A Cautionary on B. C. Compact
Among worries, are mercury emissions, the inability to recycle, and the difficulty of disposing of spent and broken bulbs, flicker sensitivity, and the electrical properties inherent in some of these lights critics say could cause rare brain disease.
Tomorrow, British Columbians will have an increasingly difficult time finding the familiar warm incandescent lights, that will be not be allowed into the province from that date on.
Environmental issues
[edit] Mercury emissions
CFLs, like all fluorescent lamps, contain small amounts of mercury[44][45] as vapor inside the glass tubing. Most CFLs contain 3–5 mg per bulb, with the eco-friendly bulbs containing as little as 1 mg.[46][47] Because mercury is poisonous, even these small amounts are a concern for landfills and waste incinerators where the mercury from lamps may be released and contribute to air and water pollution. In the U.S., lighting manufacturer members of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) have voluntarily capped the amount of mercury used in CFLs.[48] In the EU the same cap is required by the RoHS law.
In areas with coal-fired power stations, the use of CFLs saves on
mercury emissions when compared to the use of incandescent bulbs. This
is due to the reduced electrical power demand, reducing in turn the
amount of mercury released by coal as it is burned.[49][50]
In July 2008 the US EPA published a data sheet stating that the net
system emission of mercury for CFL lighting was lower than for
incandescent lighting of comparable lumen output. This was based on the
average rate of mercury emission for US electricity production and
average estimated escape of mercury from a CFL put into a landfill.[51] Coal-fired plants also emit other heavy metals, sulfur, and carbon dioxide.
Net mercury emissions for CFL and incandescent lamps, based on EPA FAQ
sheet, assuming average US emission of 0.012 mg of mercury per
kilowatt-hour and 14% of CFL mercury contents escapes to environment
after land fill disposal.
In the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
estimated that if all 270 million compact fluorescent lamps sold in 2007
were sent to landfill sites, that this would represent around 0.13
metric tons, or 0.1% of all U.S. emissions of mercury (around 104 metric
tons that year).
[52][edit] Broken and discarded lamps
Health and environmental concerns about mercury have prompted many
jurisdictions to require spent lamps to be properly disposed or recycled
rather than being included in the general waste stream sent to
landfills. It is unlawful to dispose of fluorescent bulbs as universal
waste in the states of California, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.[53] In the European Union, CFLs are one of many products subject to the WEEE recycling scheme. The retail price
includes an amount to pay for recycling, and manufacturers and
importers have an obligation to collect and recycle CFLs. Safe disposal
requires storing the bulbs unbroken until they can be processed. In the
US, The Home Depot is the first retailer to make CFL recycling options widely available.[54]
Special handling instructions for breakage are currently not printed
on the packaging of household CFL bulbs in many countries. The amount of
mercury released by one bulb can temporarily exceed U.S. federal
guidelines for chronic exposure.[55][56] Chronic
however, implies that the exposure continues constantly over a long
period of time and the Maine DEP study noted that it remains unclear
what the health risks are from short-term exposure to low levels of
elemental mercury. The Maine DEP study also confirmed that, despite
following EPA best-practice cleanup guidelines on broken CFLs,
researchers were unable to remove mercury from carpet, and agitation of
the carpet—such as by young children playing—created spikes as high as
25,000 ng/m3 in air close to the carpet, even weeks after the initial breakage. Conventional tubular fluorescent lamps
have been in commercial and domestic use since the 1930s with little
public concern about their handling; these and other domestic products
such as thermometers contain far more mercury than modern CFLs.[57]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends that, in the absence of local guidelines, fluorescent bulbs be double-bagged in plastic before disposal.[58]
The Maine DEP study of 2008 compared clean-up methods, and warned that
the EPA recommendation of plastic bags was the worst choice, as vapors
well above safe levels continued to leach from the bags. The Maine DEP
now recommends a sealed glass jar as the best repository for a broken
bulb.
According to the Northwest Compact Fluorescent Lamp Recycling
Project, because household users in the U.S. Northwest have the option
of disposing of these products in the same way they dispose of other
solid waste, in Oregon "a large majority of household CFLs are going to
municipal solid waste". They also note the EPA's estimates for the
percentage of fluorescent lamps' total mercury released when they are
disposed of in the following ways: municipal waste landfill 3.2%,
recycling 3%, municipal waste incineration 17.55% and hazardous waste
disposal 0.2%.[59]
[edit] Mercury poisoning of Chinese factory workers
In the past decade, hundreds of Chinese factory workers who
manufacture CFLs for export to first world countries were being poisoned
and hospitalized because of mercury exposure. Examples include workers
at the Nanhai Feiyang lighting factory in Foshan where 68 out of 72 were so badly poisoned that they required hospitalization. At another CFL factory in Jinzhou,
121 out of 123 employees were found to have excessive mercury levels
with one employee's mercury level 150 times the accepted standard.[60]
[edit] Recycling
The first step of processing CFLs involves crushing the bulbs in a
machine that uses negative pressure ventilation and a mercury-absorbing
filter or cold trap
to contain mercury vapor. Many municipalities are purchasing such
machines. The crushed glass and metal is stored in drums, ready for
shipping to recycling factories.
[edit] Greenhouse gases
In some parts of the world (e.g. Quebec and British Columbia) central heating for homes is provided by the burning of natural gas, whereas electricity is primarily provided by hydroelectric or nuclear power.
In such areas, heat generated by conventional electric light bulbs
significantly reduces the release of greenhouse gases from the natural
gas [61].
Ivanco, Karney, and Waher estimate that "If all homes in Quebec were
required to switch from (incandescent) bulbs to CFLs, there would be an
increase of almost 220,000 tonnes in CO2 emissions in the province, equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 40,000 automobiles."
January 1st marks D-Day for incandescent light bulbs in British Columbia. Though the governing Liberal party of Gordon Campbell tout s the forced phase out of incandescent consumer lighting as an environmentally progressive move, a novelty for that body, there are persistent and serious doubts about the ecological and human health safety of the compact fluorescent light bulbs promoted by the government.
