Toxic Light - The Dark Side of Energy Saving Bulbs

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

My avatar has been nursing that rum and coke since Valentines Day, so no. He has barely touched that thing since then, silly replicant!

On the subject of LED, I have seen a few nice installations in retail outlets, where the striplights have been replaced with reflector augmented LED tubes. Very elegant, gives good light without high glare, clean light too, not yellow or diffuse at all.

I would love to get it installed in my home, but I rent, and some of the ways I would want to use it require a certain degree of alteration to the current light fixture positions. I think bordering the corners where the ceiling meets the walls and window frame, would be a really refined solution to lighting the room, but it would need clearing with the landowner, and I doubt he would be up for it. Plus, he would insist on doing it himself, and God love him, but last time he did some electrical work (he is a professional sparks) in our place, he covered our new carpets, and most everything else, in plaster dust!

Its great tech though, and I look forward to hearing more about it, and utlising it in the future.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
My avatar has been nursing that rum and coke since Valentines Day, so no. He has barely touched that thing since then, silly replicant!

I may have to borrow his liver then.

On the subject of LED, I have seen a few nice installations in retail outlets, where the striplights have been replaced with reflector augmented LED tubes. Very elegant, gives good light without high glare, clean light too, not yellow or diffuse at all.

One of the main sectors we sell to is retail and hospitality. We have been able to have our product installed in many of the high end retail shops in New York City which has lead to them utilizing the product in their European boutiques. The more yellow (lower Kelvin) lights are popular in private homes here in the States but I have noticed that in Europe higher Kelvin lights with whiter or bluer light is more popular.

I would love to get it installed in my home, but I rent, and some of the ways I would want to use it require a certain degree of alteration to the current light fixture positions.

Let me know if you ever move, I can have my United Kingdom counterpart send you some goodies.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

One of the main sectors we sell to is retail and hospitality. We have been able to have our product installed in many of the high end retail shops in New York City which has lead to them utilizing the product in their European boutiques. The more yellow (lower Kelvin) lights are popular in private homes here in the States but I have noticed that in Europe higher Kelvin lights with whiter or bluer light is more popular.

I actually first saw the lights I am referring to, in a discount store on the high street of my local town center. It makes the whole presentation of their stock much cleaner than you tend to find in discount retail establishments, and they are of the blue end of the white scale, if you see what I mean. Really clean. Love em!

Let me know if you ever move, I can have my United Kingdom counterpart send you some goodies.

I will! Thanks very much! Till then, I am going to look into lamps that can be plugged in at some point. I have a few things holding my purse strings tight at the moment, like a planned visit to a rock festival, and potentially a trip to meet up with some other ATS members, but when I have spare funds, I am going to make a run on our local electrical retailer and see what they have available for area lighting from a socket, until I get a place of my very own, and can have LED goodness installed throughout!

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: Dianec
I'm pretty sure they agitate me mood wise too. I am not able to recall what LED lights are like, but would be willing to try one of those given their apparent safety. I was under the assumption all of the energy efficient ones were mercury based.

A modern LED looks very similar to nearly identical to an Edison incandescent bulb. There is no mercury contained in the lamp, there is only the LED emitter and a driver. The rest of the device is an aluminum heat sink and some sort of lens.

The problem is the driver circuit in the LED is not likely to live any longer than the driver circuit on a CFL, as they are similar. Both frequently feature electrolytic capacitors and my guess would be that these capacitors will often fail long before their 20th birthday. Even if the LED itself could potentially last that long, you have to consider weak links.

Also, LEDs frequently have a lot of flicker. If you want to see this, get yourself a PC cooling fan with white blades and run it in a room with an LED light bulb. Some do not have much flicker but many do. You will probably not notice it without some trick like the fan blade trick but you might notice that the light seems a little strange without being able to define quite what it is about it that's bothering you.

CFLs have their issues but they give out pretty decent light and they're inexpensive right now compared to the LEDs. Put them in an open fixture (excessive heat kills them fast) that stays on for many hours a day and they should generally last a long time.

originally posted by: Hijinx
a reply to: ChristianJihad


So don't buy CFL, buy LED. LED bulbs last twice if not 3 times as long as cfl (18 to 28 years depending on usage), they use a fraction of the energy and LED Bulbs throw more light.

CFL is the problem, don't blanket statement all Energy efficient bulbs.

Unfortunately, the light given off by many consumer LEDs is extremely directional, whereas the light given off by the average swirl type CFL is very diffuse and evenly distributed. I have no doubt LEDs will improve in this department. The Cree bulbs I'm using right now are not too bad but they don't have any emitters pointing towards the top of the bulb. All the emitters are arranged on a drum shaped tower sitting vertically in the center of the bulb. Thus, the light is sent mostly out around the sides and is noticeably dim wherever the top of the bulb is aimed.

Geeze---I just knew there was a reason I didn't like those things and I've heard several folks on radio interviews expressing the dangers of mercury but never heard all the arguments against CFLs put together in such a neat and concise package. Thanks for the thread and the video.
My biggest issue with the CFLs has been that they are all made in China---at least they were back several years ago when they were first introduced.
I was gifted with several of the things one Christmas so I have a few scattered about the house but after watching this video they'll be removed tomorrow and taken down to the local recycling center.
I also bought some of the early LEDs and while I really liked the light they give, all but one have already crapped out.
I laid in a huge supply of incandescent bulbs. We use the incandescent bulbs in winter and the LEDs in summer, just switch them out when we check the smoke alarms in spring and fall. The newer LEDs look more like the traditional bulb and fit into more fixtures than the earlier ones.
I say we should petition for the right to choose what sort of light-bulb we want to use. If I don't want to subject myself, my pets and grandchildren to toxic fumes, I should be able to buy the "alternative" light.
Just another scam....
Brings to mind a Don Henley tune: Workin' It

We got the short-term gain, the long-term mess We got the suffocating, quarterly consciousness Yes man, run like a thief New York to Hollywood, hype and glory Special effects, no story Yes man, run like a thief

a reply to: BrianFlanders

Many of the cheaper manufactures suffer this problem. The company I work for is rated extremely high by Consumer Reports on both performance and longevity.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

That is the case with chip on board style lamps which are a very small percentage of what we manufacture. A wider beam angle is achieved with the use of discrete style LEDs. We have a 230* A-lamp which gives extremely good CRI and coverage. The next iteration will have color and temperature dimming and also full RGB color rendering which gives a theoretical infinite number of settings.

I have been trying to find a non-incandescent type light for my bicycle for some time and found these LED's (Cree Q5 HID LED as well as other iterations of similar tech...) emitter to work quite well. An incandescent rated at 12 to 20 watts would burn through my battery (12V-w-10 5000mah NiMh sub-c or c cells) in about 3 hours, when the LED's last over 24 hours, I don't know for sure how long because I got tired of waiting for it to drain the pack.

The light LED's make is fine for things that don't require depth perception, but there is something seriously wrong with the light they make and I don't quite know what it is exactly.

I am sure though, that their shortcomings will be realized eventually, and they will turn out to be less safe and supposedly environmentally friendly as they are being made out to be.

Businesses will say pretty much anything to make a sale and their opinions and statements regarding their products should not be seriously regarded without research by an impartial party not associated with the business in any way.

I like the run-time, I don't really like the light they make, the light doesn't "taste right".

The real issue in the end is what to do with technology after it has outlived it's usefulness, and I am relatively sure no investment has been made into recycling these types of lights any more than there was ever any safe recycling process established for anything else....

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: ChristianJihad
LED lights are the way to go. No mercury, longer life (up to 20-25 years) and consistent lumen output with no drop off.

And you can recycle them more effectively as the heat sinks are aluminum.

the problem is cost for the LED's.... back in the 80's when LED's were mostly used for visual monitoring cues of other electronics, they cost a few cents each. I think the massive increase in price is largely due to simple greed, not complexity.

originally posted by: jimmyx
the problem is cost for the LED's.... back in the 80's when LED's were mostly used for visual monitoring cues of other electronics, they cost a few cents each. I think the massive increase in price is largely due to simple greed, not complexity.

You can buy a 25,000 hour LED a-lamp for $6. The prices have come down significantly and will continue to drop.

originally posted by: ketsuko
The same people who decided that we all had to have plastic bags instead of paper ones in order to save the trees. Now, the plastic bags are toxic, nonbiodegradable nightmare, or so we're told. So, the same people now tell us that we have to use reusable grocery bags that harbor disease causing bacteria that can contaminate our food ...

I won't have CFLs anywhere near my home. Fluorescent lighting is a potential migraine trigger, so we're slowly upgrading to LEDs in our fixtures.

The joys of learning that everything we do is flawed. I remember phasing out paper bags, in some of the stores around here like Aldi's I can still get them, but don't. Plastic bags produce a good deal of waste but I end up using them to clean up after dog walks. If I weren't using them, I would just be using some of type of plastic bag. I have some reusable bags, I've never heard they harbor disease but after deciding to give up most meat I buy very little that's fresh, just vegetables that get washed prior to eating. Even so I imagine it wouldn't be very difficult to just wash them every now and then.

LED's though, they're very good bulbs. Quite overpriced despite being old technology because they have that whole green/premium tag but they do the job. The light still doesn't compare to white incandescent, but CFL's make me feel physically ill. Those bulbs are terrible, it's essentially office lighting all day at work, then all night at home.

We've had fluorescent strip lights since time immemorial - how come we never heard anything before now?

CFLs are exactly the same but smaller...and don't we still have mercury thermometers, which most people have dropped and broke at some stage...releasing many orders of magnitude more mercury into the atmosphere?

Don't oily fish like mackerel and tuna contain mercury (I'll bet substantially more than a CFL light bulb would release when smashed)?

I agree with the scientist who believes there should be a world-wide ban on mercury use, but I doubt these light bulbs pose a significant health risk to the consumer.