I have been trying to read a decades old German paper on radioactive salts, and reading German always makes me tired and gives me a headache (This is why the second part of my multi-part diary on "Death, Faith, Eternity and the Amtrak Subsidy" - with which this diary has nothing to do - is taking so long to write.)
Rather than continue with my head splitting to read about these salts, I think I'll take a break and write, briefly, about a subject we all love, compact fluorescent light bulbs.
I have written a diary here before trying to pin down whether CFL's actually save dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping, but focused on the dangerous fossil fuel waste, carbon dioxide. That diary was called:
Um, My Compact Fluorescent Bulb Is Hot. (Places and Times NOT to Conserve Electricity.)
Just now, while goofing off, I came a across a paper from some Yale types addressing the implications of compact fluorescent bulbs on another type of dangerous fossil fuel waste, that being mercury.
(And speaking of mercury, will someone please tell me that the anti-science dangerous natural gas promotion machine mystic RFK Jr. is no longer under consideration at EPA?)
It has long seemed to me that the average output of mercury found in compact fluorescent bulbs was offset by the mercury not released from burning the dangerous fossil fuel coal, which is the chief source, by far, no matter what the dumbell RFK Jr. has to say, of mercury in human flesh and in the environment as a whole.
According to the Yalies, this statement is, as I showed in the case of carbon dioxide by comparing Vermont and New Jersey in winter, true not in general, but depends strongly on where you live.
The article in question is called "Spatial Assessment of Net Mercury
Emissions from the Use of Fluorescent Bulbs," and the Yalies who wrote it are Matthew J. Eckelman, Paul T. Anastas, and Julie B. Zimmerman and the paper in question is Environ. Sci. Technol., 2008, 42 (22), 8564-8570.
Quoth the Yalies:
When fluorescent bulbs were first produced at the turn of the 20th century, there were already warnings from the medical community about mercury’s effect on human health. Mercury exposure, depending on its form, can lead to a variety of health effects including neurological damage, particularly during fetal and child development. While the use of mercury containing fluorescent bulbs has increased greatly over the past 80 years, especially in commercial and industrial establishments, global mercury emissions have been historically dominated by industries such as chlor-alkali production, electrical switching, waste combustion, and coal combustion for heat and electric power. With the introduction of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) in the 1970s, however, and the technology’s recent and growing penetration into the residential market, concerns about exposure to mercury from shattered and discarded spent bulbs has garnered increasing attention. It is anticipated that the residential market will continue to grow due to government policies, rising electricity costs, "green purchasing" trends, and advertising campaigns...
The good news the authors tell us a little further in the paper is that a CFL uses only about 4 or 5 mg of mercury, compared to about 85 mg of mercury in the compact bulbs of the 1980's.
They tell us that about 700 million fluorescent bulbs are discarded each year, and that the best estimates of the escape into the environment over the long term of the mercury contained in them range between 6.6% and 30% but that they regard the most accurate figure as being 13%, roughly.
Then quoth the authors:
Nearly all (99%) mercury emissions from the power generation sector are a result of coal-combustion (9). This indicates that any potential reduction in mercury emissions is largely dependent on the characteristics of the coal-fired power sector and the specific coal being used for energy generation. Previous research into net mercury emissions from fluorescent bulbs has focused simply on the percentage of coal in the mix of electricity generation; however, other important factors include the quality and mercury content of the coal, the level of coal precleaning, power plant thermal efficiencies, electricity imports/exports, and any mercury control technologies that are utilized.
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Then there's a lot of science talk about which the average reader couldn't care less - particularly if one has joined Greenpeace or the NRDC and is strictly contemptuous of science - and finally some conclusions.
Let's kind of cut to the chase. I need to get back to work.
Where you increase your mercury and where you decrease your mercury emissions depends on where you live:
For the United States, the greatest reduction in emissions occurs in North Dakota, West Virginia, and New Mexico, all of which derive more than 85% of their electricity from coal. Interestingly, both Indiana and Wyoming use a higher percentage of coal and yet the reductions in those states is approximately half of that of New Mexico’s. This is due primarily to differences in coal quality and mercury content, precombustion treatment of coal, and the use of pollution control technology. There are several states where marginal increases in the use of CFLs will result in increased atmospheric mercury emissions, namely Alaska, California, Oregon, Idaho, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island. All of these states use little coal for electricity production, with the notable exception of New Hampshire (18.3%), which has a fairly low input mercury emissions rate for its coal (39).
In New Jersey, where I live, there is a marginal reduction, between 0.01 mg and 5 mg per CFL bulb, so I'm keeping mine and will replace them when they burn out.
New Jersey, by the way, is a mercury hotspot because stupid anti-nukes have worked to prevent the replacement of Midwestern coal plants in Ohio, Kentucky, W. Va and Indiana with nuclear plants and we are downwind of all those waste machines.
Of all the states where mercury dumping is actually increased by using CFL's, only one of them, Vermont, is carbon neutral in producing electricity. This is because 70% of Vermont's electricity comes from a nuclear plant and the rest from hydroelectric.
I note with contempt and disgust, that stupid people who are completely devoid of even a shred of knowledge and insight, whose risk assessment skills are zero, whose ability to think is zero, are trying to destroy, out of total and complete ignorance the nuclear infrastructure of Vermont.
These anti-science type are the same types of cretins who oppose one of humanity's greatest health successes, stuff like the elimination of smallpox and polio, vaccines, because they were never, in their useless yuppie lives, able to handle the contents of a science class.