I’ve just read an article at the Canadian Financial Post entitled The CFL mercury nightmare which is just one way of highlighting the environmental mess we’re in on this planet.

On the one hand, we know that standard, incandescent light bulbs are not as energy efficient as they could be. Greenpeace say that they are 95% inefficient, and it’s clear that they don’t like them very much.

They, alongside others, would like us to switch to low energy (“energy efficient”) compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

The problem here is that they contain mercury, and so not only require specialist disposal (though I wonder how many consumers realise this, and simply throw them away at the end of their long life, to be consigned to leak mercury into landfill sites) but are a potential hazard in the home:

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

The trouble is, traditional methods of power generation such as coal burning power stations also generate mercury. It’s just that this isn’t directly linked to the home.

So is it worth the risk to personal health using energy efficient light bulbs, or should governments be looking to generate enough ‘green’ sustainable energy to power less efficient, but arguably safer, traditional light bulbs?

We can all improve our energy efficiency, but light bulbs aren’t even the biggest culprits. Leaving equipment on standby, using inefficient home appliances, and simply being selfish in overusing resources, are much bigger factors in the human-led environmental carnage.

Aren’t they?

The article suggests that environmentalists are effectively encouraging us to put more toxic chemicals in our homes for the sake of saving some electricity.

That’s very simplistic, and there are all manner of hazardous chemicals and substances that enter and live in most of our homes every day, but it is an interesting thought, and one that hadn’t really crossed my mind before.

I knew that these CFL bulbs were efficient, and we use them wherever we can, but I hadn’t appreciated what was in them.

Surely proof that we’re getting into such an environmental mess that some of the actions we take that are supposed to help the environment simply refocus the problem, rather than solving it.

Catch 22.

Update (28th July 2008): Here’s an interesting interview with City University of Hong Kong’s professor Ron Hui, chairman of the electronic engineering department, who talks about the poor lifetime and environmental impact of electronic CFLs, and how we should really switch to magnetic CFLs, which can be recycled and last longer. The mercury issue is again raised.