New research funded by the National Science Foundation has scientists warning consumers about the potentially harmful effects energy-saving CFL light bulbs can have on skin.
Can we go back to the pennies per bulb from North America vs. the dollars per bulb from China, now please?
I have a whole hockey sock full of the good old light blubs stored for the future……should last me about 25 years or so. And I paid only pennies per blub.
“Can we go back to the pennies per bulb from North America vs. the dollars per bulb from China, now please?”
I expect we will see a regulation/law mandating
LED bulbs at $35 a crack. From China.
When I moved into my house five years ago, half the bulbs were CFLs. I have replaced four of the CFLs and no incandescents so far and this is where CFLs and incandescents are on the same switch and therefore are on the same amount of time. Expensive, mercury filled junk.
Good thing we purchased a few cases of the old incandescent bulbs.
This is just another liberal scam gone awry.
Nice to see government-funded science is back in SDA’s good graces. Somehow, thought, I don’t see this change in attitude lasting very long.
Don’t be smug and sanctimonious, davenport. Just as you know nothing about probability statistics, you know nothing about causality.
The cause of a false conclusion is not the funding agent in itself, but the shared political agenda of the agent and the researcher. Nothing to do with the money being public or private.
davenport,wheres the all powerful EPA that mandated the CFL bulbs in the first place? Do you think that they will do an about face and ban the bulbs? Bulbs that need mercury in them to operate yet try making anything else with mercury in it.
I will probably go on some gobernment list of anti-government dissidents for admitting this but when I heard the feds were actually serious about banning light bulbs, I realized government was truly off the rails and I stock piled all the last Sylvania and GE bulbs I could buy. Got a lifetimes worth.
In this lighting apocalypse, any of you twisty bulb true belivers who are sick of being poisoned and destroying the environment, can barter with me for my earth friendly lighting – each 100watt bulb twin pack will cost you one abandoned windmill or 2 inefficeint solar arrays and your support for nuclear energy generation projects.
It’s been known for years that fluorescent bulbs should be behind a diffuser to inhibit UV rays.
What are they doing, re-inventing the wheel? More money wasted.
Honestly the CFL bulb madness is probably the single best example illustrating that the green movement does not operate on facts.
CFL bulbs are the *worst* lighting technology that has ever hit the market, and yet consumers buy them out of religious adherence to “green”. It’s nuts.
David Jacuzzi will be here defending his CFL push any minute now. After all ‘he has the power’, heh.
I fell for the CFLs.
After reading their dangers years ago I switched to the good old fashion type that we used for years.
Everybody laughed at me for doing the switching.
Hope they all see the “light” sooner than later.
How many people have to be fooled by these “green” dimwits.
Typical liberalism, they force us to buy a product that is dangerous to our health and can poison motherearth but that’s okay liberals know best.
There is definately a quality issue with the chinese bulbs too. as incandescent became hard to find, I switched to halogen work lights in my studio, these are now coming in from china and only last about 100 hours even though they claim to be good for over 1000 they aren’t that cheap either.
CFLs should not be referred to as such. The scorn and folly that emerges needs to be directed at the parties responsible. They should be referred to as “Big Brother Bulbs”, “Suzuki’s Brilliance”, “ENGO Bulbs”, “Harper Lights”, etc.
Government big enough to dictate the kind of light bulbs to use deserves no respect nor civil obedience and the entities that enable and cheer lead such tyranny deserve only contempt.
By raising the price of electricity to where it hurts, they are trying to force everyone on to the green path. All ideaology and no logic but Agenda 21 demands compliance for transition to world government. All driven by the UN and unelected bureaucrats. Not only electricity but also water/land usage, food consumption,elimination of personal liberties and the ability of any country to make decisions for their own benefit. The new world order is on the horizon for western civilization. Many countries, including China are not playing the game and probably take great pleasure in watching us destroy ourselves in the process. If the UN has ever been efficient at doing anything it just does’nt come to mind.
I love folks from Saskatchewan and Alberta for their “can-do” approach to life.
It is a refreshing change from the MSM view of the world.
After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year outside of Vancouver,
B.C. scientists found traces of copper cable dating back 100 years.
They came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a
telephone network more than 100 years ago.
Not to be outdone by Vancouver, in the weeks that followed, a Toronto,
Ontario, archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet somewhere just outside
Trenton. Shortly after, a story in the Toronto Sun read: “ Toronto
archaeologists report a finding of 200 year old copper cable, have
concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech
communications network a hundred years earlier than Vancouver.”
One week later, a local newspaper in Yorkton, Saskatchewan,reported the
following: “After digging down about 30 feet deep in his pasture near
the community of Springside, Bob, a self-taught archaeologist, reported
that he found absolutely nothing. Bob has therefore concluded that
300 years ago, Saskatchewan had already gone wireless”.
Just makes a person proud to be from Saskatchewan.
Was at a garage sale last month, snagged about two dozen 60 watter’s for $4 bucks. I told the kind lady they were for the chicken houses during the winter.
Re: “inefficient general service lamps”, as described by lab ‘rats.
“Issue: Delaying the date for compliance with Canada’s efficiency standards for general service lighting for 100/75/60/ 40 W light bulbs (general service lamps) is required in order to strengthen communication activities, to allow for technology innovations and to consider the concerns expressed about the availability of compliant technologies and perceived health and mercury issues, including safe disposal for compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs).
Description: The proposed amendment would delay the completion dates for general service lighting currently prescribed in the Energy Efficiency Regulations (the Regulations) by two years to January 1, 2014, for 100/75 W bulbs and to December 31, 2014, for 60/40 W bulbs.”
http://gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2011/2011-04-16/html/reg1-eng.html
Replace 10 100W incandescents with 10 100W equiv. CFL’s. (No, not football leagues!!) Assume you use the bulbs average 3 hours a day per year each. 365 x 3 hrs x 10 bulbs x 100W = 1,095 kWh
At $0.10/kWh (just to make arithmetic easy) that’s $109.50 to run your incandescents. 100W equiv CFL’s (= 23W power), same duty cycle, we get 365 x 3 x 10 x 23 = 251.8 kWh, or $25.18.
Cheapest set of bulbs I could find quickly was a 16-pack of 60W Philips at Home Depot for $4.44, or $0.27 per bulb. Two pack of 100W equiv CFL’s was $11.98.
So, cost for one year of incand: $10.95 electricity and $0.27 bulb = $11.22
Cost for one year CFL = $2.51 + $6.00 = $8.51
10 cents a kWh too high? Same results with 5 cents a kWH: incand: $5.77 vs. CFL = $7.25
7.5 cents a kWh: incand: $8.48, CFL = $7.85
So, clearly, which is cheaper to run is dependent on your electricity cost. I’ll wager most Canadians are paying $0.07 kWh or more right now; certainly here in McSquintyland we’ll be paying much more than that in the future.
I have a CFL in my desk lamp; it’s on 2-3 hours a day minimum, and I haven’t changed it in 5 yrs. I’m not disputing what others say about lifetime of their bulbs, just that I change my incandescents much more frequently than my CFL’s. The 40W’s in my bathroom, for example, need to be changed every 6-9 months, and they’re not on nearly as much as my desk lamp. Maybe it’s the humidity in the bathroom.. at any rate, YMMV.
If you want to argue against CFL’s on the quality of their light (harsh), or on their toxicity (harsher!), fine by me. But to say ‘they’re toxic so can I buy cheaper incandescents’ is mixing your arguments. From my experience, CFL’s are cheaper to own from a TCO viewpoint, unless they start charging me $2 each to throw them away (which I wouldn’t put past McSquinty, since he charges me an extra $10 when I buy a printer for a “disposal fee”.)
Have you not noticed? Leds are here. You may have noticed one or two in tail lights.
Spiral tubes and mercury are indeed just junk. TG
The longevity of the LED’s will be the future as well as the energy savings in using LED’s.
The wiring is 12V, thus reducing the copper needed to run between the circuits. In industrial applications, conduit is no longer needed, reducing cost as well.
The biggest expense in replacement LED’s is the driver to take the bulb down to using only 12 volts, instead of the 110.
The conversion is what is expensive, but in time the costs will come down as the LED’s become mainstream and the quality improves with the new technologies.
The LED deniers and whiners will be lumped in with the wagon-wheel builders of the past century. Afraid of the change because of the inconveniences of the present.
That, and I am a salesman for LED’s!!! ;^D
Biggest problem with LEDs is that they don’t emit white light. They are even worse than fluorescents in that respect.
They mimic white light by making LEDs with emission spikes at numerous points in the visible spectrum, but it is really a way of tricking the eye, just like television and movies trick the eye into seeing motion by means of a rapid sequence of still frames.
If economy of operation is your chief concern, LEDs are great. I have a number of LED flashlights, and they work just fine, and batteries last a long, long time. But I don’t care about the colour rendition with a flashlight; I just want to see things well enough to avoid tripping on them.
And LEDs are good where you want a monochrome source. They seem to work perfectly as vehicle tail lamps, and in traffic signals. But I wouldn’t want to light a room with them, other than as emergency lighting.
KevinB….you are all ready breaking the law by throwing away something that contains mercury.Careful McDinky’s eco-cultists don’t find you.
Now if CFL’s are causing skin irritation,then may I suggest some people are using them the wrong way.Rubbing them against your body to excite the mercury gas isn’t the best way to get them to light up!
LEDs save on electricity costs if, IF! you do not want the heat anyways – which in Canada is almost all year long.
When heat is not wanted, as in our short summers, the lights are barely on before it is nighty nighty. Factor that into your calculations and the LEDs electricity’s real saving is a pittance. Factor in all other considerations – high initial cost, color, fixture compatibility, ect and is it really worth it?
Accidentally break one here and there and you have probably lost all your savings for all your household LEDs for the rest of your life.
Careful McDinky’s eco-cultists don’t find you.
Yes, I see them lurking on my lawn near dawn.
They disguise themselves as rabbits..
And thinking on it a bit longer,it isn’t really,for me anyways,whether CFL is better,or incandescents are cheaper,it’s the fact that some a^&hole can tell me how to light my house!If I want to use a kerosene light,that is my right.If I want to use beeswax,then my right.If I want to go to bed when the sun goes down,and get up when the sun wakes me up,is my right.If I use no lights,it is my right.If I use a wood torch,my right.That is the problem we are missing.Some busybody interfering in our lives.
Another lefty idea that became worse for humanity. It never stops with these people.
Justthinkin @ 4:13, exactly and well said. It seems every time we turn around someone is trying to tell us and force us through a coercion of some sort on how to think and how to live.
Is UV-C leakage through phosphor coating cracks even an actual problem in normal use? I have one bare CFL in the laundry room, and every other bulb has either a plastic or glass cover, or a lamp shade. And what about the fluorescent tubes in use in offices for decades?
Mercury dissolves gold but it is not a health mineral. Mercury in small doses makes people insane, in slightly larger doses it is fatal.
Every schoolkid of my age knew these simple facts in grade three. What happened?
I would use candles or a lantern with stinky kerosine before I would allow one of those killer bulbs in my house.
KevinB to get a correct TOC you need to factor in the fact that incandescent bulbs heat a home in the winter, and are turned on less in the summer when heat is not required. This is the case in northern climates like Canada’s.
Second, even if something does have a lower TOC it doesn’t mean it is worth having.
Third, the light from CFLs bulbs is awful. Stick one in front of a spectrometer if you don’t believe me.
Fourth, CFL bulbs cannot be dimmed, whereas incandescent bulbs can – this can *drastically* lower the operational cost of incandescent bulbs. Nearly every room in my home has a dimmer to lower light levels when brighter light is not required. The old bulbs also last much longer when dimmed. Indeed take a 100 W bulb and dim it to 50 W most of the time and it will last years and years and years.
Like just about everything with the green movement, CFL bulbs are mostly a fraud where the positive benefits are highly exaggerated, and the negative aspects are virtually ignored.