Great, just great. Don’t get me wrong, I like the LED bulbs, I have several in my house. But when we get back to basics, a tungsten light bulb doesn’t require a haz-mat squad to dispose of. It’s glass, ceramic, tungsten, some thin steel, and tin solder (if ROHS). CFL bulbs and now LED bulbs are so much more eco unfriendly and when they inevitably end up in landfills, they become a source of heavy metal. We may have gained short term energy efficiency, but the long term payback may not be worth it.
LED products billed as eco-friendly contain toxic metals, study finds
UC researchers tested holiday bulbs, traffic lights and car beams
From UC Irvine:
Those light-emitting diodes marketed as safe, environmentally preferable alternatives to traditional lightbulbs actually contain lead, arsenic and a dozen other potentially hazardous substances, according to newly published research.
“LEDs are touted as the next generation of lighting. But as we try to find better products that do not deplete energy resources or contribute to global warming, we have to be vigilant about the toxicity hazards of those marketed as replacements,” said Oladele Ogunseitan, chair of UC Irvine’s Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention.
He and fellow scientists at UCI and UC Davis crunched, leached and measured the tiny, multicolored lightbulbs sold in Christmas strands; red, yellow and green traffic lights; and automobile headlights and brake lights. Their findings? Low-intensity red lights contained up to eight times the amount of lead allowed under California law, but in general, high-intensity, brighter bulbs had more contaminants than lower ones. White bulbs copntained the least lead, but had high levels of nickel.
“We find the low-intensity red LEDs exhibit significant cancer and noncancer potentials due to the high content of arsenic and lead,” the team wrote in the January 2011 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, referring to the holiday lights. Results from the larger lighting products will be published later, but according to Ogunseitan, “it’s more of the same.”
Lead, arsenic and many additional metals discovered in the bulbs or their related parts have been linked in hundreds of studies to different cancers, neurological damage, kidney disease, hypertension, skin rashes and other illnesses. The copper used in some LEDs also poses an ecological threat to fish, rivers and lakes.
Ogunseitan said that breaking a single light and breathing fumes would not automatically cause cancer, but could be a tipping point on top of chronic exposure to another carcinogen. And – noting that lead tastes sweet – he warned that small children could be harmed if they mistake the bright lights for candy.
Risks are present in all parts of the lights and at every stage during production, use and disposal, the study found. Consumers, manufacturers and first responders to accident scenes ought to be aware of this, Ogunseitan said. When bulbs break at home, residents should sweep them up with a special broom while wearing gloves and a mask, he advised. Crews dispatched to clean up car crashes or broken traffic fixtures should don protective gear and handle the material as hazardous waste. Currently, LEDs are not classified as toxic and are disposed of in regular landfills. Ogunseitan has forwarded the study results to California and federal health regulators.
He cites LEDs as a perfect example of the need to mandate product replacement testing. The diodes are widely hailed as safer than compact fluorescent bulbs, which contain dangerous mercury. But, he said, they weren’t properly tested for potential environmental health impacts before being marketed as the preferred alternative to inefficient incandescent bulbs, now being phased out under California law. A long-planned state regulation originally set to take effect Jan. 1 would have required advance testing of such replacement products. But it was opposed by industry groups, a less stringent version was substituted, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger placed the law on hold days before he left office.
“I’m frustrated, but the work continues,” said Ogunseitan, a member of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control’s Green Ribbon Science Panel. He said makers of LEDs and other items could easily reduce chemical concentrations or redesign them with truly safer materials. “Every day we don’t have a law that says you cannot replace an unsafe product with another unsafe product, we’re putting people’s lives at risk,” he said. “And it’s a preventable risk.”
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@WUWT
> CFL’s … and now LED bulbs are so much more eco unfriendly and when they
> inevitably end up in landfills, they become a source of heavy metal.
What is this? Yes, CFL’s are nasty little polluters. I don’t buy them anymore. But you’re castigating LED’s? By association with CFL’s? They’re made of tiny bits of silicon (‘sand’), with only nanoscopic levels of other ‘dopants’, encased in plastic.
Perhaps I’m missing something here. Have you any evidence that LED’s are chemically or environmentally harmful?
@ur momisugly Peter 4:04 am
LEDs for household lighting are not considered safety critical or high reliability applications. That is generally reserved for things like military and aerospace.
Calvi36
“In my country, why not build more hydro-electric dams, god knows we have enough water!”
Because the enviro-socialist-zombie-hippies saw fit to make policy sure to ban further building of dams for fear of potentially destroying sensitive local environment in and around river systems. Which I believe was the product of the hair brained argument that the current life in and around the rivers might not be able to adapt. The logic being that just because the rivers already having dams went right ahead to start teaming with life at the moment of its creation might not be true for a new dam. The so called precautionary principle or what ever.
Of course one has to assume that plastering acres upon acres with solar panels are absolutely the bestest thing ever for the local environment what with all them critters now can spend time in the shade of crazed hippie ingenuity. And of course assume that millions of wind mills are the pillars of creation of the new green world less the avionic capable soup ingredients formerly known as birds. (Mosquitos +1.)
Seen in one of our local supermarkets in the UK recently:
Tungsten lamps (basically banned – but stockists are allowed to use up stock): 25p each.
CFLs: 10p each – and there was a HUGE binful..!
Question: What’s going to happen when the retailers collectively decide that it isn’t worth the retail space trying to flog CFLs any more, and they all finish up in landfill..?
Henry@calvi36
Yes, I noticed the profits. We have a state owned energy company, which I think is better as they are more non profit orientated, We had a shortage of electricity some time ago due to bad planning in the past. We were asked to change the bulbs (which most of us did) but I am sure that this did not save all that much. They then decided to subsidise solar geyser installations. Like I said, after installing a solar geyser my consumption of electricity went down by 40%. I still have back up normal electricity for the days when there is no sun. (geyser switches on automatically if water gets too cold)
Visiting LA now, which has so mch sunshne. I am puzzled that no one here has solar geysers?
Likw I said, we all know global warming is a hoax but it still costs money to make energy so it is still better if we can save energy.
@ur momisugly Angry Exile – Off the top of my head Halogen bulbs use Xenon gas, which is a trace component of the atmosphere, so shouldn’t pose any health problems. As stated above they should not be dimmed as the metal lost from the filament during use is re-deposited by this chemical reaction. Because of the higher temperatures involved the filament is contained in a quartz capsule, so the production process is invariably more complex and costly. This must affect the “Eco” aspect in a negative way. Another thing that bothers me is the orientation of the filament. Conventional bulbs have this at right angles to the cap, and so a good proportion of the light is radiated downwards where it’s most needed. Halogen bulbs usually have the filament vertical, and so most of the light gets sent to the walls, not down. The same applies to CFL’s, which may go some way to explaining peoples complaints about comparisons with conventional bulbs.
I’ve just found this site which has more details:
http://www.sylvania.com/ConsumerProducts/AutomotiveLighting/Products/Halogen/HowHalogenWorks.htm
@ur momisugly Bill Thomson at 3:49 am – Halogen bulbs are not intended to be used with dimmers. They need to run hot.
Interesting. They’re being marketed here as suitable for dimmers, and I’ve not found a dimmer friendly CFL in the usual places. Since I’ve finally run out of my carefully hoarded stock of regular incandescents these seem to be the only alternative. A bit of dodgy marketing? Or they know that technically they’ll work (they do) but maybe not last as long?
Fortunately, rough service bulbs are exempt from the ban.
I don’t mind using LEDs or CFLs in the right situation, but incandescent bulbs in my opinion give off a better quality light. My main objection to the light bulb ban is that the government is writing laws arbitrarily to regulate something and not letting the free market work. If CFLs and LEDs are superior, they will win the day in the marketplace, just as iPods have replaced CDs, not because someone wrote a law banning CDs but because the new technology was superior. Likewise, no one wrote a law banning 35mm film…the list goes on.
Let individuals decide what’s best for their needs…
I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with Lazy Teenager (LazyTeenager says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:38 pm), but what he (she) said – utter rubbish. I suggest that you will be safe as long as you don’t grind them up in quantity and ingest them.
As for kids, I suspect there is a far higher likelihood of choking on individual LEDs than of being affected by the toxins, or of being strangled by getting caught in a string of Christmas lights.
When will people be given the knowledge to judge the scale of any potential hazard? The toxins in LEDs, especially arsenic, are present in microscopic quantities and it is debatable whether they could be separated from the silicon matrix which they are doping by a digestive system.
End of rant, now to something much more practical.
A word of warning for people planning to replace low voltage halogen lights (MR11/MR16) with LED versions. I had problems with early failure which the supplier said was due to using the electronic transformer designed for halogen lamps. This produces high frequency AC (40kHz or so, I think) with poor voltage regulation, which apparently those LED lamps didn’t like. You need to get get transformers designed for LED illumination, or use a conventional 12V transformer which supplies AC at mains frequency.
I have LEDs lamps supplied using both types and the only problem I have observed is that those lights using dense matrices of conventional LEDs (72 LEDs packed into a MR16 bulb) is loss of some of the LEDs. Research suggests that this is due to overheating rather than supply effects.
Mains powered LED lights (usually GU10 packaging) do not suffer from supply related effects.
Power consumption in my kitchen has dropped from 300watts to about 30watts, and with typical usage of 7 or 8 hours a day we have savings over a year of around £100. Exterior lighting is now left on permanently during darkness, the PIR sensor now being unnecessary as the light is directional rather than flood (so doesn’t annoy the neighbours) and the power consumption is just a few watts.
Diodes could have other uses, as many of them emit a laser like light of a single wavelength. Sun´s light is mainly a Calcium wavelength light, a warm yellow.
At the end of the day it´s all about business….but , at the end of the day, any kind of bulbs will be manufactured in China 🙂
@ur momisugly Dave Ward at 4:51 am – thanks for that info. The bulbs I’m using are these:
http://www.mirabella.com.au/products-energy-savers.html?Itemid=49&product=7 (better picture of the packaging at http://dicksmith.com.au/product/S8511/halogen-gls-42w-es-clear-energy-globe)
Your thoughts? As I said above, since normal incandescents are banned and I’ve run out of spares I just went for what said dimmable on the box. Is a false claim being made here or might it be just that they’re less than ideal for dimmers? Or might the manufacturer found a solution?
@M.A.DeLuca says:
February 10, 2011 at 8:47 pm
Wait. What?
Except for the anode and cathode, the guts of an LED are encased in a thick layer of plastic.
Plastic, huh? Plastic is made from fossil fuels. Isn’t that bad? Raping mother earth, all that Co2 released during plastic manufacture, etc. just so we terrible humans can light the night. For shame. 😉
@Bill Thompson 4:26am
I was talking about leaded solder, not LEDs
There seems to be some confusion here.
I agree with the restoration of incandescent bulbs.
However, it is not LED (light emitting diode) lights that are the problem, it is CFL’s (compact fluorescent lights) containing mercury that are the danger.
The CFL’s often have a much shorter life than claimed, are relatively expensive, warm up times become progressively longer, some explode, and all release mercury after breakage of the glass.
In true Greenie fashion/ignorance, their “solution” poses a much greater threat than any supposed problem they claim to cure.
I agree with several others questioning this article. While CFLs may have a significant toxicity problem due to mercury vapor being released when they break, this article is about LEDs.
How easy is it to break an LED in such a way that the trace amounts of toxins are released? I can’t see that happening short of someone deliberately using a hammer on them. Even the compactors in the garbage trucks wouldn’t break them.
Seeing as the Gov’t evidently has decided that lead isn’t dangerous, I suppose we can bring back lead paint? /sarc
Or maybe it’s really a plot to cull some of the worlds population by slowly poisioning us? After all, wouldn’t the world be a better place without humans? We could let mother nature start the evolutionary process again and maybe humans would turn out better? /sarc again
Sorry, I just can’t seem to help myslef……. I wonder how many CFL’s AlGore has in his McMansions? You know the one in the San Fransisco flood plain! /damn sarc again
When will we be asking for the power plants to be turned back on. Freezing in the dark, it’s the plan.
Operability in winter? In climes subject to freezing, or, where record cold is experienced e.g. Oklahoma and Texas, and as a result, burst pipes have become a common occurrence … so, what are the operational difficulties considering tap water freezes on the order of 0 deg C?
Do these systems incorporate a separate loop (utilizing antifreeze for instance) for exposure to the outside elements? Now, the risk for contamination presents itself due to corrosion in the antifreeze heat-exchanger to the tap water side (leaking into the supply-side water as well!)
Or do these systems incorporate additional automatic valving for the water (and the additional expense) to drain (into a provided drain in the system) the solar-exposed portion when cold temperatures are experienced?
Already the complexity is beginning to increase for the real-world environment (subzero C temps) is considered …
.
Moderators
[Fixed. Thank you, Robt]
HenryP says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Even though by now everyone who is well informed knows that global warming is a hoax, it still makes good sense to try and preserve energyy. ……. Visiting from South Africa. I am puzzled that I don’t see more solar water heating (with a solar geyser). This is stupid. You can save 40% of your electricity bill just letting the sun heat your water for the geyser. Due to to a shortage of power , our (state funded) electricity company in South Africa is giving a subsidy for every installation built. This is an idea that must be implemented worldwide, as it is a good way to spend government subsidies instead of wasting it on “climate research”.
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I agree but, of course, it depends where you are. With the present state of technology, solar is very good at producing low grade heat. Electrity no, far too inefficient; but low grade heat definitely if you are in a sunny climate. Whats more, a suitable system does not have to be high tech, you only need to make a simple heat exchanger. This is really no more than a DIY job. The larger the area of the heat exhanger, the more heat captured and produced. A suitable heat exchanger does not need to be anything more sophisticated than a series of domestic radiators painted black and situated in a sunny elevation.
I am presently making a solar heating unit for my swimming pool (the unit will cover an area of between 25 to 30 sq m). Without heating, the pool can be used from early April through to about mid October. I expect with solar heating to be able to extend the season either end by about a month. The limit is the weakness/low angle of the sun by late November through to the end of February exacerbated by the cold air temperatures in January and February which means that you get cold quickly when wet.
If you are in a sunny climate not only can it supply domestic hot water, it probably could sustain the bulk of underfloor heating in the winter (during sunny days of the winter). A concrete and tiled floor acts like a large storage heater and even if the system (on sunny days) only produces heat for about 6 hours a day, this with the residual effect of the concrete floor is probably sufficient to keep a room warm all evenning.
Of course, the system would need to be supplemented since there will many days when there is no or insufficient sun but in the right climate, a solar hot water system could probably provide about 40 to 55% of winter heating which would make a big difference to energy bills especially bearing in mind how much these are going to escalate due to green levies which energy providers are charging to their customers.
Calvi36 says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:13 pm
“Centrica, a French Company that owns British Gas has reported this:
Key Fundamentals Financials – Interim (28/7/2010)
Turnover £m 11,707
Pre-tax Profit £m 2,004
EPS p 25.78
DPS p 9.14
Now, do they look like they have to raise prices by 5-8%?”
They have a price to earnings ratio of 12, that’s entirely normal for a utility, so it doesn’t look like a rip-off. They pay a dividend of 4.5 %, again nothing outrageous.
Ultimately, this is exactly the sort of things we, as humans, need to be talking about. This is real environmentalism, and who doesn’t love the environment? Discuss, debate, talk, chat, etc., openly and fairly, in an atmosphere that is serious yet fruitful. Let go of pet theories, the convoluted and constrained attitudes, and just talk about what’s going on. After all, haven’t humans made grave errors in the past? Just because someone somewhere came up with a quick fix, well, since when do snap decisions become sacrosanct? All things should be open to debate, and I do mean all things. I’m a religious man by rearing and by nature. My religious beliefs have only become strengthened over a lifetime of testing and debate. All “scientific” men and women know this same principle can be applied to almost any belief or would-be solution. Indeed! It is the medium of innovation! Something is either true and will stand the test of time, or it is false and needs tweaking or perhaps an outright overhaul. Yes, sometimes you might truly get it right the first time, but if not… don’t get caught clinging to your phlogiston.