The EPA says mercury is a poison- unless it is in your home [Reader Post]

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The EPA thinks it’s worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone’s homes?

When the EPA announced its new air pollution rules this week — designed to reduce power plant emissions of mercury and other to gases — Administrator Lisa Jackson blogged that:

“Mercury is a neurotoxin that is particularly harmful to children, and emissions of mercury and other air toxics have been linked to damage to developing nervous systems, respiratory illnesses and other diseases.”

At $10 billion a year, complying with the new rules won’t come cheap, and that assumes the EPA’s low-ball estimate comes true. According to the coal industry, this is the most expensive rule the EPA’s ever imposed.

Fear not, since Jackson claims the “health and economic benefits” will be many times greater than the costs.

But here’s the curious thing: While whipping up fear about mercury in the outdoors, the EPA is actively downplaying mercury’s health risks when it comes out of fluorescent bulbs inside people’s homes.

In a pamphlet extolling the virtues of the looming federal ban on traditional incandescent light bulbs, the EPA says it’s a “myth” that the mercury used in compact fluorescent lights is “dangerous in your home.”

But if you break a mercury-containing CFL? What then?

Before Cleanup

Have people and pets leave the room.
Air out the room for 5-10 minutes by opening a window or door to the outdoor environment.
Shut off the central forced air heating/air-conditioning system, if you have one.
Collect materials needed to clean up broken bulb:
stiff paper or cardboard;
sticky tape;
damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes (for hard surfaces); and
a glass jar with a metal lid or a sealable plastic bag.

During Cleanup

DO NOT VACUUM. Vacuuming is not recommended unless broken glass remains after all other cleanup steps have been taken. Vacuuming could spread mercury-containing powder or mercury vapor.
Be thorough in collecting broken glass and visible powder.
Place cleanup materials in a sealable container.

After Cleanup

Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly. Avoid leaving any bulb fragments or cleanup materials indoors.
If practical, continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the heating/air conditioning system shut off for several hours.

Here’s what happened when one concerned citizen took action following a CFL breakage:

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as US$180 annually in energy costs — and assuming that Bridges doesn’t break any more CFLs — it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.

And when they burn out?

► Contact your local waste collection agency

Visit Earth911.com Exit EPA Disclaimer to find collection schedules in your area or drop-off locations if curbside collections are not available. Note that waste collection agencies:

– provide services that are usually free, though some may charge a small fee.
– sometimes collect household hazardous wastes only once or twice a year, so residents will have to hold on to their light bulbs until the collection takes place. Other collection agencies provide collection services throughout the year.
– may also collect paints, pesticides, cleaning supplies or batteries.
– usually accept waste only from residents, although some collection programs include small businesses as well.

So it’s going to cost you additional money to recycle your spent CFLs and/or you’re going to have to burn gas to deliver them to a recycler. Worse, you’re going to have burn the one thing you cannot ever get back- the time required to do this.

And if your local trash hauler doesn’t offer CFL recycling, p*ss them off!

1) Your local garbage service
Probably the best place to start is with whoever currently picks up your household trash or recyclables. If you pay for this service, you’ll almost certainly find a customer service number on your bill. Give them a call and ask if they offer CFL or mercury recycling. If not, politely suggest they do so. Here’s an opportunity to write a letter, attend a meeting or take some other activist role in highlighting the importance of proper CFL disposal. The appropriate follow-up will depend on whether your trash service is privately or publicly held.

Left out of this suggestion is that should the hauler be forced into such a program, the cost would be passed on in the form of increased fees. And the truth is that few are going to be bothered with this. Millions and millions of CFLs are going to be discarded into landfills, which will eventually contaminate the ground with significant amounts of mercury. And CFLs have far greater mass than incandescent bulbs.

What about the energy required for manufacture of CFLs?

The total energy input for the production of a CFL light bulb comes to 1.7kWh compared to 0.3kWh for a single incandescent light bulb.

That’s six times as much energy required to create a CFL over an incandescent bulb!

Most CFL’s are manufctured in China, and in their manufacture workers are poisoned:

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent light bulbs.

A surge in foreign demand, set off by an EU directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment of a remote part of China.

Doctors, regulators, lawyers and courts in China are increasingly alert to the potential damage to public health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the Earth but depends on highly toxic mercury for its core product.

Making the bulbs requires workers to handle mercury in either solid or liquid form because a small amount of the metal is put into each bulb to start the chemical reaction that creates light.

Mercury pollution in China is already a significant problem.

Reducing Hg pollution has been a high priority in China’s environmental management and improvement program. During the past few years, China’s State Environmental Protection Administration has also strengthened its management of the production, use, import, export, and disposal of Hg. Hg mining has been restricted in many areas, such as Wanshan. In 1996, artisanal Au-mining activities were officially banned.

This “green” stuff ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Six times as much energy is used in the manufacture of CFLs over incandescent bulbs, workers and landfills are poisoned and CFLs are toxic if broken.

But you can be comforted knowing that while mercury may be poisonous in the air, Lisa Jackson says it is safe once it is your home.

Merry Christmas!

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This whole obama regime is made up of caricatures from Alice in Wonderland. The similarities of Mooshell and The Queen of Hearts is astounding.

It’s going to cost more than 10 billion all told. The higher cost of electricity, and the brownouts caused by suddenly forcing coal burning plants out of operation, are probably going to multiply the total cost to the economy by an order of magnitude.

Just one piece of quackery among many, e.g.:

-Shut down Central Valley irrigation for a tiny fish that probably won’t benefit anyway. Billions of gallons of irrigation water sent to the ocean, hundreds of square miles of farmland turned back into desert, thousands thrown out of work.

-Mandate “renewable” energy sources that will never ever pay for themselves.

-Carbon tax schemes.

At some point, you start to think that maybe the environment is not the real issue. Instead, it’s power, control, and extortion. Making energy and food into scarce things, are ends in and of themselves.

The hatters went mad from mercury poisoning. What’s Lisa Jackson’s excuse?

The exposure to a broken curley bulb in your house on the carpet exposes people to more than a life time of exposure to coal power plant emissions. Remember, there is little air exchange in most houses. The mercury is reintrained into the air every time you vacuum. The EPA is doing just what Obama said he would do- put coal power plants out of business. We will be lucky if it only doubles our utility bills. Then we need to look at all of the industry that will move somewhere else like Canada.

In high school chemistry class in the sixties, we routinely played with liquid mercury. We’d float chunks of lead on a bowl of it, and rub it all over copper pennies which we carried around with us in our pockets.

Not to worry, though, we cleaned our hands afterwards with Benzine…

Exposing children to curly bulb mercury residue is just one small part of the plan to produce more future Democrat voters.

Not to take away from drj’s pointing out the insanity that passes for Jackson/EPA “logic”, it might be a good time to point out that HR 2055 was signed by Obama on Dec 23rd. This was another of those “not a budget, but we need to keep the government doors open” compromises.

And in there, under the Dept of Energy section, was a defunding of the Dept of Energy to prohibit enforcement of the light bulb ban. It stays on the books… but goes into the never never land of laws that are around but who cares. Like immigration and voting fraud laws, it will be ignored.

Of course, this is just another kicking of the can down the road since the defunding reprieve expires Sept 30th, 2012, the end of the Congressional fiscal year (like that makes any difference these days…). That will, of course, be in time for yet another public and political dog and pony show to erupt for the election.

The ban was the brainchild of Queen Pelosi’s “transparent” Congress majority, with HR 6, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, being one of the first idiotic nanny rule laws coming out of the gate. It had a Dem sponsor, and 198 co-sponsors (3 of them GOP idiots…). Naturally, it passed mostly along party line vote, and Bush signed it into law. Considering 18 GOP Senators voted in favor of it, the chances of a Presidential veto not being over ridden were pretty darned slim.

So Jackson and the EPA have had their fiscal wings clipped, and put on “hold” and “ignore” for a year. Not long after that, we may have an idea of a new temporary occupant of the Oval Office.

The bigger question is will the manufacturers see this as an undependable future and still wind down production? Or take advantage of a popular product’s elongated life span?

PS: drj… as a big Depp fan, I’m oh so bummed to see the Mad Hatter character so mutilated… LOL

It would be much cheeper for the coal company to donate heavily to Obama. That way the coal burning emissions will be declared safe.

I think I am going back to Afghanistan as a contractor life there was safer. You could figure out who the bad guys where. Here I am not sure who is trying to kill us sounds like the Goverment. Oh I did not vote for the all your going to have left in your pocket is CHANGE. Black3/6 out

Thank god some people have brains and use them. How does one get this issue out there? Just dont hear enough about it. I know I dont buy those lights and funny thing is you can’t buy mercury thermometers anymore.