Banning of light bulbs

[unicorn]

I have just found out from one of my clients (being treated for electromagnetic sensitivity and light sensitivity) that the UK government is planning on passing laws to ban our common light bulbs in favour of the green economic bulbs.

Now in theory this sounds good... but it's not good news for our health as the eco light bulbs can be flourescent and are nearer the red end of the light spectrum, which is cancer-causing.

I'm meeting her next week so I'll be able to upload some info that she's gonna provide me with, as she's part of a group raising awareness of EMS that are fighting this law. Here's a couple of links if you're interested in further info. One of them is from our trusty BBC :rolleyes:

http://www.banthebulb.org/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4667354.stm

John Ott was an American that helped reduce leukemia in schools by advising them to replace the flourescent bulbs with blue-spectrum bulbs. And brought it to a greater awareness that artificial lighting can be a major factor in causing illness. :eek:

It blew me away that this insidious plan is underway... and all the greenies will think it's a move to help the ozone and slow down climate change... me not think so!!! Be(a)ware!

[whitenight639]

wow thats amazing, i often though lighing was a contributer, and who the fuck our the government to tell us what pissing lightbulbs we can and cant use!

[lookfar]

I have seen the increase in the pushing of these new bulbs lately, but didn't realise there were health implications involved with them, OMFG :eek: Yet another avenue that they're going down!:(

Thanks for sharing unicorn.

[phoebe]

Simple solution:
Just before they are phased out
All the shops will be selling the old ones dirt cheap
Just buy a lifetime supply.
:D

[unicorn]

who the fuck our the government to tell us what pissing lightbulbs we can and cant use!

I agree... on the info links it goes on about how many millions of tonnes of carbon this will save each year. Well, if this is really true, how come it's taken until 2007 for them to tell us this and to do something about it? And why make it compulsory to only have the cancer-causing bulbs available???


'It has been estimated that if every household in the US replaced just three of its incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving designs and used them for five hours per day, it would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 23 million tonnes, reduce electricity demand by the equivalent of 11 coal-fired power stations and save $1.8bn.' :rolleyes: I smell bullshit...

'If we cannot deny ourselves incandescent light bulbs, which would require minimal sacrifice, how are we ever going to do the really difficult things such as cutting our reliance on fossil fuels, buying smaller cars or reducing our use of finite natural resources?
Ending the life of this inefficient and obsolete technology is not enough to prevent damaging climate change; but it is an easy first step, and one the world should not hesitate to take. '

So why piddle around with this 'small step' instead of targeting the major pollutants of the oil/petrol/fuel/aviation/nuclear industry?? Hmmm, I wonder :p

Mr smarmy Matt Prescot... they did a good job brainwashing you.
But it don't wash with me!!

Thanks Lookfar, dolphin buddie :) :) :)

It is shocking indeed but thank heavens people are already stopping it before the law is snuck in under our noses ;)

[unicorn]

Simple solution:
Just before they are phased out
All the shops will be selling the old ones dirt cheap
Just buy a lifetime supply.

;) :) ;) :) ;) :)

[lookfar]

Simple solution:
Just before they are phased out
All the shops will be selling the old ones dirt cheap
Just buy a lifetime supply.
:D

Hehe I was thinking that too phoebe!! Although with the Codex Alimentarius getting rid of our precious alternative remedies etc, I'm gonna need a new house to store all this stuff in, lol!!:eek::D

[chris]

I'm sure the energy efficient lobby is behind this...A bit like the anti-CFC lobby banning a whole industry and recreating another with their own mould.

Also I heard these energy efficient bulbs are not as natural as tungston (sp).

[_invisibleplane_]

this is definitely bullshit, and its clear that these fluorescent bulbs give off harmful radiation. they're garbage as far as I'm concerned, even the glow they emit is very unnatural...back to candles we go

[lookfar]

this is definitely bullshit, and its clear that these fluorescent bulbs give off harmful radiation. they're garbage as far as I'm concerned, even the glow they emit is very unnatural...back to candles we go

I agree, the glow is really not nice on them, plus the fact that they're harmful!!:(

I think more people need to be made aware of the dangers involved instead of being hoodwinked by the "green/eco" aspect.

[Anders Lindman]

I agree, the glow is really not nice on them, plus the fact that they're harmful!!:(

I think more people need to be made aware of the dangers involved instead of being hoodwinked by the "green/eco" aspect.

Two years to change EU light bulbs

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=380442007

Say hello to the Orwellian bleak and sterile new light for the new century.

[ezbar]

Ok from what I understand, light emissions from an incandescent bulb are over the entire spectrum (like the sun but of course less powerful) and emissions from a fluorescent are specific bands, which excite a phosphor.

So with this knowledge in hand, what exactly is so damaging with fluorescents? Incandescent light bulbs are emitting the same bands too, just as the sun is, why is it more damaging from a fluorescent?

I may have got my assumptions wrong but thats what I understand anyway, but I am aware of other harmful aspects in the disposal of fluoros, just not in absorbing light from one.

[1 2 free]

They contain mercury gas and have to be disposed of properly. You can't just bung them in the bin. My folks have been using these for years. I told my dad about the mercury gas and he had no idea. He, just like everyone else, has been bunging them in the bin. If this is an enviromental issue then why is no one keeping the public informed on the correct disposal or these things?

Mercury toxicity

Because fluorescent lamps contain mercury, a toxic heavy metal, governmental regulations in many areas require special disposal of fluorescent lamps separate from general and household wastes. Mercury poses the greatest hazard to pregnant women, infants, and children.

Landfills often refuse fluorescent lamps due to their high mercury content. Households and commercial waste sources are often treated differently.

The amount of mercury in a standard lamp can vary dramatically, from 3 to 46 mg. [1] Newer lamps contain less mercury and the 3-4 mg versions are sold as low-mercury types. (A typical 2006-era 4 ft (120 cm) T-12 fluorescent lamp (i.e., F32T12) contains about 12 milligrams of mercury[2].)

In early 2007, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association in the US announced that "Under the voluntary commitment, effective April 15, 2007, participating manufacturers will cap the total mercury content in CFLs under 25 watts at 5 milligrams (mg) per unit. CFLs that use 25 to 40 watts of electricity will have total mercury content capped at 6 mg per unit."NEMA Voluntary Commitment on Mercury in CFLs

[edit] Cleanup of broken fluorescent lamps

Fluorescent lamp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[peachped]

Two years to change EU light bulbs

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=380442007

Say hello to the Orwellian bleak and sterile new light for the new century.

"Greenpeace hailed the summit deal as "the biggest such decision since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who chaired the summit, said: "We're not saying people should throw out all the bulbs in their house today but people should start looking at what's in the shops," she said.

However Mrs Merkel appeared to suggest she was not totally enamoured of the low-energy bulbs

. "Most of the light bulbs in my flat are energy-saving bulbs. They're not yet quite bright enough. When I'm looking for something I've dropped on the carpet, I have a bit of a problem," she said. "

Talk about an illuminati piss take they want us literally in the dark, They'll ban heating next!

[1 2 free]

Dimwits: Why 'green' lightbulbs aren't the answer to global warming

by CHRISTOPHER BOOKER


They have to be left on all the time, they're made from banned toxins and they won't work in half your household fittings. Yet Europe (and Gordon Brown) says 'green' lightbulbs must replace all our old ones.

Every day now we are being deluged with news of the latest proposals from our politicians about how to save the planet from global warming. We must have 'a new world order' to combat climate change, Gordon Brown proclaimed yesterday. We must have strict 'green' limits on air travel, proposes David Cameron, so that no one can afford to take more than one flight a year.

A fifth of all our energy must be 'green' by 2020, says the EU, even though there is no chance of such an absurd target being met. We must have 'green' homes, 'green' cars, 'green' fuel, even microchips in our rubbish bins to enforce 'green' waste disposal.

Have these politicians any longer got the faintest idea what they are talking about? Do they actually look at the hard, practical facts before they rush to compete with each other in this mad musical-chairs of gesture politics?

Take just one instance of this hysteria now sweeping our political class off its feet: that which was bannered across the Daily Mail's front page on Saturday in the headline 'EU switches off our old lightbulbs'.

This was the news that, as part of its latest package of planet-saving measures, the EU plans, within two years, to ban the sale of those traditional incandescent lightbulbs we all take for granted in our homes. Gordon Brown followed suit yesterday, saying he wanted them phased out in Britain by 2011.

No doubt the heads of government who took this decision (following the lead of Fidel Castro's dictatorship in Cuba) purred with selfcongratulation at striking such a daring blow against global warming.

After all, these 'compact fluorescent bulbs' (or CFLs), to which they want us all to switch, use supposedly only a fifth of the energy needed by the familiar tungsten-filament bulbs now to be made illegal.

Among the first to congratulate the EU's leaders was UK Green MEP Caroline Lucas, who claimed that 'banning old-fashioned lightbulbs across the EU would cut carbon emissions by around 20 million tonnes per year and save between e5 million and e8million per year in domestic fuel bills'.

Who could argue? Certainly one lot of people far from impressed by the EU's decision are all those electrical engineers who have been clutching their heads in disbelief. Did those politicians, they wondered, actually take any expert advice before indulging in this latest planet- saving gesture?

In fact, the virtues of these 'low-energy' bulbs are nothing like so wonderful as naive enthusiasts like Ms Lucas imagine them to be. Indeed in many ways, the experts warn, by banning incandescent bulbs altogether, the EU may have committed itself to an appallingly costly blunder.

It is a decision that will have a far greater impact on all our lives than most people are yet aware, presenting the UK alone with a bill which, on our Government's own figures, could be £3 billion or more.

The result will provide a quality of lighting which in many ways will be markedly less efficient. Even Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who put forward the proposal, admitted that, because the energy-saving bulbs she uses in her flat take some time to warm up, she often has 'a bit of a problem' when she is looking for something she has 'dropped on the carpet'.

But even more significantly, because they must be kept on so much longer to run efficiently, the actual amount of energy saved by these bulbs has been vastly exaggerated.

So what are the disadvantages of CFLs over the traditional bulbs we will no longer be allowed to buy? Quite apart from the fact that the CFLs are larger, much heavier and mostly much uglier than familiar bulbs - and up to 20 times more expensive - the vast majority of them give off a harsher, less pleasant light.

Because they do not produce light in a steady stream, like an incandescent bulb, but flicker 50 times a second, some who use them for reading eventually find their eyes beginning to swim - and they can make fast-moving machine parts look stationary, posing a serious safety problem.

Fluorescent CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches or electronically-triggered security lights, so these will become a thing of the past. They cannot be used in microwaves, ovens or freezers, because these are either too hot or too cold for them to function (at any temperature above 60C degrees or lower than -20C they don't work),

More seriously, because CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.

Astonishingly, according to a report on 'energy scenarios in the domestic lighting sector', carried out last year for Defra by its Market Transformation Programme, 'less than 50 per cent of the fittings installed in UK homes can currently take CFLs'. In other words, on the Government's own figures, the owners of Britain's 24 million homes will have to replace hundreds of millions of light fittings, at a cost upwards of £3billion.

In addition to this, lowenergy bulbs are much more complex to make than standard bulbs, requiring up to ten times as much energy to manufacture. Unlike standard bulbs, they use toxic materials, including mercury vapour, which the EU itself last year banned from landfill sites - which means that recycling the bulbs will itself create an enormously expensive problem.

Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically they must be kept on more or less continuously. The more they are turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life, creating a fundamental paradox, as is explained by an Australian electrical expert Rod Elliott (whose Elliott Sound Products website provides as good a technical analysis of the disadvantages of CFLs as any on the internet).

If people continue switching their lights on and off when needed, as Mr Elliott puts it, they will find that their 'green' bulbs have a much shorter life than promised, thus triggering a consumer backlash from those who think they have been fooled.

But if they keep their lights on all the time to maximise their life, CFLs can end up using almost as much electricity from power stations (creating CO2 emissions) as incandescent bulbs - thus cancelling out their one supposed advantage.

In other words, in every possible way this looks like a classic example of kneejerk politics, imposed on us not by our elected Parliament after full consultation and debate, but simply on the whim of 27 politicians sitting around that table in Brussels, not one of whom could have made an informed speech about the pluses and minuses of what they were proposing.

Even if it does have the effect of reducing CO2 emissions, those reductions will be utterly insignificant when compared with emissions from China, for example, which is growing so fast it is using half the world's cement, 30 per cent of the world's coal, one quarter of copper production and 35 per cent of steel.

There was not a hint of democracy in this crackpot decision, which will have a major impact on all our lives, costing many of us thousands of pounds and our economy billions - all to achieve little useful purpose, while making our homes considerably less pleasant to live in.

Such is the price we are now beginning to pay for the ' ecomadness' which is sweeping through our political class like a psychic epidemic. The great 'Euro-bulb blunder' is arguably the starkest symbol to date of the crazy new world into which this is leading us.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=441881&in_page_id=1770

[Anders Lindman]

"Greenpeace hailed the summit deal as "the biggest such decision since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who chaired the summit, said: "We're not saying people should throw out all the bulbs in their house today but people should start looking at what's in the shops," she said.

However Mrs Merkel appeared to suggest she was not totally enamoured of the low-energy bulbs

. "Most of the light bulbs in my flat are energy-saving bulbs. They're not yet quite bright enough. When I'm looking for something I've dropped on the carpet, I have a bit of a problem," she said. "

Talk about an illuminati piss take they want us literally in the dark, They'll ban heating next!

Centralization and con-formity. :mad:

[anoninnyc]

wow, this is all news to me. i had no idea that these eco-bulbs were bad for my health. didn't even cross my mind.

[joyful]

Flourescent bulbs hurt my eyes and leave me blinking.

When energy usage drops the corporations will up the price to make up the difference.

[ezbar]

Still doesn't really show exposure to the light is dangerous, only exposure to the product during its destruction or disposal (an easily segregated act)

[Anders Lindman]

Still doesn't really show exposure to the light is dangerous, only exposure to the product during its destruction or disposal (an easily segregated act)

Yeah, but they ain't pretty. If they don't look nice what good are they? :D If they cannot produce light more than in a tiny bleak spectrum, who would want such lamps? If our governments cannot offer more choice than that, what good are the politicians? hehe.