Hello, Unintended Consequences!
I blogged previously about the upcoming ban on regular light bulbs in favor of the crappy CFLs, but I didn't know which Oval Office politician to blame. (Oh, did you think there's much of a difference between Democrats and Republicans? There is: Democrats are the party of really, really big government, and Republicans are the party of pretending to be for small government.)
Turns out George Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which establishes performance criteria that incandescent bulbs can't meet, writes Deroy Murdock. Not only that:
Scarier still, just drop one onto your kitchen floor. Its internal mercury is highly toxic. If spilled, it requires something approximating a Superfund cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency warns that if a CFL breaks on one's apparel or bedspread, "Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage" (emphasis added).CFLs should be discarded at recycling centers. Hundreds of millions of busy Americans, however, will toss these dangerous bulbs in the trash, atop table scraps and junk mail. CFLs will clog landfills from coast to coast. Decades hence, mercury will have leeched into the environment. Americans will wonder why people are suffering brain, kidney, and lung damage. Medical visits will yield lawsuits. And yet another national disaster will erupt, courtesy of Washington, D.C.
And it's a quality of life issue -- for me, anyway. And I drive a hybrid car -- a 2004 Honda Insight -- with about the same pickup as my Goodwill-bought vacuum cleaner. But, I chose to drive that car. Meanwhile, I'm going to be stockpiling incandescent bulbs in plastic storage boxes in my garage. I think I'll buy a few bulbs every time I go to the store. More from Murdoch's column:
"I think the incandescent light bulb was one of the great contributions to the art of architecture in the 20th century," says Howard M. Brandston, a legendary lighting designer renowned for relighting the Statute of Liberty before its rededication on July 4, 1986. "Lighting played a huge role, as essential as the structures themselves. That was thanks to Thomas Edison.""If the federal government insists on banning the incandescent lamp, it significantly will decrease the quality of life in every home in America," Brandston tells me. "The CFLs cannot be dimmed properly. When you dim one, the spectral power distribution and color quality of the lamp make people look cadaverous. Most people who wear makeup will not need to do so to look like the Bride of Frankenstein."
"Here we have the government entering all of our homes. Our homes are our castles," says Brandston, a former adjunct professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a founder of its Lighting Research Center. "Now they are telling us how to light our homes, and they are putting onerous burdens on us in terms of handling these toxic CFLs. The government should not enter our homes, tell us how to live, endanger our health, and ruin our quality of life."Republicans and thinking Democrats running for Congress this fall should pledge publicly to repeal the federal ban on Thomas Edison's monumental creation. Why not try something worthy of the Spirit of '76? Keep traditional bulbs, CFLs, halogens, and everything else on the market, and allow Americans to purchase whatever bulbs help them pursue happiness.
What, and allow the plebes to make decisions based on what they want, rather than what their betters know to be the Right Thing?
Horrors!
brian at July 8, 2010 7:26 AM
I had resisted buying CFLs because my experience from a long time ago was they were expensive and gave off poor light.
But I gave in and bought an inexpensive desklamp from Amazon that has a CFL in it.
It arrives, I take it out of the package, and they way it is packaged, the CFL, which is like quadruply wrapped in bubblewrap, falls out of the box and onto a carpet and breaks.
So thank the FSM, it is all still in the bubble wrap, but what kind of bulb would break after a three foot fall in bubblewrap to a carpeted floor?
Amazon was pretty good. Asked if I wanted a refund or replacement, and then told me that under no circumstances should I ever consider sending it back to them. Dispose of it properly, but jeez, they didn't want the hazardous waste back.
So then I spent the next hour or so googling how to clean this up from carpets, and eventually "decided/gave up" and said, well it was all in the bubble wrap, I'm not going to worry.
Of course, I also remember as a kid playing with mercury with bare fingers. Cool stuff. Now that shit would close down a school.
jerry at July 8, 2010 8:39 AM
Anyway, off to the store to buy some tuna. I love tuna and just realized I was out. Have a nice day.
jerry at July 8, 2010 8:41 AM
Dollar Store and Big Lots if you have them in SoCal are great. Been buying several during my trips there.
Feebie at July 8, 2010 9:01 AM
Word on the dollar store, I've gotten 60w incandescents 4 for a dollar before. Wait you meant dollar store light bulbs, not dollar store tuna, right?
smurfy at July 8, 2010 9:46 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/07/08/hello_unintende.html#comment-1730671">comment from FeebieThanks, Feeb - good advice. I'm going to go to the 99 cent store and get some and start storing them in plastic boxes in my garage.
Amy Alkon at July 8, 2010 10:02 AM
I like my CFL's... but they are my choice. Sign me up for "personal choice, the gov. should stay out of it!"
Oh, and? There are thousands of chemicals that people have intheir houses that should be cleaned up as toxic if spilled. The amount of mercury in a cfl is small. D'ya think that commercial bldg's are all carefull about how they throw away their FL tubes? nah, they throw 'em in the dumpster with all the other trash. I'd have to bet amount-wise, there are far more tubes thrown away like that every day, than consumers ever would.
SwissArmyD at July 8, 2010 10:15 AM
Well, here's some irony.
"And I drive a hybrid car -- a 2004 Honda Insight -- "
What do you think will happen to thousands of Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries from those cars?
The environmentally-responsible thing to do is to remove the battery when it fails and oeprate the car without it. Yes, that requires some hacking.
Because the alternative is to support the generation of more NiMH waste.
Radwaste at July 8, 2010 10:37 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/07/08/hello_unintende.html#comment-1730694">comment from RadwasteThere are tradeoffs. My car is a SULEV, meaning a Super Ultra Low Emissions vehicle. My battery will need disposing of, but I'm not putting foul crap in your lungs like other vehicles are.
Amy Alkon at July 8, 2010 10:53 AM
Am I the only person who can hear a high-pitched whine when CFLs are turned on? That alone keeps me from buying them.
Lunamoth at July 8, 2010 11:18 AM
(Oh, did you think there's much of a difference between Democrats and Republicans? There is: Democrats are the party of really, really big government, and Republicans are the party of pretending to be for small government.)
Thank you! Best def./explanation yet!
saiorse at July 8, 2010 11:20 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/07/08/hello_unintende.html#comment-1730718">comment from saiorseI hear a buzz from CFLs. My landlord installed one in my front room, and it gives off the light like you'd expect in the hall of a dingy, unrenovated SRO hotel.
And thanks, salorse. I'm always amazed by how people stand up for these parties and the politicians in them. There are exceptions -- I think Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, is a truly good guy, looking to do good (he's quite unpopular with his own party for going after earmarks). But, mostly, if you lift up any politician and look underneath, there will be ugly things crawling around.
Amy Alkon at July 8, 2010 11:40 AM
In April 2008, I put together a review of CFL's and some of their difficulties that are not talked about, or printed on the box.
The CFL Advertising Account
The good and bad about compact fluorescent lights. Why the ads are both true and false. How to save and waste money on CFL's.
Andrew_M_Garland at July 8, 2010 12:45 PM
Two comments about lights.
1. Not all CFLs are identical; many are junk. It took me some
time but I found that Sunwave gives me what I want: quick turn
on time, good quality light, and the kind of lifetime I'd expect
from fluorescent.
2. If you do want to stock up on incandescent, buy a bunch of
Sylvania Capsylite bulbs. They're not efficient enough to
qualify for the new standards, but they're notably more efficient
than the normal run of incandescents. They're also higher
quality. The old-style lights I had on a dimmer circuit buzzed
when dimmed. The Capsylites dim silently.
Ron at July 8, 2010 2:51 PM
There are tradeoffs. My car is a SULEV, meaning a Super Ultra Low Emissions vehicle. My battery will need disposing of, but I'm not putting foul crap in your lungs like other vehicles are. -- Amy
Actually foul crap was put into the air when the batteries were made. There was an eye opening article in the IEEE Spectrum (I am not enrolled in summer qtr so don't have access) a while back about all the energy and release of toxic chemicals that goes on with the making of the hybrid and all electric vehicles. IIRC, only the then new prius (of the models looked at) looked to reduce green house gases and then only if it was driven a lot in city type conditions and for the projected life of the battery.
I think the incandescents should be taxed more as a luxury item. I read awhile back (sorry, don't remember the source) that if all lighting today was still incandescent that the power grid could not handle it because of the increase draw of the lights and then increased A/C because of the heat they give off -- the big factor is the business and schools.
The Former Banker at July 8, 2010 3:59 PM
"My car is a SULEV, meaning a Super Ultra Low Emissions vehicle. My battery will need disposing of, but I'm not putting foul crap in your lungs like other vehicles are."
And mine is an ULEV, with no NiMH. Further, the 3-year run of this body style and popularity of "tuner" parts will let me maintain it for maybe two decades.
"Green" is often an excuse to look good, and that's too bad.
Radwaste at July 8, 2010 4:28 PM
Rather random, but I thought you may find this site entertaining. The NYT did a blurb on it today : gotryiton.com You could definitely set some of the posters straight!
Choika at July 8, 2010 5:42 PM
There *are* apparently some developments in progress for incandescent lamps with *do* meet the energy standards...though not as efficient as the CFLs, they have better light quality--don't know if it's as good as a traditional incandescent or not. Also, they're apparently going to be pretty expensive. I believe both GE and Philips are pursuing this.
However, that's just a side note. The important point is that the government has no right to micromanage our lives in this way, and if this is allowed to stand there will be no end to it.
david foster at July 8, 2010 6:55 PM
Our lovely hostess shares an opinion with Rush Limbaugh regarding CFLs. And they are both, if not wrong, at least incompletely informed.
I understand that not everyone has the time to research lighting options. At the same time, I bristle at the government's arrogant presumption to know what's best for any given situation.
The dollar-store CFLs are complete ass. I use them in my basement. It takes a good five minutes for them to get to full brightness. But they're cheap, and it's the freaking basement - who cares?
Sylvania makes some very good high-end CFLs, but you're gonna pay for them. Phillips (same company) also makes some top-notch T8 tubes. Again, expensive as all hell. It was $24 for the four tubes in my office on top of the $100 fixture. But the light is as close to flawless as you're gonna get.
Basically, what I'm saying is if you want good light, you're gonna pay.
brian at July 8, 2010 7:17 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/07/08/hello_unintende.html#comment-1730945">comment from brianI have high-end CFLs from home-depot. I care about lighting so I bought the best ones they had. They, well, blow goat balls.
Amy Alkon at July 8, 2010 8:24 PM
I have the political misfortune to live in Chicago. There aren't enough rational people here to vote the bastards out. I hope the rest of the country can. Vote against all of them, left or right, Dem or Rep. No one who has been in this spendthrift Congress should ever be returned.
Punditius at July 8, 2010 9:28 PM
I'm not certain any of these consequences are accidental. If CFLs are the only way we can light our homes, the market for improving them is going to be really, really big, and we should expect prompt improvements to their performance.
That's not to say it's worthwhile, or that anyone has any business meddling in the market this way, but I'm pretty sure the people who've pushed this through have done some of the math: If round tires were outlawed on Friday morning, some genius would have found a way to do great things with cubed rubber by next Monday.
Crid at July 8, 2010 10:30 PM
Ban on incandescents is already in force here in Australia. The light from CFLs is awful. So I'm now running a medical anglepoise lamp to read by as well as the ceiling light that used to be fine by itself. Energy saving where exactly?
Mind you, the mercury angle is overblown, the amount really is tiny. Treating dead or broken CFLs as hazardous waste is ridiculous. Not that that will stop them.
It's just a bit early is all, within 10-15 years LED lamps will take over, no need for legislation at all. Two stage dimmer switches perhaps? Luminance level and colour temperature? Plus they might actually live up to the promise of longer life, I've never seen that from CFLs despite the hype.
Ltw at July 9, 2010 12:14 AM
I put the recycle bin out and read on it that intact CFLs can be put in the glass bin. Disposal very easy. Not the tubes though...
The Former Banker at July 9, 2010 12:21 AM
"I have high-end CFLs from home-depot"
No, you don't - Home Depot doesn't carry high-end CFLs. What you
have are higher-priced CFLs. And, yes, your assessment of the
quality of Home Depot's best agrees with mine. However, I think
that condemning all CFLs just because one chain store doesn't carry
any decent ones is going rather overboard.
Ron at July 9, 2010 6:16 AM
Green-ness, conservation efforts, recycling ect are utterly useless , feel good, politically correct, and functionally useless nonsensical bull crap fed to a stupid American public.
Any minimal environmental gains from all of the above are negated by anyone who has spawn.
The only politicians who were willing to admit that people are the source of environmental problems and non unsustainable economies were the Chinese, and even the totalitarian Chinese had to back off from their universal one child policy.
Go to the market and look around: the foodstamp welfare queen in line ahead of you with 6 illegitimate kids and a cart full of ciggies, beer and junk food, or the herd of new immigrant full wrapped islamo-breeder cows each surrounded by her eight demographic time-bombs, and going for the islamo-breeder cow goal of 12 future domestic suicide bombers, negated your pitiful efforts at green-ness, and assure that your kids will have a nasty crowded toxic and extremely miserable future, and that your great grand daughters will be either goat herding burqua wearing dhimmis or harem fodder, and that your grandsons will have no life at all.
Soylent Green, anyone?
Mark Engels at July 9, 2010 7:27 AM
Government wants to continually brainwash you with the message that they belong in your home, having authority over every little detail of your life, even mundane ones. The damage is more than just the direct economic damage from silly laws like this --- the damage is far more subtle, because it re-entrenches the mentality (already way too far gone) that government deserves authority to lord over every detail of our existence.
Lobster at July 9, 2010 8:58 AM
LEDs are more efficient than CFLs, work in dimmers, have long lifetimes, have no warm-up problems, and give good light.
Too bad they're so freaking expensive (today).
I've got enough incandescent bulbs to last five years.
After that, I'll be looking to switch to LEDs.
John Galt at July 10, 2010 10:37 AM
Rush at it again... Love it.
Gregory Charnelton at July 13, 2010 10:55 PM
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