[Previous entry: "Illegal immigrant labor more likely to spread fecal bacteria"] [Next entry: ""Offensive" sign removed by Nanny State"]

03/21/2008: ""Green" lightbulbs are toxic waste producers"

Compact fluorescent light bulbs, long touted by environmentalists as a more efficient and longer-lasting alternative to the incandescent bulbs that have lighted homes for more than a century, are running into resistance from waste industry officials and some environmental scientists, who warn that the bulbs’ poisonous innards pose a bigger threat to health and the environment than previously thought.

All CFLs contain mercury, a neurotoxin that can cause kidney and brain damage. As long as the mercury is contained in the bulb, CFLs are perfectly safe. But eventually, any bulbs — even CFLs — break or burn out, and most consumers simply throw them out in the trash, said Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University and editor of the journal Environmental Research.

“This is an enormous amount of mercury that’s going to enter the waste stream at present with no preparation for it,” she said.

The amount is tiny — about 5 milligrams, or barely enough to cover the tip of a pen — but that is enough to contaminate up to 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe drinking levels, extrapolated from Stanford University research on mercury. Even the latest lamps promoted as “low-mercury” can contaminate more than 1,000 gallons of water beyond safe levels.

[ We're in such a hurry to sell "green" products, so we can buy new things and not change our lifestyles or tell people to stop breeding, that we are willing to unleash toxins upon our world en masse. Good thinking! ]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23694819/