31 aug 2009

EU mandates TOXIC lightbulbs for everyone

The corporate powers in the EU have decided that incandescent (classic) lightbulb will be a thing of the past. They claim they produce too much CO2 and contribute to global warming. Both statements are false and let me tell you why. There is no man-made global warming & besides CO2 is only a small contributing factor in the natural greenhouse effect. See my previous posts on this here.

The introduction of these CFL lamps are another outright attack on our health, safety and income!!
Since today in the EU 100W-75W are forbidden and gradually in 2010 and 2012 other wattages will follow.

From the Daily Mail:

[...] 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.
But [...] 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.

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.

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).

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.

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.



What is dirty electricity or electrical pollution?
Electrical pollution refers to low frequency electromagnetic waves that have unwanted effects, such as badly shielded electric cables that induce disturbances in electrical devices nearby.
Imagine turning on a light bulb and within 20 minutes you notice skin problems:
Dirty Electricity - Part 1 - Rays of Rash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CVLa_tRslY
Dirty Electricity - Part 2 - Dirty Energy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A55081TOlbQ
Dirty Electricity - Part 3 - Reaction To Rays http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kdvHUUDsJ0
Dirty Electricity - Part 4 - Electrical Shock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOwyn-xVXV4
Daaaaag ouwe trouwe gloeilamp http://www.gelderlander.nl/voorpagina/liemers/5451147/Daaaaag-ouwe-trouwe-gloeilamp.ece

Einde nadert voor gloeilamp http://www.omroepbrabant.nl/?news/123231432/Einde+nadert+voor+gloeilamp.aspx

reader comments:

People who listen to Short Wave radio (radio hams and enthusiasts) hate these lamps because of the interference they generate - and it travels along the mains wiring from house to house and radiates over a wide area. The light has an unpleasant quality which can make reading or fine dextrous work difficult. In short they are hopeless AND they contain mercury, which the EU has just banned.

They are not ideal task lights close to head. The low frequency field which the trigger gear generates is a hazard. Too many of these in the house and you have a very undesirable level of interference carried around the domestic wiring. This is a form of the 'dirty electricity' problem extensively encountered in the US and Canada.It is wrong to completely cut off supply of lower wattage filament / task lights.

Posted by chellow at 11:03 p.m.

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1 opmerking:

Lighthouse zei

(mooi een beetje nederlands te zien.. toch spreek ik huidig niet zo viel....)

More on health issues you mention
http:ceolas.net/#li18x

It is indeed extraordinary to ban a safe popular product,
instead of dealing directly with any energy and emission problems.
See http://www.ceolas.net/#li1x onwards

The particular error of banning 100W+ ordinary bulbs is that bright CFLs or LEDs are comparatively difficult and expensive to make,
and the high wattage heat effect is not necessarily wasted (room heat substantially rises towards the ceiling by convection, and spreads downwards from there).

Banning frosted lights smacks of particularly unwarranted EU pettiness, for any marginal savings involved.
Clear lights (including halogens) have a strong glare - hence the overwhelming popularity of frosted lights for ceiling use.

Another problem is that small bright CFLs and LEDs are difficult to make, so that candle/golfball lights are bulkier and may not fit some lamps.

Supposed savings don't hold up for many reasons:
Just a few examples here: CFL Lifespan is lab tested in 3 hour cycles. That does not correspond to real life usage and numerous tests have shown real life type on-off switching reducing lifespan. Leaving lights on of course also uses up energy, as does the switch-on power surge with CFLs
Also, CFLs get dimmer with age, effectively reducing lifespan

Power factor: Few people know that CFLs typically have a power factor of 0.5 - that means that power stations use up twice as much power than what the CFL rating shows. This has to do with current and voltage phase differences set up when CFLs are used.
Although consumers do not see this on their meters, they will of course have to pay for it on their bills.
This is explained with official links including to US Dept of Energy here: http://ceolas.net/#li15eux

Emissions?
Does a light bulb give out any gases?
Power stations might not either:
Why should emission-free households be denied the use of lighting they obviously want to use?
Low emission households already dominate some regions, and will increase everywhere, since emissions will be reduced anyway through the planned use of coal/gas processing technology and/or energy substitution.

(so whether or not emissions should be dealt with, a ban is still wrong!)

1 september 2009 om 00:28

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