La Voz Weekly: Flourescent Lighting’s Dark Side
Filed under: Earth 911 - May 12, 2008
By Matt Larvey
Several large retail companies and a number of environmental groups have been encouraging consumers to buy compact fluorescent lamps in place of incandescent, tungsten filament lamps, but there are hazards associated with the fluorescent bulbs that people should be aware of.
Compact fluorescent lamps are designed to fit into ordinary light sockets. They are advertised as an environmentally friendly alternative to incandescent lamps because they provide the same brightness and use a quarter of the energy. Their lifetime can also be 15 to 20 times that of regular incandescent bulbs.
Still these bulbs, like all fluorescent lamps, contain a small amount of mercury. When thousands of these bulbs are improperly disposed of with regular garbage and end up buried in landfills, the combined mercury from the bulbs creates a veritable toxic waste dump.
Thousands of pounds of mercury, a substance that is very toxic to human beings, end up in our landfills every year because of the improper disposal of fluorescent lamps. As the mercury accumulates underground, vapor escapes through the waste and vents into the air. Winds can carry the vapor and deposit traces of mercury into rivers and streams, potentially causing massive damage to the environment.
Furthermore, mercury often changes once in these landfills from its elemental form to a form known as organic methyl mercury, an even more dangerous and toxic form of mercury.
Despite all this, fluorescent bulbs are not currently the main contributor of mercury in landfills. Even if they were to be adopted by consumers as the primary choice for indoor lighting, they still wouldn’t add a significant amount of mercury pollution to our environment. In fact, they would likely reduce our dependence on coal power plants, which are by far the leading cause of mercury pollution.
Educating the public on hazardous waste recycling can reduce the amount of mercury that ends up in landfills, but overall florescent lamps are a positive change for consumers and people shouldn’t be cautioned against buying them.
To find a hazardous waste facility near you, go to www.earth911.org.