The CFL mercury nightmare

[Guest guest]

The CFL mercury nightmare

** Milloy,

Financial Post**

Published: Saturday, April 28, 2007

*http://tinyurl.com/2pk9d7*

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light

bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the

bulb. Then you, like Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be

looking at a cost of about US$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 favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs

(CFLs).

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.

he 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 US$2,000 to

clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and

Bridges began " gathering finances " to pay for the US$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 US$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.

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 five billion light bulb sockets

in North 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 United States,

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 in the U.S. 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 five 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. Yet governments (egged on by environmentalists and the

Wal-Marts of the world) are imposing 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? -

Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a

junk-science expert and advocate of free enterprise, and an adjunct

scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.