulb into a bag and set the bag outside. The room should then be left to air out for an hour or so. If the lamp broke on a carpet you can vacuum, but it should be done quickly while the room is being ventilated, the vacuum cleaner should be removed to an outside area, and again the room should be left vacated for an hour or so. Once the vacuum cleaner has cooled, you can empty the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag into the bag with the broken bulb. Take the bag to your nearest recycling center.

The CCHT twin house facility in Ottawa, Canada

The Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others recommend that we set our thermostats at 68°F in the winter and 78°F in the summer. Some people are comfortable at home with these temperatures and some or not. So how can we save energy and still be comfortable?

Besides recommending that people replace their incandescent bulbs with CFLs, we at Home Energy also encourage people to turn their thermostats down when they are away from home during the winter, and to set them up when they are away from home in the summer. Both actions are supposed to save energy. But do they? It's not really that clear. For example, if you set your thermostat at 60°F before you leave for work in the morning, and then set it at 68°F in the afternoon when you get back, does your furnace use more energy raising the temperature of your house from 60°F to 68°F, than it saves by having the temperature at 60°F all day?

Once again the Canadians have come up with an answer. Marianne Armstrong and her colleagues at CCHT used the twin house research facility to show that thermostat set backs in the winter and thermostat set forwards in the summer really do save energy.

In the research house where they set the thermostat back to 64°F at night and during work hours, from 72°F, it saved more than 10% on heating costs compared to the house that was set at 77°F all day and night. A 61°F setback saved more than 13%.

In the summer, a set forward to 77°F at night and during work hours from 72°F saved 11% on cooling costs. Now for the big winner: Setting the thermostat up to 75°F all day and all night saved 23% of cooling costs compared to the house set at 72°F. That's a savings of about 8% for every degree adjustment.

If you lower your thermostat a few degrees when you are away from home this winter, or when you are asleep, you'll save energy and money. If you set your thermostat up a few degrees when you are away from home or asleep this Indian Summer, you'll save energy and money. And you won't be uncomfortable.

When you replace incandescents with CFLs, you use less electricity for lighting, but you use more energy for heating your home in the winter, since hot burning incandescents–which produce a lot more heat than light–decrease the heating load. This is called the take-back effect. Anil Parekh, who does research for Natural Resources Canada, and his colleagues, studied the take-back effect. They wanted to know if CFLs really saved energy in a home over the course of a year.

The Canada study, which took place at the Canadian Center for Housing Technology (CCHT)–two identical homes that allow researchers to compare different technologies–showed that even in heating dominated climates, such as in Fairbanks, Alaska, you save energy overall by swapping out incandescents with CFLs. And in cooling climates, such as in Los Angeles, you save on lighting electricity and there is an added bonus (as if Southern Californians deserved it) you use less to cool your home in the summer, since cool CFLs, which put out 90% less heat than incandescents, are not adding to your cooling load.

Some readers may have noted that I declared my allegiance to light-emitting diodes (LEDs), in a recent blog, since they are potentially much more energy efficient than CFLs. But we'll have to live with CFLs until LEDs become more cost effective… kind of like driving my pretty-fuel-efficient 1997 Geo Prizm into the ground before investing in a newer, hybrid car, or until I quit driving. It takes a lot of energy to make a hybrid car.

Sometimes the most efficient car, or appliance, or light bulb, is the one that's already been made.

The people of Juneau saved electricity in a hurry– when electricity
went to 55 cents per kilowatt-hourIn Juneau, Alaska, an avalanche on April 16th downed transmission lines and cut off the city from it's cheap source of hydroelectric power; electricity prices jumped by 500%. Alan Meier-a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Home Energy Magazine's Senior Executive Editor, and an expert in how to cut energy use in a hurry-was called in to help. Within a few weeks the city reduced its electricity use by 30%. Remember that we reduced our electricity use in California by 15% in response to Enron and other power companies manipulating the power markets in 2001? Alaska reduced its electricity use by twice as much and did it in a hurry.

How did the Alaskan's do it? They lowered their thermostats. They bought out all the CFLs from the hardware stores and you bet they turned out the lights when they left the room-wouldn't you if electricity cost 55 cents per kilowatt hour? They took shorter showers and used cold water to wash their clothes. The city ran out of clothespins since so many people were hanging out there clothes to dry (anecdotal evidence suggests it takes two days to dry jeans).

The people of Juneau bought power strips in record numbers, so that they could really turn off power to all those devices that still use power when they are supposed to be off, like TVs and stereos, microwave ovens and cell phone chargers. And there was a lot of talk from city leaders, on the radio, and among neighbors and classmates about the best ways to save.

(Note: You generally use more energy when you wash your dishes by hand rather than washing full loads in a dishwasher-not everything they did helped.)

We may not face rolling blackouts in California this summer, but we probably will in the near future. There will be other natural disasters like Juneau's that spike the price of electricity or natural gas. How will we save energy in a hurry? And here's a bigger question: How will we keep saving energy after the crisis is over?

The Juneau transmission lines should be up and running by June 8. Will the people who were used to cheap electricity fall back into old habits when prices decrease? Brazil faced a similar crisis in 2001 when severe drought shut down hydroelectric plants all over the country. They cut their electricity use by 20%, and they haven't changed their consumptions habits very much since the drought subsided.

We are still dependent on a diminishing store of fossil fuels mostly located in politically turbulent parts of the world where even the hint of conflict raises oil prices. For Californians, Alaskans, Brazilians, and everyone else, it might be best if we permanently changed our energy use habits and considered every day an emergency that calls for conservation.

Low winter light over the town of Iqaluit,
the capitol of Nunavut,Canada. Photo by Bill Semple,
architect and senior researcher at the Canada Mortgage
and Housing Corporation.

Among home performance professionals, we also call the systemic approach, the whole house approach. For example, we think it is best to retrofit your home to make it more energy efficient before you invest in an expensive solar electric, or PV, system. You can buy a smaller PV system that way, and draw less energy from the electric grid. We think you should switch to CFL bulbs right now, buy Energy Star appliances when you need new appliances, and before the next hot summer have a home performance professional air seal your attic and add insulation. Make sure the contractor checks to see if you have proper ventilation in your home after air sealing-otherwise your gas appliances may back draft nasty things like carbon monoxide into your living spaces. Don't go out and buy new windows, no matter what the advertisers tell you, until your old windows are worn out. In other words, do it all, but when the time is right.

There is a debate going on in our country about how to solve our energy and environmental problems. Some say corn ethanol is the answer; others say it's cellulosic ethanol. Some say wind energy and some say solar energy; some say more government regulation is the answer and some say let the free market decide. These either/or approaches are wrong in my book. The more we are divided in our passion to solve our problems, the less likely we are able to solve them. The best-built homes are the ones in which all the parts-building site, building envelope, walls, foundation, attic, roof, HVAC system, appliances, lighting, and people-work in harmony and are most adaptable to change.

Tom Friedman also said in his talk at Berkeley Lab that writing in blogs about solving our energy problems is not enough. In our March/April 2008 issue of Home Energy we will publish a story about home building in the far north of Canada, within the Arctic Circle. The Inuit people who live there are already building to adapt to the climate change that is already occurring, as well as preparing for more climate change in the future. They are building homes that are culturally appropriate. They are also building in a way that will reduce as much as possible the emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing climate change. Amen to that! Amen to the systematic approach!

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.