Source: http://www.defendingthetruth.com/topic/15052-the-great-cfl-light-bulb-scam/
Lie # 2 – CFLs are better for the environment. Fact: This is a complete lie backed up by no facts. They claim that power plants create up to 4 times the mercury to light an incandescent light. That sounds like a number pulled out of thin air just like all the cooked books to sell us on global warming.
How can that be when these bulbs don’t last much longer? The truth is these bulbs are a 1,000 times worse for the environment because of the mercury gas they contain. These bulbs will emit mercury gas thereby contaminating a person with the second most toxic heavy metal known to man and they will contaminate the earth with mercury on a scale unseen in human history.
They say “be careful of the mercury inside the bulb and if you accidentally break one be sure to open the windows and use gloves to pick up the pieces.” How many people will do that? Duh! Billions of people all over the world will be dumping their burned out CFLs in the garbage which will contaminate the landscape of the earth with mercury.
According to mercury expert John Moore in a story published in Crusador: “The new long-life, low-energy fluorescent light bulb that is in the marketplace is a mercury light bulb. What makes fluorescents work is that you put a coating on the inside of the bulb, then you put mercury in it, then you activate the mercury and it lights the tube.
Unfortunately, over time the mercury escapes through the glass. The mercury cannot be contained; it will pass through the glass. Mercury will dissolve all but 3 metals: iron, platinum, and nickel according to the chemistry handbook that is used at universities. It’s an unbelievable material. Mercury is also the only metal that goes from a liquid to a vapor form, and it starts doing that at 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. It’s really the genie out of the bottle.”
…in the near future you won’t even be able to buy an old light bulb. That means that every single human being will be exposed to mercury vapor off-gassing from these bulbs. It also means that this mercury will seep into vital waterways worldwide as landfills get piled up with burned out CFL bulbs.
To begin with,
CFL mercury, is indeed a much bigger problem than any incandescent related coal
power plant mercury release
The coal plant argument keeps doing the rounds,
but USA EPA administration themselves are not now pursuing that
argument (whatever about old diagrams floating around), following the
90% mercury emission reduction mandate under Lisa Jackson.
It never was true anyway, for the extensive referenced reasons here:
http://ceolas.net/#li198x
(Of course, to the user, a broken bulb in the home is a likely greater
worry than a distant chimney emission release anyway, again with
reference to EPA in their clean-up mandates)
Moreover,
as for mercury vapor passing through the glass,
the counter-argument that”mercury (also) gets deposited inside the glass and is thus not available for release into the atmosphere”” does has some truth in it,
but it does not change the environmental perspective overall:
That is, breaking an older CFL bulb is less dangerous in vapor release than a new bulb,
since some of the mercury content gets deposited on the bulb wall.
However, two points here:
Firstly, it also relates to the greater inefficiency of older CFLs, giving out less light for the electricity used – there is no free lunch.
But also, as regards a dumped broken bulb (and that many bulbs are dumped rather than recycled), the mercury then simply leeches into the soil instead of being released into the atmosphere (for references etc see previous comment link)