Director, Safetyissues.com

This week, on July 15^th, Congress did not vote to repeal the law, Better Use of Light Bulbs Act, or H.R. 91, which will force Americans, starting October 2012, to buy Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs.  In my last blog, CFLs vs. LEDs and Incandescent Lights, back in February I had hoped that a light had been turned on in Congress by U.S. Representative Joe Barton, R-TX, who coauthored a Bill to repeal this new standard being forced on the American people.   Barton stated, “People don’t want Congress dictating what light fixtures they can use. Traditional incandescent bulbs are cheap and reliable. Alternatives, including the most common replacement Compact Fluorescent Lights or CFLs, are more expensive and have serious health hazards — so why force them on the American people?”

Should consumers bear the economic and health costs of this legislation, all in the name of conserving energy? Is conserving energy 8 to 15% worth the inevitable dangers of having mercury bulbs in our home environment, not to mention the increased cost to our budgets to purchase these CFL bulbs?  Let’s explore this ban how, learn how it got started, and why Congress HAS to vote to overturn it.

Despite the Evidence

Despite evidence from the scientific community, true environmentalists and concerned citizens, Congress still voted this past week not to repeal the law banning the sale of incandescent bulbs. Therefore, CFL bulbs will replace incandescent bulbs, purportedly because they use less energy and so are considered to be more “environmentally friendly” than the incandescent bulbs we have used for the last 100+ years. This is disconcerting because it is now common knowledge that CFL bulbs contain mercury and it is the presence of mercury in the new CFL bulbs, along with several radiation hazards, that make CFL bulbs a horrific product with which to replace incandescent light bulbs. Saving the light bulb: Rep. Barton promoting personal freedom

Why force them on the American people?

Potential Hazards of CFL bulbs

CFL bulbs are filled with a gas containing low-pressure mercury vapor and argon. The inner surface of the bulb is coated with a fluorescent coating made of varying blends of metallic and rare earth phosphor salts. When a high-voltage current is passed through this vapor, the electricity causes the gasses to “fluoresce” or emit light. NOTE: Phosphor futures went up on the Stock exchange all last week, suggesting that you might want to stockpile on light bulb purchases now if you have any extra money because they will be much more expensive come 2012 or next year.

Loss of US jobs to China

Despite the patriotic brand names, like GE Corporation, most compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs are not made in America. While most incandescent light bulbs are made in the USA, with Congress instituting this incandescent light bulb ban it will essentially shut down most, if not all electric light bulb plants in the US. A recent Washington Post story reported that GE is shutting an incandescent light bulb plant in Winchester, Va., killing 200 jobs in the process.  This means, once again, losing an industry worth thousands more jobs to out source manufacturing to China. NOTE: President Obama appointed the CEO of GE to head up his new Commission on creating more jobs here in the US, and in particular manufacturing jobs.

CFLs are made in factories where Chinese worker are exposed to near lethal amounts of mercury vapor, which is a component of CFLs. These factories are largely powered by coal. Since China lacks the environmental protection laws that we have in Europe and the US, it is more cost effective to make CFL bulbs in China.  So while  Chinese coal-fired CFL bulb factories pollute the Chinese environment,  we, as consumers, will soon be forced into buying these silent toxic time bombs, and we are supposed to somehow feel like we are actually helping to promote a cleaner, more “sustainable” environment?  Only if you can close your eyes, ears and nose to the stench of hypocrisy which surrounds the push to have CFL bulbs replace environmentally safe and friendly incandescent bulbs.

Light bulbs don't 'seem sexy

HIGH COSTS OF CFL BULBS: Purchase and Disposal

The CFL bulbs cost hundreds of times more to purchase. Up to now, local utilities have been subsidizing the cost of purchasing these bulbs to help bring their price down to a reasonable level. Once the law is in effect, and we have no choice but to buy CFLs, it is anyone’s guess how long the subsidies will stay in affect which offsets their exorbitant costs.

In addition to the purchase price of CFL bulbs, there is also the cost to dispose of them properly to consider. These bulbs are very toxic, as they contain deadly mercury vapor. Mercury is one of the most toxic elements on Earth. All CFL bulbs contain a minimum of four to five milligrams of mercury. There is enough mercury in one CFL bulb to contaminate 6,000 gallons of clean water. If broken, the lethally toxic mercury puts the health of your entire family at stake. The proper cleanup of a broken CFL bulb would require professional HazMat services. That can be very very expensive!

Most consumers do not even think about how to properly recycle fluorescent bulbs.   Many State governing agencies have even adopted their own regulations regarding fluorescent lights disposal. In California, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, it is against the law for anyone to dispose of fluorescent bulbs as just plain waste, tossed in your garbage can, according to LightBulbRecycling.com.

One CFL bulbs contains enough mercury to contaminate 6,000 gallons of water.

Freedom of using Compact Fluorescent and Regular Incandescent Bulbs

The problem is that the amount of mercury in one CFL bulb is enough to contaminate up to 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe drinking levels. The EPA recommends an elaborate cleanup ritual including throwing away any clothes, bedding, or carpeting that has come in direct contact with the mercury from the bulb should one fall and accidentally break.  Further, about 30,000 pounds of mercury will be dumped into our environment each year due to the disposal of these new compact fluorescent light bulbs. That’s an enormous amount of mercury, and almost half of the total amount of mercury emitted into the atmosphere by a coal-fired power plant.

While the widespread consumption of fluorescent lights may save our nation from wasting a small amount of electricity on incandescent lights, it may also lead to a mercury contamination catastrophe! Never before in the history of our world will so much mercury become so widely distributed across our environment. The long-term effects of this contamination are currently unknown, but they can only be negative. The real unknown is the degree of harm that will occur if the mercury proliferation is left unchecked.

CFL bulbs offer better lighting for less energy fallacy

CFL bulbs do use less electricity to produce the same amount of light that incandescent bulbs produce.  This is certainly an admirable quality of CFL bulbs.  However, the argument that the upfront expense (roughly 8-10 times that of a standard incandescent) will supposedly be paid for by the longer life span of a CFL bulb is specious at best.   The truth of the matter is that if CFL bulbs simply replace the light bulbs we use on a daily basis, then they will be switched on and off repeatedly, the very same way we use the incandescent bulbs the CFLs were designed to replace.  However, when CFL bulbs are switched on and off, like incandescent bulbs, their life span is reduced by nearly 85%!!! To put it another way, a CFL bulb’s actual life span under real world conditions would be nearly identical to incandescent bulbs — yet they will cost consumers 8 to 10 times as much as a standard incandescent bulb!  With no advantage due to longevity, the CFL bulb’s only advantage is lower electric current usage; but less electricity usage is essentially irrelevant to a consumer who is being charged 8 to 10 times the replacement cost of an incandescent bulb up front!   There is simply no way that a CFL bulb will cost consumers less money than an incandescent bulb, even factoring in less electrical usage.

But CFL bulbs are “good” for the environment, insist the environmentalists.  They will still use less electricity.  So what if the consumer, the American public, has to spend 8 to 10 times more than they normally would for a light bulb?  CFL bulbs, say the environmentalists, will help reduce pollution because less electricity will need to be generated, thereby reducing the overall “carbon footprint” of each household.

This is the irony we now find ourselves in.  Under the Guise of Safety, we are being duped!   We are being forced to rid our households and businesses of safe, incandescent bulbs made in America with three major brands of CFL bulbs, all of which are made in Chinese factories, and all of which are filled with mercury which silently waits to permanently contaminate our environment…. and all of this in the name of environmental cleanliness and safety!

Hazards: not only Mercury but radiation from electrical radio and ultraviolet light

Can this legislation possibly be more ironic than producing the direct opposite of the “clean” environment it supposedly fosters?  The answer, incredibly, is yes.  For not only do CFL bulbs pose an additional environmental hazard by adding approximately 30,000 pounds of toxic mercury to our environment on an annual basis — there are also two more aspects to CFL bulbs which environmentalists and their naive allies in Congress seem to be blithely unaware:  their electrical radio radiation, and the ultraviolet light radiation, both of which are potentially carcinogenic.

Few environmentalists are aware of the psychological effect CFL bulbs can have on the users. An overlooked hazard of CFLs is their operating frequency. They operate at a frequency that can make people ill by emitting radio frequency radiation which causes migraines, dizziness, nausea, confusion, fatigue, skin irritations, and eyestrain.  Moreover, the actual light the CFL bulbs produce is hazardous, as it includes ultraviolet light, which can cause skin eruptions, skin cancer and other cancers.

A Worldwide move to ban incandescent bulbs in 2007 during Bush Administration

This was not just an inadvertent attempt by the U.S. Government, or a gaff by former President Bush, to control our freedom of choice.  In 2007, “saving” the “environment” became a worldwide rage.  The propaganda that consumers could enjoy significant energy savings by enforcing a ban on incandescent bulbs which would or could save 20% on carbon emissions released into the environment due to less electricity usage was started in a report circulated from the United Nations. I could not confirm at the time of writing this blog which agency or country provided this report. However, suffice it to say that this same year, at an EU conference hosted by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, the European Union’s leaders announced their intention to ban incandescent light bulbs for the 490 million people living within the EU’s 27 countries by 2010, according to the banthebulb.org. The new legislation by the EU called upon members states, “along with EU encouragement [to] immediately launch public information campaigns (or propaganda) on the economic and environmental advantages of efficient lighting systems and maximize existing legislation to facilitate the phasing-out of the incandescent bulb.”

There has been a growing worldwide move to ban incandescent bulbs in such diverse places as Cuba (May ’06), Venezuela (Nov ’06), Australia (Feb ’07) and Ontario, Canada (Feb ’07).   Five U.S. states, including California also considered legislation to ban incandescent bulbs.

Eighty percent of home lighting today use highly inefficient incandescent bulbs that convert only five percent of the energy they consume into light. As consumers and nations move away from highly inefficient incandescent lights, most are considering using compact fluorescent light bulbs, as these are the “energy efficient” bulbs most readily available.

Yet there far better alternatives to CFL bulbs, which do NOT contain mercury and will NOT contaminate our environment, nor do they radiate harmful electrical waves or ultraviolet light.

A Safer solution: LED lights are a better alternative

LED lights are completely free of mercury, and they generate clean white light using 1/10th the electricity of incandescent light bulbs. They’re more expensive up front (due to the use of high quality components), but they actually last 50,000 hours and pay for themselves within 1 – 2 years of use due to their electricity savings.

Summary

So at the end of the day, what has Congress and the Obama administration left us with?  After October, 2012, we will now have a legal mandate to use more “energy efficient” electric bulbs, most of them CFL bulbs, which use almost as much electricity as their incandescent counterparts when one includes being turned on and off as a part of their life cycle; we will have access to “new” bulbs which cost between 8 to 12 times as much as our old incandescents; we will be able to buy the new CFL bulbs which contain 4-5 milligrams of mercury, one of the most hazardous substances on Earth to human health, and which essentially requires the cleanup efforts of a Haz-Mat team if they fall and are accidentally broken; the CFL light bulbs must be disposed of in an entirely special way to supposedly prevent further contamination of our environment, the same environment for which they were originally promoted to “protect”; we will have new “energy efficient” bulbs, which will now be mandated in order to “protect the environment”, most of which will not be disposed of in accordance with new disposal regulations, which will eventually leak at least 30,000 pounds of poisonous mercury into our environment on a yearly basis which would ordinarily NOT be dumped into our environment; we will also have two new, additional hazards associated with the CFL bulbs:  electromagnetic radiation pollution, which causes headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, mental depression and confusion; and the other gift of CFL bulbs, ultraviolet radiation, which causes skin eruptions and possibly skin cancer and other cancers.

Under the Guise of safety we are being duped!   We are being “forced” to use these bulbs to “protect” our environment but we will be destroying our environment when we dispose of these bulbs! And what happens when they break?  Call the HazMat team!  And what happens when they are disposed of in our garbage cans?  Are we to think that the garbage company will bury each little CFL bulbs in its own watertight metal coffin so that the mercury inside doesn’t leak into our environment?  And even if they provided little coffins, how long would it be before they deteriorate and contaminate our environment?

A Call to Action

The ultimate victim is Freedom itself, as this legislation is nothing more than another nail in Freedom’s coffin. But there is still Hope.  If you feel strongly, as I do, that the best products will emerge in a free market of competing products, then notify your Congressman and Senator and tell them, no even better, INSIST, that all electrical lighting products remain available to consumers, and let consumers decide upon the merits of energy efficient replaceable light bulbs.

In a truly free society, the one both you and I have been led to believe exists in the United States of America, we should still be able to make this rational choice for ourselves!

Michelle Markey,
Director Safety Issues Publication, Inc.