"As someone who sells light bulbs for a living, I am less enthusiastic than most about compact fluorescent bulbs. This is due to the fact that the ones currently available contain significant amounts of mercury. If one of these bulbs should break inside of a person’s home, it could cause a challenging disposal situation. It is my belief that the technology should progress to a point at which the mercury levels are low or nonexistent before people changeover their entire homes. Another consideration is that as these bulbs burn out, they will most likely be thrown away as though they are normal rubbish and landfills will have incredibly high levels of mercury in their soil as a result."
I always like light bulb, maybe because of the simple design and easily fix socket. Of course is not good for environment as the power usage is high. That why a lot of people change their like bulb to fluorescent lamp as they use less power.
But we can always change to a more energy save light bulb and can last longer and reduce the power usage, but it take some time to get to their maximum glow, and is not that bright.
Fluorescent lamp on the other hand has less power usage but they do have mercury contain that mention by Johnny5. Mercury is harmful to us and environment, if we discard the lamp properly then is alright, but the bad things is we normally just throw in the dustbin and this can be very environment unfriendly.
So is not easy to decide which to choose, or in my case, if it is not necessary to switch on the light, just don't. Try to reduce power usage as much as you can for the environment sake. Dispose your light bulb and fluorescent lamp properly. Change to energy saving light bulb will also be a good idea as you no need to fix new socket for the fluorescent lamp. So you as the consumer, you decide, be a smart one.
1 comment:
Most CFLs today on the market contain less than 5mgs of mercury and there are CFL options out there that contain as little as 1.5mgs of mercury- which can hardly be called a “significant amounts of mercury” considering that many item in your home contain 100s of times more of mercury including your computer. Mercury levels in CFLs can never be “nonexistent” since mercury is a necessary component of a CFL and there is no other known element that is capable of replacing it. But CFLs actually prevent more mercury from entering the environment. According to the Union of Concerned Scientist, “a coal-fired power plant will emit about four times more mercury to keep an incandescent bulb glowing, compared with a CFL of the same light output”.
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