Comments on: Less Mercury in CFL’s – GE is working on it.

By: Ed Kirshner

Ed Kirshner — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 05:53:13 +0000

The bogus argument is that there will be a reduction in toxic mercury into the environment with CFL’s due to the energy reduction from coal plants. (1) 50% of electricity does not come from coal plants in the US and coal plants are now mandated to reduce their mercury emissions by between 70% and 90% in the next several years. (2) Places like California produce very little energy from coal plants, so CFL energy reductions will not cut much mercury there. (3) The 5mg of mercury claimed for CFL’s is largely a goal and not the current reality which can be 300% to 600% higher. (4) CFL’s are made in China with energy from mostly very dirty coal plants that emit much more mercury than US coal plants. (5) CFL’s made in China spill as much mercury into the environment as goes into the CFL’s. (6) CFL’s are delivered here on ships using bunker oil, the worst mercury producer of the fuel oils. 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. And after many years even the industrial recycling programs only handle 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, a massive CFL program will put a massive amount of 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.

By: David

David — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:25:44 +0000

considering that 1mg of mercury = .000035274 ounces of mercury and 150 million CFL’s contain , by my math about 1700 pounds of mercury. And considering that coal fired power plants output of mercury is measured in thousands of tons per year wouldn’t it be more intelligent to put all that labor and money into improved scrubbing of the mercury from power plants smoke emissions. The amount or mercury CFL’s contain is popcorn when compared to a coal powerplant. Sounds like GE is just trying to make themselves look good with out really going after the big polluters.

By: Skrattus Von Sho

Skrattus Von Sho — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:55:09 +0000

Aye - tis true. I believe Pablo covered this here.

By: Billy F

Billy F — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:37:46 +0000

I don’t have the math on hand, but the overall mercury put into the environment over the lifetime of the bulbs is higher with incandescents because of the emissions of coal fired plants (the vast majority or power plants in the U.S. are coal fired).