CFLs … Mercury … and making a shaker for kids

When you were younger did you ever do what many kids did years ago … turn an old light bulb into a maraca or shaker?  We would take them and multi-layer the light bulbs with strips of old newspapers dipped in flour paste – and add a handle from the same materials.  Once the covering over the old light bulb was thick enough, and the glue was dry, you would smack it on a hard surface to break the bulb and voila --- you had a maraca, or shaker.  Add a coat of paint and it became a work of art.

Well don’t expect to do that with our new Energy Saver Compact Fluorescent Bulbs (CFLs) – they are dangerous!  Do a Google Search to dispose of these things and what do you find??

Variety of CFL's available for sale

CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing - an average of 5 milligrams (roughly equivalent to the tip of a ball-point pen). Mercury is an essential, irreplaceable element in CFLs and is what allows the bulb to be an efficient light source. By comparison, older home thermometers contain 500 milligrams of mercury and many manual thermostats contain up to 3000 milligrams. It would take between 100 and 600 CFLs to equal those amounts.  There is currently no substitute for mercury in CFLs; however, manufacturers have taken significant steps to reduce mercury used in their fluorescent lighting products over the past decade.

Okay so maybe it isn’t so bad after all. But, if that is true, then why do I also find the following from a news story in the Vancouver Sun dated January 11^th, 2011?

Improperly discarded CFLs could release mercury into landfills and watersheds. Because coal-fired power plants release a significant amount of mercury into the atmosphere, governments hope that reducing our energy needs for lighting with longer-lasting, more efficient CFLs will mitigate the amount of mercury released into the environment.

If a compact fluorescent bulb breaks in your home, the recycling council and the federal government recommend that you open the windows for 15 minutes to allow the mercury vapor to dissipate. After that, wear rubber gloves to collect the glass fragments and phosphor powder, and then wipe the area with a damp towel. Double-bag all the CFL's remains and the cleaning supplies and take it to a recycling collection depot.

Recycling council executive director Brock Macdonald warns that you shouldn't clean up fragments with a vacuum, at least not right away. "That disperses some of that mercury into the air; you are best to brush it gently into a dustpan and bag it."

Hmmm … that doesn’t actually sound all that safe to me.  In fact it was pointed out to me by an acquaintance that with these bulbs being produced in some countries where the environment is pretty low on the list of concerns, perhaps these compact fluorescent bulbs are not being manufactured all that safely.  Another Google Search turned up the following:

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. 

So why has this topic even come up??  Well in part because I asked people what concerns and issues the BC government needs to deal with, and I had a response back regarding CFL’s.  It's also come about because I had my first one quit working.  I knew I wasn’t supposed to toss it in the garbage, and it didn’t go in the recycling can.  So now what?  Here's a word from LightRecycle:

The BC Fluorescent Light Recycling Program began July 1, 2010.  You can now take burnt out compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and fluorescent tubes (residential use only) to a collection depot near you.  The Electrical Equipment Manufacturers Association of Canada (EEMAC), a council of Electro-Federation Canada, has worked together with Product Care Association to develop a product stewardship program plan for residential use fluorescent light bulbs.  The BC Recycling Regulation requires programs for electrical lighting equipment by July 1, 2012. This would include all types of lamps sold into the institutional, commercial and industrial sector as well as ballasts, fixtures and other parts. 

The questions has been asked, and I to am inclined to wonder as well, where and how do these bulbs get recycled … what use(s) are the components that created the bulbs put to … what happens to the mercury?? 

And, in case you have forgotten, YES we do pay an extra fee when we buy these CFL’s so they can be recycled – and indeed it is HST taxable.

The program is funded entirely by the eco fees remitted by Product Care's industry members. Eco fees paid by members are based on their unit sales in BC and vary according to the type or length of the light. The eco fee may be shown separately or may be included in the product price.

Have we made a huge mistake in changing over to these new compact fluorescent bulbs??  I sure hope that in another 10 or 20 years we don’t find we have poisoned the planet to a far worse degree that simply having a bit of heat and global warming generated from our old light bulbs ever would have created.

I’m Alan Forseth … and those are the thoughts, and questions, of one conservative in BC.