Thursday, January 17, 2008

Mercury in CFL Bulbs

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How Much Mercury?

There has been a bit of hoopla recently by some critics of the CFL bulb about the "dangers" of CFL bulbs because of the mercury in them. To put the matter into some perspective, I have a list of common items which contain mercury and, as you will see, they all contain many more times mercury than a CFL bulb.

A single CFL bulb has approximately 5 milligrams of mercury.

One tiny watch type battery has 25 milligrams or 5 CFL bulbs worth of mercury. How many tens of thousands of these are disgarded every day??

Perhaps right in your mouth, your dental fillings of the older type have 500 milligrams or 100 CFL bulbs worth of mercury - per filling.

Home thermometers have between 500 milligrams and 2 grams or between 100 and 400 CFL bulbs worth of mercury.


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1 comment:

James said...

Tony this is great blogging and just another example of why I, for one, nominated your blog in the specialist category of the Irish Blogging Awards. Please keep up the great coverage.