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.