Millions of low energy light bulbs are being given away to British home occupiers. It, along with insulation, is the Government’s virtually only policy to reduce carbon emissions in households. Low energy light bulbs consume less electricity and so reduce the carbon emissions in the atmosphere. The reason why they require less energy is that they contain mercury, the molecules of which bounce around inside the low energy light bulb, enhancing the light. But we risk, while reducing our carbon footprints significantly increasing our toxic mercury footprints.
Mercury is a poison and it gets into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels and when we burn household and industrial waste. This releases around 3000 tonnes of mercury each year. A similar amount is released by natural processes from which gases flow from the earth’s crust into the oceans and atmosphere.
Once in the atmosphere it gets into watercourses by being dissolved in rainfall and other precipitation and ends up in the sea.
When mercury in rainfall reaches the land it undergoes a process known as methylation and becomes highly toxic methylmercury. Methylmercury is unfortunately easy for micro organisms at the bottom of the food chain to absorb. These micro organisms are eaten and the mercury works its way through the food chain and ends up in fish by accumulating in fish meat and being directly assimilated by the gill membranes of fish.
We all know how important fish are as part of a healthy diet. Fish contains high quality protein, very little saturated fat and is high on omega-3 fatty acids. Everyone needs these nutrients especially the young and pregnant women.
Because fish as so good at absorbing mercury, most fish contains tiny traces of mercury which does you no harm at all. However, some fish are better at absorbing mercury than others and so the US Food and Drug Administration recommends that pregnant women, nursing mothers and young children avoid four types of predatory fish, Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel and Tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury. They advise that people should eat fish twice a week and point out that shrimp, pollock, light tuna and catfish are all low in mercury and are perfectly safe.
Virtually all fish are safe to eat, unless you are very young, pregnant or nursing in which case the FDA advises avoiding just the four species I have mentioned, which do not feature on the menus of British fish and chip shops but are available in fish restaurants.
In Japan where much fish in the form of Sushi is eaten, there have been incidents of people dying as a result of eating fish over extended periods which was highly contaminated with mercury after accidental local industrial mercury discharges. In these cases the mercury levels were as high as 24 parts per million, but the FDA’s “safe” level is 1 part per million and most expert toxicologists agree that the US figure is perfectly safe with plenty of leeway, so as to speak.
FDA sampling of various species show that cod, crab and halibut all have tiny traces, which makes a meal from them perfectly safe for everyone and that catfish, flounder, hake and salmon have no mercury that can be detected.
In Australia and New Zealand the authorities, FSANZ, recommend that no more than one meal a week is eaten of swordfish, broadbill, marlin, shark and catfish and that the young and pregnant women limit their intake of these species.
Now our low energy light bulbs contain mercury and although low energy light bulbs last much longer than traditional tungsten lighting they do not last forever.
The Government has issued advice about waht to do if you break a low energy light bulb to avoid being affected by the mercury with it. You should open windows and leave the room for fifteen minutes to allow the mercury gas to escape.
However, it is important taht mercury from these millions of low energy light bulbs does not enter the atmosphere. As far as I can see most people put their used low energy light bulbs into the normal rubbish bin, where it is compacted by the collection process (releasing mercury into the air) or put into land fills where the mercury enters the watercourses.
Clearly, if we are to avoid a higher accumulation of mercury in fish in the future we need to have a process under which low energy light bulbs are recycled, the mercury in them reclaimed and reused. To do this we have to have proper low energy light bulb recycling collection and the recycling facilities.
It might be convenient to charge a deposit on a low energy light bulb, which is refundable when the bulb is taken back to the shop or to a recycling centre. Giving them away for free makes people assume that they are safe and that they are doing enough by using them, without thought as to what should happen after they are spent. Everyone is careless with things that are cheap or free, as has been demonstrated by the way in which we have used cheap energy. We will all become much more careful as energy becomes expensive. Can we get a habit of care in relation to low energy light bulbs?
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