[Announce] lights - where best to recycle round flourescents?

[Andy Arthur]

Several years back I worked at the office of a major environmental
consulting firm so I have a good working knowledge of the dangers of
asbestos, lead, mercury, and other toxins in the construction industry.
Simply said, what Jim Travers is saying is misleading and based on junk
science at best.

On Sat, 2007-07-14 at 16:30 -0700, James Travers wrote:


> For safety's sake, I recommend that you only purchase those with the
> protective plastic 'bulb'. 
>  
> If you drop the exposed type and it breaks you will be releasing its
> mercury into your immediate environment. 


Less then 4 mg of mercury that is.  In many urban environments after a
few hours of exposure, your likely to find levels far exceeding that in
the air. There is a lot of mercury out there, that we are constantly
breathing in and absorbing into our skin. To make matters worst, methyl
mercury formed through air pollution cooked under hot summer weather is
far more toxic then elemental mercury in florescent bulbs.


> <big snip> 
> While this may sound a bit excessive, it is safest thing that you can
> do. Unless you have spare remnants remaining from when you first had
> your carpet installed that you can use to repair the hole in your
> carpet, you will have to replace your carpet.


That is excessive, particularly when we are putting something like 500
tons of mercury -- which becomes methyl mercury and is far more toxic --
into our atmosphere globally every year by burning coal and other fossil
fuels. If you were talking about dimethyl-mercury and not elemental
mercury, such steps would make sense, as that stuff can kill you on
touch. Fortunately, dimethyl-mercury is very rare.


> The lawful proceedure is to call in a hazmat team, but doing this will
> cost you many thousands of dollars, seriously, and you will still have
> to pay the cost to replace your carpet afterward. You may even have to
> evacuate your home while the removal and clean up takes place. 


That is not true at all. Spills of mercury less then one pound are not
reportable under state or federal law. 


> God forbid that they find asbestos while in your home. If they do, you
> might as well abandon your home altogether, seeing that they've now
> declared all your furnishings contaminated. 


Again, not true. The removal and disposal of asbestos in private
households by owners is completely unregulated in New York State. There
is no requirement to wear respirators or put up barriers if you are
doing it yourself as a homeowner.  If you have a contractor come in and
do the work on asbestos containing materials, then they are regulated
with the abatement of asbestos to protect worker safety. Other states
have different rules.

Asbestos regulations mostly exist to make people wealthy and to a lesser
extent to protect workers. Plenty of workers were injured by applying
friable crodolite or blue asbestos in enclosed spaces prior to the
mid-1970s, but that was largely due to prolonged exposures of crodolite
in closed places. Asbestos is not nearly as dangerous in areas where
there is plenty of air to dilute down fiber concentrations. When is the
last time you saw a roofer or auto-mechanic wearing protections from the
asbestos fibers they are exposed to everyday? It should be noted that
Canada doesn't regulate asbestos at all, except for miners and in
enclosed application.

You can go to your local hardware store and find probably dozen chalks
and chemicals containing white chrysotile asbestos. New product designs
containing asbestos are prohibited by federal law, but existing product
applications are generally permitted for sale by the EPA unless they are
readily friable. People pay millions of dollars to remove tile attached
to floors by asbestos mastic, only to put new tiles down with new
asbestos mastic. 

How much asbestos do you have in your house? If you have a house built
prior to 1976, then most likely the floor tiles are 8" and contain
around 33% or more asbestos. The mastic that sticks the tiles to the
floor contain asbestos, as do the chalks around the windows, and the
shingles on the roof of your house.  Of course, if your doing an
asbestos audit, federal regulations exempt asbestos applied post-1976 as
that asbestos is considered less harmful -- as that when blue asbestos
was banned.



> Here's a story that was published back in April that documents one
> woman's nightmare she experienced when she dropped a CFL in her
> daughter's bedroom 


Sob stories are not good grounds for policy-making, particularly when
they are infrequent and unconfirmed. 


> One thing we can do locally is to see to it that an ordinance is
> passed outlawing the use of the exposed unprotected type of compact
> fluorescent bulb within Albany City limits and maybe statewide.


In contrast, any attempt to discourage the use of energy efficient
lighting is bad policy. The few milligrams of mercury is small compared
to the massive amounts of resources that it takes to make energy. Over
the five year plus life of florescent lamps, the 45-75 watts saved per
bulb per hour, reduces the amount of coal burned enough to actually
exceed the amount of mercury in these bulbs by quite a large amount.

If we are serious about cutting down the amount of mercury in the
environment, then we have seriously think about how we generate and use
electricity, along with the use of other resources. That said, cheap
power promotes business and creates jobs -- witness how Ohio has a much
stronger industrial base then New York today. Ohio charges customers, on
average, half as much as New York State for electricity, but they also
burn significantly more coal in old plants then we do in New York. 



-- 
Andy Arthur / andy at nycowboy.org / 518-797-3149 / www.newyorkcowboy.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://nodumpinthepinebush.org/pipermail/announce_nodumpinthepinebush.org/attachments/20070716/1c5ec4a9/attachment.html