YES. Usually if there is an upside, there is also a downside. The upside is easy to understand – you save energy by using fluorescent bulbs vs. incandescent. The downside is the mercury that fluorescent bulbs contain. Incandescent bulbs do not use mercury. Well that is not completely true – Incandescent bulbs do use mercury but in a different way. Let me explain:
How does the bulb get the energy to light up?
Our energy comes from energy plants. Nearly half of our energy comes from coal burning plants. Coal is burned at power plants to power generators; the mercury gets put into the air where it settles onto land and water. So when looking at this information both bulbs has the possibility of using mercury when used in a light fixture because they both require energy to light up.
How Much Mercury is being used when you use a bulb?
Which bulb should you use? You are going to use less mercury if you use Compact fluorescent bulbs vs. incandescent according to Wendy Reed, who manages EPA's Energy Star program. The reason they are going to use less mercury is that they use less energy than incandescent and that savings reduces the impact of mercury into the environment even though they contain mercury. If you want to read more on what Wendy Reed had to say about compact fluorescent vs. incandescent visit her interview on NPR
So someone can state that CFL’s use less mercury but where are the numbers to back this up. EnergyRace pulled the numbers. Here is what they had to say: “Start with the EPA's eGRID2006 version 2.1 which contains electricity generation and emissions data by state for the year 2004. According to the eGRID data, we generated 3.9 billion megawatts in 2004 from all US power plants and we emitted 106,041 pounds of mercury. That is 0.00002695 pounds of mercury per megawatt hour of electricity use. Let's assume the CFLs are 25 watts (100 watt incandescent equivalent) and that they are used for 6000 hours. (Manufacturer's typically rate CFLs at 6000, 8000 or 10000 hours lifetime.) 25 watts times 6000 hours times 150 million CFLs equals 22,500,000 megawatt hours of electricity. 22,500,000 MWh times 0.00002695 pounds of mercury per megawatt hour equals 606 pounds of mercury.
CFL Summary (150 million CFLs) 1,653 pounds of mercury in the bulbs. 606 pounds of mercury from the electricity to run them. 2,259 pounds of total mercury (assuming 0% CFL recycling) Incandescent Mercury Calculation Incandescent bulbs do not contain mercury so the incandescent calculation is just about the mercury that comes from the electricity used to run them. 150 million incandescent 100 watt bulbs used for 6000 hours = 90,000,000 megawatt hours of electricity. (Note that incandescent bulbs do not last anywhere near 6000 hours so to keep 150 million fixtures running for 6000 hours will take alot more than 150 million incandescent bulbs. But that is not relevant here because this is not a cost calculation but an electricity used calculation.) 90,000,000 MWh times 0.00002695 pounds of mercury per megawatt hour of electricity equals 2,425 pounds of mercury emitted.
Summary
Mercury from the CFLs and their use = 2,259 pounds
Mercury from incandescent bulb usage = 2,425 pounds Switching to CFLs reduces the mercury put into the environment by 165 pounds or 7% assuming not a single CFL gets properly recycled.”
Recycling means Even Less Mercury into the Environment:
According to the calculations from Energyrace, we do put less mercury into the environment by using CFLs and we could even put less mercury into the environment by recycling CFLs. However, recycling CFLs does take a little effort. Ikea stores and Home Depot stores are two places that you can recycle CFL bulbs. Click Here to find out where you can recycle your CFL bulbs.
A tiny amount of mercury is sealed into CFLs and is essential to their function but if disposed of properly, danger can be reduced. It is important that users start recycling CFL and in order to that there has to be more awareness and information about recycling. For most, it has to be easy to recycle CFL or it won’t get done.
More information on CFL:
According to the EPA, CFLs are much more energy-efficient than incandescent, using 2/3 less energy, lasting 10 times longer, and generating 70% less heat. If you were to use an incandescent bulb, you would have to throw away 10 bulbs to the one CFL bulb used which also means that less waste was used to actually make the CFL. So you have less waste, less energy used to make the energy saving bulbs(since there are less bulbs), and less fuel (energy used to transport the bulbs to stores).
What are the dangers of Mercury in CFL?
Mercury is a dangerous toxin. The tiny amount of mercury you're exposed to when breaking a CFL is extremely unlikely to cause any noticeable effects but you still want to minimize your risk. The symptoms to low level exposure(like breaking a dozen CFLs in your house every day for a week) could cause fatigue, memory problems, mild clumsiness, and difficulty concentrating.
What do you think?
So back to the question at hand, is there a downside to energy saving bulbs? Yes there is downside, they contain mercury. Now it is up to you to decide how terrible the downside is.
Below are some more links to what others had to say about Merury in Light Bulbs:
EarthEasy - Energy Efficient Lighting
Enviornmental Defense Blog - Mercury Poisoning from Light Bulbs?
Earth911 - Efforts Begin to Reduce Mercury Content in CFLs
EnergyRace - More on Mercury, Coal and CFLs - Updated