Did You Know? – CFLs, Mercury and Coal: The Big Picture

Did You Know? – CFLs, Mercury and Coal: The Big Picture

(written by Steve Lavender on behalf of the Sustainability Team for the Nov 18th FORUM.)

CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lamps), the spiral lighting source that's rapidly replacing incandescent bulbs are a great way to reduce electrical costs in your home or office. Occasionally, concerns are voiced about the mercury contained in each CFL. To get the facts, I consulted a favorite technical publication, Popular Mechanics magazine. Here's what I discovered:

v       In order to generate light, each CFL is produced with an average of 5 milligrams of mercury. Five milligrams is just enough to cover a ballpoint pen tip.

v       By comparison, the traditional oral thermometer that may still be hiding in your medicine chest contains 500-600 milligrams of mercury.

v       Since CFLs use only about 25% as much energy as their incandescent counterparts, using CFLs reduces the amount of electricity you consume and therefore the amount of electricity our power plants must produce.

v       In Michigan, about 2/3 of our electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants. Mercury naturally contained in the coal is released when it burns. Reducing the demand for power through efficiencies such as CFLs means less coal is burned, reducing mercury emissions.

v       Replacing just one 75 watt incandescent bulb with a 20 watt CFL (they produce the same amount of light) will reduce mercury emissions over the CFLs' lifetime by almost 10 milligrams.

So what's the point behind these numbers? The emissions from coal fired power plants are a much greater hazard than any CFL. Incandescent bulbs prompt the release of almost 4 times as much mercury into the environment from coal fired power plants as do CFLs. That incandescent bulb is the "smoker" in the room and all of us are ingesting the toxins in the power plant produced second hand smoke. Look at the big picture. CFLs, with their minute level of mercury safely enclosed within the lighting tube actually reduce the level of mercury that all living objects, including humans continually ingest from power plant emissions. DTE's Monroe Power Plant, a coal fired facility, released 614 pounds of mercury into the environment in 2010. It's only 31 miles from St. Francis as the wind blows. Help reduce the emissions - use the CFLs!

Join your fellow parishioners as we build a Sustainability Project here at St. Francis.   Contact Scott Wright (734-821-2121).
www.stfrancisa2.com/sustainability