The law of unintended outcomes is alive and well. As soon as the government announces that it intends to ban incandescent light bulbs and replace them with Compact Fluorescent Lamps (to save the planet, don't you know) the stories start to come out about the dangers of these bulbs.
It looks as if the government will end up being complicit in poisoning its own citizens in its reckless pursuit of environmental redemption. We now have a warning (Hat tip:NZ Conservative) from the Fire Service. When the bulbs get to flickering, we are being advised to replace them because it seems as though they might be causing fires. Now that is bad enough. But it gets worse. It turns out that these little environmental saviours are particularly fragile. Why is that a problem, you ask? Because they contain mercury, as we have posted before. Once broken, the mercury is released.
So, the bulbs contain a noxious poison, and they are fragile. Sounds like a winning combination--just the sort of thing a bunch of environmental bureaucrats would seize upon to save the plant. Maybe it is all part of a clever plan to kill off people, which would be the ultimate environmentally friendly act.
Meanwhile, (Hat Tip: The Briefing Room) WorldNetDaily--that despicable oxymoronic right wing news outlet--has come out with a piece even more alarmist. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has studied the effects of broken CFL's and concluded that a broken CFL can spike mercury vapour in a room to 300 times the recommended safety level (as stipulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.) Now, we don't know about you, but that seems to be getting a bit "up there." The concentration of mercury vapours is particularly dense at lower levels in the room--sort of the level a child would be at.
Brown University, a prestigious Ivy League institution, has also published research, the findings of which confirm the Maine Study. So, a private sector and a public sector institution appear in agreement on this one. This has led the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to warn that, "Breaking a fluorescent bulb sends mercury vapor levels to unsafe levels for the elderly, pregnant and young – and those levels remain elevated for days."
The research project in Maine also found amazing variation in mercury concentrations within CFL bulbs. The official received wisdom is that a bulb contains (only!) 5mg of mercury. Of the bulbs tested, the range was from 0.9mg to 18mg! Unborn children, young children and the aged are particularly vulnerable to this noxious poison. The Maine study reported:
It is well established that the developing organism may be much more sensitive than the adult to neurotoxic agents. For example, methylmercury exposure can produce devastating effects in the fetus, including cerebral palsy, blindness, deafness, and even death, while producing no or minimal effects in the mother.The fact that these fragile bulbs are to be put in homes by force represents a quadruple jeopardy: mercury levels are far too high to begin with; the mercury is in vapourised form; the bulbs are fragile; and the poison of a broken bulb will vapourise in a concentrated living space where the young and the elderly are particularly at risk, leading to it being in-breathed. Remember, once mercury is in the system it never leaves, but builds up and "works" for a lifetime.
Infants and toddlers also have a much higher rate of respiration than adults. Therefore they have a higher exposure to similar concentrations. They also are lower to the floor and therefore closer to the source of the exposure and presumably more apt to obtain a concentrated dose of mercury.
Elderly and unhealthy individuals may already be at comprised health and be more susceptible to mercury effects than a healthy individual. For example, mercury does kidney damage which could exacerbate an already existing kidney disease.
We believe it is time for some questions to be asked in Parliament along the lines of whether there is any truth to the rumours that government wants to poison the people, or will it be merely one more unintended consequence. Stop the megalomaniac madness that is leading you to rush into solutions that increasingly appear to have the potential to cause far greater harm. Do some more real work, instead of the normal, "Trust us, we know best" lunacy.
At the very least, make sure that there are large print health warnings in place on the packaging of CFL bulbs. Where is Sue Kedgley when you need her? Oh, yes, that's right. We forgot. She is an ardent advocate of these poison pills. Oh, well, we guess that it is a small price to pay for saving the planet--as long as someone else pays. Good one, Sue.
4 comments:
This whole debate is ironic. Environmentalists playing down the dangers of mercury to children and pregnant mothers.
Yup, ironic indeed. What's a bit of mercury in the body when we are saving the planet!
Politics is all about perception not reality. When the government had to chose between reducing the road toll or getting tough or the nuisance caused by boy racers and being seen to be doing something about Auckland's traffic congestion they naturally chose to do the latter, apparently believing (correctly) that taking down the speed camera signs and bringing back the black-and-whites would keep the public happy.
The difference between doing what the National Road Safety Committee wanted and what the focus groups wanted is a road toll that has barely fallen below 400 rather than falling below 120. The lowest on record rather then merely the lowest since the 1960s. Lower even than the number of travellers drowned in rivers and streams in the late 1860s.
Hi, Kevyn
Are you are suggesting that the announced government ban upon CFL bulbs is a mere marketing ploy designed to symbolise combat against supposed anthropogenic global warming? Are you implying that the ban does not emanate from rational scientific investigation?
Every government policy produces side-effects, most of them unwanted and unpalatable. Deciding upon policy includes the art of measuring what set of unwanted side-effects the electorate will be prepared to live with.
Personally, we are not prepared to live with the risk of mercury poisoning our children. That's because we are responsible parents, unlike Sue Bradford, Helen Clarke and their acolytes.
If the ban goes ahead, we are contemplating going into the illicit incandescent light bulb business. The market will likely be huge, and the margins high. It will be the days of Prohibition all over again.
When a government is relentlessly stupid, fortunes can sometimes be made.
JT
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