Sight fears over low-energy bulbs

[peakprepper]

You may be interested in reading the following article in full:

http://sound.westhost.com/articles/inca ... htm#explod

I found this article a while back, and have been seeking confirmation on some of the claims ever since.

If you read through the entire article, you will see there is more than mercury to worry about.

On a personal level, I have been to house where CFL's have been used in totally enclosed luminaires, and where upon inspection, the CFL base has been extremely discoloured.

[peakprepper]

Forgot to mention this section:

"It has to be said that the current situation is not merely intolerable, it is a disaster waiting to happen. Many people use lights (often on timers) when they are away, so that it looks like there's activity in the home. I wouldn't use any CFL as supplied for unattended use, because there is no way to know when (or how) it will fail, or what exactly will happen when it does fail. I'd be perfectly happy to use a conventional fluorescent lamp in this role, as I have never seen one "crash and burn" when it fails. Likewise, an incandescent lamp will fail silently - no smoke, fire or brimstone - they just stop working. Unattended operation may not pose a big risk, but it's something we never had to worry about before."

... in other words, we have not been using CFLs long enough to see a statistically representative sample of how they fail.

I have also stopped using CFL's on timers when out or away!

[clv101]

I can't for a moment believe it is beyond the wit of man to design a bulb to light a large room for 20W and not be fail safe.

If today's products can't do that - then legislation is exactly what we need to make it happen. Wasting another 80W is daft.

[kenneal - lagger]

WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT????

Any one would think that CFLs have only been around for a year or two. We've been using them exclusively for over thirty years and I've not got mercury poisoning and I can still see, albeit with glasses for reading, at the age of nearly 60.

We used Thorn 2D, now GE, bulbs for the first 20 years and found that the most common way of failure was by just fading away: coming second was by breakage. We've never had an explosive failure.

Since moving into the new house we have been using the two finger type bulbs, initially from Ikea, but we've found that you get what you pay for and stopped buying from there as the bulbs didn't seem to last very long: months not years. Our 2D bulbs would last at least a couple of years, often three (we always put the date on them on first installation), equivalent to at least 15k hours usage. Since putting in branded bulbs we haven't had to replace any yet.

My loss of sight is more likely to be due to sitting in front of a computer screen than sitting in a dim room reading, but if I do go blind in the near future or contract mercury poisoning I'll let you know.

[adam2]

With the approaching incandescent lamp ban, I believe that we will see a lot more anti-CFL hysteria, it might even take over from anti cellphone hysteria.As others state, the technology is now well established, as with anything you tend to get what you pay for, and very cheap lamps from unknown firms are liable to be of unknown but probably low qaulity.All reputable CFLs have the lumen output and colour temperature printed on the box, and this will be reasonably accurate in the case of lamps made by well known companies.In the case of obscure brands, often from China, such information is either absent, or misleading.The light output of a CFL is typicly roughly equivalent to an incandescent lamp of four times the power.As stated above, in general a 60 watt incandescent should be replaced with a 15 watt CFL, and pro-rata with other sizes.
The colour temperature is generaly given as a 3 digit code

827= extra warm white, similar to incandescent830=warm white, similar to halogen840=cool white860 or 865=daylight.I prefer 865, but accept that I am in a minority, most people would prefer 827 or 830.
Remember that on very cheap lamps of doubtfull origin, this information is likely to either missing or wrong.

All flourescent lamps (compact or linear) contain mercury, this is toxic, but the amounts are very small and unlikely to pose any risk unless you routinely break large numbers of lamps. The mercury should only be present as a vapour, but some cheap firms add too much mercury, in which case a droplet may also be present.

At end of life, the internal electronic ballast generaly fails, all reputable lamps contain an internal fuse to protect against excessive current or temperature when this occurs.
Cheap lamps may lack this feature, and at end of life may produce some smoke and/or enough heat to melt the plastic housing, thats a good reason to avoid the cheap lamps.

[skeptik]

What does the panel think?

The panel thinks this is the dumbest story so far this year. Haven't these people got anything better to do? If a bulb is too dim I buy a higher wattage one. End of story.

[DominicJ]

I just put 100w equivs in everything, less effort that way.
Except my loft, which is going to have 6 of the smallest.

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Edited for apparent madness
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[Jakell]

In my 'comfort' rooms I have both types. I prefer incandescant for reading with, and it's quite feasable to use both types at once. In functional areas I use purely CFL's

[Aurora]

BBC News - 29/01/09

The government has rejected claims that partially-sighted people will suffer when new low energy light bulbs are introduced across the UK.

Article continues ...

[Susukino]

I have heard that the mercury content of these is quite large. I broke one once and there was a cloud of white dust. If I break one now I will leave the room for at least half an hour

For the cold cathode fluorescent lamps used in laptops the amount of mercury used is 5mg or less but I haven't heard a precise figure for home-use CCFLs.

Suss

[2 As and a B]

This panellist thinks that charities and eyesight specialists have too much time on their hands and too few light bulbs above their heads.

[happychicken]

A light lit up by a low energy light bulb isn't as dim as a room lit up by a candle

[kenneal - lagger]

A light lit up by a low energy light bulb isn't as dim as a room lit up by a candle

How small is the CFL and how large is the candle?

[happychicken]

Apologies for the typo in what I wrote above. I meant I think a room lit up by a candle would be dimmer than a room lit up by a low energy bulb.

The way things are going at the moment with the state of the economy etc, we might be reading by candlelight. Who knows

[kenneal - lagger]

We had Christmas lit by an oil lamp and pv powered leds.