This is Day 134 of the Green in 365 series!
By Hilary Kimes Bernstein of Accidentally Green
I remember when compact fluorescent lightbulbs were introduced to the public. My husband and I had just bought our first house, and we invested in dozens of CFL lightbulbs to conserve energy. Room by room, we replaced every incandescent bulb with a CFL one. The lighting definitely looked different, but we were excited at the thought of saving so much money.
Then our electric bill came.
Photo by Meawpong3405/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
It turns out that we didn’t save much money after all. In fact, we never could tell if the CFL lightbulbs truly paid for themselves.
We kept using them, and I passed all of our old – but not burned out – incandescent bulbs onto my parents (who had no interest in CFL bulbs).
Shattered bulbs
A couple years later, I learned about the mercury levels in the bulbs. I wasn’t too concerned – until I read about the extensive clean up process:
- People and pets should leave the room – especially pregnant women and children.
- Turn off the heating and air conditioning. Ventilate the room by opening a window.
- Use disposable gloves, sealable plastic bags and cardboard to collect the debris. (Don’t touch the debris, but brush the shards of glass and mercury powder into the sealable plastic bag with cardboard.) Use a flashlight to detect any missing pieces, and pat the surrounding area with sticky tape to attract powder and glass.
- Promptly throw everything in an outdoor trash container and continue to air out the contaminated room for several hours.
Second thoughts
As soon as I heard about that process, I realized our CFL bulbs weren’t the safest items in our house – especially considering two of our family members are rambunctious, young children. I always half expect any belonging in our house to break by accident – and I certainly didn’t want a mercury-filled light bulb accidentally shattering.
Recently I’ve learned that CFL bulbs also have been proven to emit UVA and UVC rays. I try to avoid those when my family’s outside, and I certainly don’t want those inside my house.
Making another switch
Because of the mercury, need for extensive clean up, and the UVA and UVC rays, I’ve stopped using CFL light bulbs in my home. My parents returned our old incandescents, and I’ve been stockpiling them when I find good sales at the store.
To conserve energy – and money – everyone in my family makes sure to turn off lights when we leave a room. Our light bulbs last longer, we’re conserving energy, and are not exposing ourselves to the potential dangers of CFL bulbs.
Your turn; what kind of light bulbs do you use … and why?
Find all the Green in 365 posts.
Hilary from Accidentally Green: Hilary Kimes Bernstein is a Christ follower, wife, mama, and writer who blogs about making healthy decisions that honor God and happen to help the environment at Accidentally Green. She’s recently released her first eBook, First Bites: How To Instill Healthy Eating Habits During Your Baby’s First Year.
__________________________________________
If you’d like to learn more about living green and living frugally I’d love to have you as a Live Renewed reader! You can subscribe, either by email or in a reader, to get the latest posts, ideas and inspiration for living frugally green. You can also connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest!
*Disclosure – There are affiliate links in this post. If you make a purchase through one of my links, I’ll receive a small commission. Thanks for supporting Live Renewed!
Like you,I changed all my lightbulbs to CFLs. I was a bit worried about the mercury,but not too much as it is just my husband and I now. But when I read about the bulbs giving off radiation,I wanted them gone!
I found some incandescent lightbulbs made in America on the website madeinusaforever.com
They are from a company called Aero-Tech Light Bulb Co. They are made in the Midwest. They come in 60 and 100 watt bulbs and in clear or frosted. I changed all the CFL bulbs in my house back to incandescent and feel much better. Just a note,they are 20,000 hour bulbs. I highly recommend them!
We have been using CFLs since 1999. We have never broken one. They’re much less fragile than incandescent bulbs, and because they last longer, you handle them less often. We taught our child to be careful of “unstable” things when he was a year old, and that reduced the odds of knocking over a lamp; when we’ve found a lamp’s position really risky, we’ve rearranged. Most of our bulbs are in ceiling fixtures, where they’d be very hard to break.
Here is what Snopes says about mercury in CFL bulbs. Calling it “a mercury-filled light bulb” is a huge exaggeration–the amount of mercury is less than 1% of what is in a mercury thermometer. Yes, you should be careful cleaning it up **IF** you have one break, but if it’s not broken no mercury escapes.
It’s a risk I’m willing to take in order to use less electricity, seeing as coal-fired power plants release a lot of mercury into our air. It’s hard to quantify the effect of CFLs on our electricity use because we switched gradually (replacing bulbs as they burned out) and were implementing other conservation measures at the same time, but we do have a lower electric bill than most of our friends.
In the article about the UV rays, please note that having the bulb inside a glass cover (like most ceiling light fixtures and some lamps) provides some protection. Because I am prone to migraines that make a brief glimpse of an unshaded light bulb excruciating, I try to arrange our lighting so that all bulbs are behind shades or pointed to bounce light off a wall. It’s interesting to know that may be healthier for our skin, too!
Overall, I think of CFLs as a temporary step on the way to better lighting technology. I have no intention of clinging to them as safer and even more energy-efficient options come along. But I’m comfortable using them for now.
My brother was recently telling me about LED light bulbs. Has anyone used them or know how safe they are?
great information thanks.