Fluorescent Light Bulbs, the Ticking Toxic Time Bomb

The fluorescent light bulbs, also called energy saving light bulbs, give out the same amount of light as the ordinary, incandescent applications, but with many advantages in terms of energy consumption and greenhouse gas reductions.

However, there is one major problem with these lamps, the fact that they contain mercury. Mercury vapor is excited in argon or neon gas by electricity passing through it, thus producing light. So, even if they do save a lot of energy and reduce pollution, the fact that many people dispose of burnt out fluorescent light bulbs in ordinary garbage disposal units can lead to an extremely poisonous mercury contamination.

"They’re very efficient, but once they’re used up they become a ticking toxic time bomb," said Leonard Robinson, chief deputy director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. "They need to be captured and recycled."

Recycling them is the biggest headache caused by these lights, since there are few viable options for gathering and reusing the toxic mercury inside them. The total amount of mercury is even considered negligible by many, who don't take into account the fact that even if one such bulb alone is not dangerous by itself, when numbers add up they produce dangerous quantities of mercury.

"Though they’re energy-saving, cost-saving, [they] do contain small amounts of mercury, and for that reason, [they] need a little bit more attention in their disposal," said Joe Bergstein, a spokesman for the EPA's New York City regional office.

"Some counties are better budgeted to do these kinds of collections and handle these kinds of materials on a much more regular basis than others." Even the 5 milligrams of mercury contained by one light bulb can be damaging for the organism if inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

Since each county has to pay a company to handle the collection and recycling of these bulbs and citizens are not always willing to take a trip to their friendly neighborhood fluorescent light bulbs recycling company, lots of them get dumped into the trash.

"More and more states are starting to ban throwing CFLs away, but on a whole, probably more of these are making it into the trash than are being recycled," said Robinson, the California official. "The two reasons they’ll toss them: they either don’t know or they don’t care. If we can educate the ones who don’t know, we can pressure the ones who don’t care."
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http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fluorescent-Light-Bulbs-the-Ticking-Toxic-Time-Bomb-59399.shtml

Nice typed, Mr. GPL. lolzz jks...

Quite interesting information to know.

this part of the thing wid new york goin green or some crap? i do care is just that i dunt kno wut the thing name
yeah man its a good idea...i read up alot on this lately...its gonna help a great deal...kudos to them
buh i bet coned gonna still bill us high..

Omg I didn't know that compact fluorescents had mercury in them! That's crazy... and the one's I have actually DON'T get recycled because we don't have to recycle here and I wouldn't know where to go to recycle them.

They seriously need to put labels on the lights/packaging to let people know that they contain mercury.

Flame_Angel wrote:

Omg I didn't know that compact fluorescents had mercury in them! That's crazy... and the one's I have actually DON'T get recycled because we don't have to recycle here and I wouldn't know where to go to recycle them.

They seriously need to put labels on the lights/packaging to let people know that they contain mercury.

Warn people about the danger? And put the industry at a possible loss or decline in sales? Heck no, human lives are expandable co-operations don’t care about consumers they care about the profit and that’s about it. Do you know how many drugs get recalled because of detrimental side effects? And these same drugs have been certified by the FDA as “safe”,
It’s just like the global warming saga, they knew about it and did nuttin’ till the last moment when it’s irreversible. Couple years from now you gonna hear about how many people got killed cuz of mercury poison from florescent bulbs and then you’ll see countless drugs on the market to treat the problems, mind my words, I said treat not cure, a bigger profit is secured by selling treatment rather than cures.

Snoopy Snoop wrote:

Flame_Angel wrote:

Omg I didn't know that compact fluorescents had mercury in them! That's crazy... and the one's I have actually DON'T get recycled because we don't have to recycle here and I wouldn't know where to go to recycle them.

They seriously need to put labels on the lights/packaging to let people know that they contain mercury.

Warn people about the danger? And put the industry at a possible loss or decline in sales? Heck no, human lives are expandable co-operations don’t care about consumers they care about the profit and that’s about it. Do you know how many drugs get recalled because of detrimental side effects? And these same drugs have been certified by the FDA as “safe”,
It’s just like the global warming saga, they knew about it and did nuttin’ till the last moment when it’s irreversible. Couple years from now you gonna hear about how many people got killed cuz of mercury poison from florescent bulbs and then you’ll see countless drugs on the market to treat the problems, mind my words, I said treat not cure, a bigger profit is secured by selling treatment rather than cures.

Yepp, I agree with everything you said.

All they care about is making money. I think I heard somewhere that there are many drugs that can cure illnesses out there but the FDA won't approve them because if they did then many drug companies would go out of business, people wouldn't have to keep buying the products to get treatment. I don't know if it's true or not but I wouldn't be surprised

Instead of trying to improve what they have for the betterment of mankind, they make things worse

snoopy startin to post now

These are some links on places that recycle CFLs (in the US and Canada).

http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/recyclers.html

And IKEA has bins in all their stores where u can leave your CFL's and they'll recycle them.

http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_ikea/social_environmental/environment.html

YAY lol

lol u study well

daaamn me nah able read all of dah sumbody wanna tell me whats dis all about