Writing in Slate Ron Rosenbaum captures a widely shared (including by me) hatred of fluorescent light.
Yes, the idiots in Congress, too torpid and ineffectual to pass a health-care bill for children, have busy-bodied themselves in a bumbling way with the way you light up your world. In December, they passed legislation that will, in practice, outlaw incandescent bulbs because they won't be able to meet the new law's strict energy-efficiency standards. The result: Between 2012 and 2014, incandescent bulbs will be driven from the market. Replaced by the ugly plasticine Dairy Queen swirl of compact fluorescent lights.
From a purely environmental perspective, this move is shortsighted. CFLs do use less energy, which is good. But they also often contain mercury, one of the most damaging—and lasting—environmental toxins. Not a ton of mercury, but still: A whole new CFL recycling structure will be required to prevent us from releasing deadly neurotoxins into the water table. CFLs: coming soon to sushi near you.
The compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are supposed to replace the incandescent light bulb. But they've got major drawbacks. As Rosenbaum sees it, the real evil of flourescents is aesthetic.
But the greater crime of the new bulbs is not environmental but aesthetic. Think of the ugly glare of fluorescence, the light of prisons, sterile cubicle farms, precinct stations, emergency rooms, motor vehicle bureaus, tenement hallways—remember Tom Wolfe's phrase for the grim, flickering hallway lights in New York tenements: "landlords' haloes"?—and, of course, morgues. Fluorescents seem specially designed to drain life and beauty from the world. Don't kid yourself if you hope Hell is lit by fire. More likely fluorescents.
Yes, fluorescents. Buzzing, flickering, able to cause epileptic seizures in the susceptible, in addition to headaches and other neurological symptoms. Let's smash all the incandescent lights and replace their glowing beauty with the harsh anatomizing light of fluorescence. The flickering tinny corpse light of bureaucracies and penal institutions.
I'm more down on them due to their distracting effect. I have enough interruptions to my concentration as things stand without the mental fatigue and distraction caused by flicker.
In the book of Genesis God did not say "let there be flickering".
The new CFLs pulse faster than their ancestors, so the flickering is less perceptible, but at some level, it's still there. CFL manufacturers may be right that the new bulbs are an improvement, but there is still something discontinuous, digital, something chillingly one-and-zero about fluorescence, while incandescent lights offer the reassurance of continuity rather than an alternation of being and nothingness. If I remember correctly, the line from genesis was "Let there be light," not "Let there be flickering."
I bought some CFLs several years ago to use in places I spend little time in. But my light fixtures in most of those places can't fit the CFLs.
Dan Neil of the Los Angeles Times shares Rosenbaum's lack of enthusiasm for fluorescents and also thinks LED lights are not good substitutes either.
As a good liberal, I’m ready to embrace, and pay for, more efficient lighting. And yet, I’m already feeling what might be called Edison nostalgia. Even a bare bulb hanging from a wire is a thousand times more bewitching, more jocund and welcoming than a CFL screwed into the most arty fixture featured in Wallpaper magazine. The light from a CFL—stark and shadowless and overcorrecting—is a scold: Why haven’t you dusted? Why haven’t you taken better care of your skin? (This is the well-known public lighting effect.) LEDs, by their very nature, produce a single frequency of light, a sliver of the visible spectrum. In the case of “white” LEDs that would replace the common bulb, they are actually a ghastly white shade of blue, and that’s why everyone looks a touch cyanotic under them. The quality of light from these instruments will get better, but they only can approximate—only counterfeit—the warm, wide-spectrum glory of a filament that radiates across the visible spectrum and beyond.
But on FuturePundit there's the obligatory "but can't technological advances solve all problems?" angle to any story. Some Turkish researchers might have found a way to make LED light more acceptable.
Topping LEDs with a coating of carefully tuned nanocrystals makes their light warmer and less clinical, a new study shows. The researchers argue this is a must for energy-efficient LED lights to make headway in the commercial market.
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To accomplish this, Hilmi Volkan Demir and colleagues at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, coated blue LEDs with a layer of nanocrystals. These crystals are made from a core of cadmium selenide with a surrounding layer of zinc sulphide.
The crystals absorb some of the LED's blue output and emit their own red and green light. That combines with the remaining blue light to produce a soft white glow.
A New York Times panel looked at 21 alternatives to incandescents and found most of the compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) disgusting. But they liked some of the LED and halogen choices and even found a few CFLs acceptable.
Another object of excitement was the Pharox bulb (upscalelighting.com) from Lemnis Lighting, which uses a light-emitting diode, or L.E.D. This technology, which works by illuminating a semiconductor chip, is more efficient than compact fluorescent lighting. But because L.E.D.'s emit directional rather than diffuse light, they are typically implanted in flat surfaces like walls or light panels.
Not all the bulbs were met with negativity. Panelists favored the light cast by halogen bulbs (including the Daylight Plus and the BT15 from Sylvania, and G.E.'s Edison 60), which last twice as long as incandescents, requiring less energy for the production and distribution of replacements, and are therefore more efficient.
One halogen model, the Philips Halogena, was not only pleasing to the eye - "nice, soft, golden light" one panelist said - but efficient enough to meet the criteria of the new energy bill.
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The n:vision TCP Home Soft White, for example, was deemed "a warm pleasant light." The TCP Spring Light/Soft White was "almost warmer than incandescent," one person said. And the MaxLite SpiraMax was generally liked.
That LED Pharox bulb costs $59. Not exactly cheap.
Since we will have halogen and LED alternatives the death of incandescent bulbs won't force us to use CFLs. LED costs are falling and moving into wider spread use on cars. That bodes well. But as we near incandescent phase-out dates if LEDs and halogens aren't looking like acceptable and affordable alternativs you might want to lay in a few year supply of incandescents to provide more time for the non-fluorescent alternatives to improve.
Update: Brendan Koerner defends CFLs.
The irony of CFLs is that they actually reduce overall mercury emissions in the long run. Despite recent improvements in the industry's technology, the burning of coal to produce electricity emits roughly 0.023 milligrams of mercury per kilowatt-hour. Over a year, then, using a 26-watt CFL in the average American home (where half of the electricity comes from coal) will result in the emission of 0.66 milligrams of mercury. For 100-watt incandescent bulbs, which produce the identical amount of light, the figure is 2.52 milligrams.
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The last, desperate swipe at CFLs—as elucidated by the Lantern's colleague last week—is that their light is cold and dreadful. Perhaps this was true in years past, but the Lantern just doesn't see it anymore: In a recent test, Popular Mechanics rated CFL light as far superior to that produced by incandescent bulbs.
You can always try one of the higher rated CFLs and judge for yourself. But I continue to hate the workplace long tube fluorescents that I come across.
By Randall Parker at 2008 February 02 07:37 PM Energy Lighting | TrackBackI guess I am just not sensitive, but I have no problem with CFLs. I love that they give off a lot of bright light and that they don't heat the room in the process. I think a lot of color problems can be solved by paying attention to lamp shades and wall colors.
My CFL never flickers. I'd advise you to buy one that hasn't been manufactured in a low-rent shoe factory.
I have been using CFLs here in England since 1992.
They do not flicker.
They have NEVER flickered.
The only way to get them to flicker is to put them on a dimmer switch.
Their colour temperature is nearer to natural daylight than those orangey incandescent bulbs ever were.
The Slate article is FUD.
It seems the common theme of the articles you quote are the leftist/enviro/luddite slant (slate,lat,nyt). Their predecessors were probably ranting about how the incandescent bulb didn't "hold a candle to"....candlelight.
I've seen the exact same arguments vis-a-vis digital books vs. dead-tree-format books; flickering screen(?), cold and impersonal, "ugly glare", "sterile", etc...
The luddites will never be happy until we're back in the caves. The fact that there are new, more efficient technologies emerging almost daily, only whip them into a greater fervor for their death wish (see; peak oil, ozone layer, nuclear reactors exploding, power line cancer, electro-sensitives, global ice age,whoops...warming,whoops,...climate CHANGE?)
Randall,
The article you quoted was an ignorant rant.
CFLs use solid-state ballasts. While they flicker, they flicker at a frequency for which human physiology has no sensing organs to detect. As such, CFLs have less perceptible flicker than incandescent bulbs, which flicker at the very noticeable 50 to 60Hz in North America. Granted, the amplitude of flicker is much less than the intensity of the light with incandescents, but one might as well rant about the equally imperceptible microwave noise left over from the Big Bang.
I am very sensitive to flicker. I find monitors at 75Hz refresh rates barely adequate and strongly prefer 85Hz and higher. Anything less than 75Hz will give me a migraine very quickly. I cannot even look at 65Hz monitors, and they are even worse in my peripheral vision.
My house is full of CFLs, and I do not have any problems with the light from them. If you have CFLs you do not use, I suggest putting them in places where you spend a lot of time. If the bulb flickers, try another CFL. If they both flicker, replace the fixture. In that case, the bulb is not getting full current, which means the current is going somewhere you don't want it to, which could lead to a fire or electrocution. However, I doubt you will notice flicker in any case.
From a toxicity perspective, coating things with cadmium is just as bad as filling them with mercury. Worse actually. I am surprised you would repeat such ignorant claptrap without tearing it to shreds.
The trick with CFLs is to use "full-spectrum" lamps, with CRI (Color Rendition Index) of at least 90.
They do a quite passable imitation of midday sunlight. They're expensive, too (the good spectral distribution of light energy is achieved by mixing five or more different phosporus). I ended up using a 55w full-spectrum CFL in my home office which doubles as an electronics lab (the alternative was to use 300 watt halogen bulb which heated the relatively small room noticeably and cast harsh shadows, too). The only disadvantage is that it takes about a minute for the lamp to get to the full brightness.
LEDs... well, I think "LED-bulb" manufacturers are missing the point - the most attractive feature of LED lighting is ability to control color; a special dimmer replacement can be used to communicate HSV information to the LED bulbs digitally over the existing AC wiring. The phosphorus-covered blue LEDs (which is what "white" LEDs are) aren't any better than CFLs.
Waaaahhhhhh!!! I love how people are all for energy efficiency and conservation as long as they aren't inconvenienced one teeny tiny little bit. The mercury thing is a joke. The mercury issue was thoroughly vetted in committee before the legislation was passed. It's such a tragedy that this guy's sense of aesthetics has to be compromised in order to help the environment. Boo hoo hooo!!!!
The odd fluorescent will bother me, but most of them do not.
As an aside, I find the U-shaped CFs better than the twist ones intended for incandescent replacement. Maybe with a fixture switch we'd have better results.
"I love that they give off a lot of bright light and that they don't heat the room in the process."
I love the fact that, given high propane prices, the incandescents in my house heat the room more cheaply than the furnace. A pity the government can't cope with the complexities of the real world...
Half of the compact flourescent lamp manufactures in europe are supposidly coating the bulbs with a clear plastic coating just like they do with some commercial 8 foot flourescent tubes used in office buildings (greenpeace UK)... that would go a long way to protect against a broken bulb, all that is needed is a manditory recycle program to recycle the mercury...also, they need to solve the problem of when the compact bulbs wear out, they tend to overheat and smoke (sometimes flame) the electronics inside before they "expire".
Brett,
Glad you brought up heating costs.
1 kilowatt-hour of electricity contains 3413 BTU. A gallon of gasoline might contain 115,000 BTU (it varies by time of year and region). So a gallon of gasoline is about 34 kwh. Since the future is electric I'm leaning toward converting more energy measures to kwh equivalents.
With electricity at a the US national average of 10.6 cents per kwh a gallon of gasoline delivers as much energy as $3.60 worth of electricity. But wait. There are conversion inefficiencies with the burning of fuel. You get maybe 80% or at most 90% as real heat. So electricity and gasoline are about the same price for heating on average.
Of course, if you live somewhere that has 8 cents or less per kwh electricity (e.g. the Dakotas, Oregon, Kentucky) then electricity provides more heat energy than gasoline.
Now, people who heat with liquid fuel tend to use heating oil (139,000 BTU per gallon) which is basically diesel. Though I think it is taxed differently. So you have to compare heating oil to electricity. But the cost is close.
What are you paying for propane? At $1.87 per gallon propane was $20.47 per million BTU in early 2007. On that same page #2 heating oil at $2.22/gallon was $16.01 per million BTU according to that page.
Q: How many country music singers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Six. One to change the bulb, and five to write a song about how much better the old one was.
I found an article that puts heating oil at $3.35 per gallon in Virginia. Okay, that's 139,000 BTU per gallon/3413 for 41 kwh per gallon of heating oil. So if you have 8.1 per kwh electricity or cheaper it makes more sense to use electricity than heating oil to heat a house. Weird wild stuff.
Even without using a heat pump electricity has become cheaper than heating oil for some parts of America. Add in a ground source heat pump and electricity for heating becomes very compelling.
Of course, natural gas is still a cheaper heat source. But not everyone has access to natural gas - especially not in the Northeast.
I have CFL's in my Edison-socket installed in my recessed cans in my living room, family room, and kitchen. I bought the cheapest ones I could and the CRI is very high (must be upper 80s or low 90's) and I only had one infant mortality. Other than that one, I haven't replaced a single one. There is no perceptible flickering. If you break a CFL, you can release mercury vapor. In a closed room, it will exceed OSHA requirements unless you open the windows for an hour or two. However, it is really methyl mercury, not just mercury that causes the major health hazard so this isn't really much of a problem.
In addition, some people I know who work at EPRI have analyzed the net difference of mercury emissions from most power plants caused by the excess power for incandescents versus the mercury inside the CFL bulbs and the CFL's come out ahead.
There are now new ICAT (Insulation compatible air-tight) CFL cans that are going to really be the way to go for modern residential light fixtures. When they are in a can, they blend in with traditional decorating schemes very well. There is some FUD going around about how CFLs need to be "special" to handle going into a can but the real problem was some bad Electrolytic caps made in 2002 caused by a common supplier's mistake of missing a key ingredient in the electrolyte (the caps built up H2 gas and burst after 6 months). This problem was sometimes mistakenly attributed to heat in can fixtures but it really was just a fluke of bad parts. I agree that the swirl CFLs can look like crud in some Edison socket fixtures - but this is just industrial design lagging the technical design. In my bathroom I have some exposed CFLs that are have bulb housings that look pretty good.
Most of the LED bulbs I've seen peak too much in narrow spots of the "red" and "blue" spectrum. This makes it uncomfortable for reading as your eye lense has high chromatic dispersion causing black and white text to have a discontinuous blur on your retina.
I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (a fairly mild case) but I find that incandescent bulbs seem to keep this at bay.
Flourescents of any flavor seem to negatively affect my mood and concentration as well.
I shaln't be giving up my incandescents any time soon - no matter what some over-Federalized B.S. nanny state says..
No wonder R. Paul is getting such a fanatical support base - people are getting quite sick of this shite!
I have a love of chandeliers and I cannot stand the thought of replacing my incandescents with a swirly CFL. I don't mind if it's under a lamp shade but don't make me put it on my crystal to stare at over an elegant dinner. I want to see the White House crystal chandeliers on full bright CFLs during a state dinner - unable to dim.
You can go down to Home Despot today and buy frosted-shroud candelabra-base CFLs... which are dimmable.
Got one outside my front door. It works when the temperature is in the teens, too.
Randall,
The problem with the long tube fluorescents at your workplace and other locations is not the tube or the fluorescence. Keep the tubes and lose the ballasts.
One can install long tube fluorescents with solid-state ballasts that will have less perceptible flicker than an incandescent bulb. I have had a light box for over a decade that uses just such ballasts.
The price of solid-state ballasts has declined greatly in the past decade and will continue to decline. In fact, once people start using them more, the increased production will drive down the price very rapidly just as it does for other solid-state devices.
To increase your effectiveness as a futurist, I suggest you shift your focus to the right technological culprit. Eventually, building codes will insist on solid-state ballasts in new construction. The sooner that happens, the better for everyone who is sensitive to flicker. If you want to agitate, agitate for that change to the building code.
Sometime after that happens, the price of the ballasts will drop to the point where legislatures can contemplate requiring employers and public spaces to replace the old ballasts with new ones. Railing against CFLs won't help anyone.
Several people here claim not to find the CFL's offensive. Hey, lots of folks think junk food tastes good and is inexpensive but that doesn't mean junk food is good or inexpensive. Face it, lots and lots of people have lousy esthetic sensibilities and even lousier common sense.
CFL's and LED's produce ugly light - it's harsh and cold and it's also inefficient. I LIKE the fact that incandescents throw off heat - believe me, in upstate NY in February that heat is not wasted. The most basic claim concerning CFL's twice longer life (than incandescents) is bogus: after about 40% of their life-span, most CFL's operate at less than 40% effectiveness - which put them in just about the same category as good quality incandescent light-bulbs. Personally, I don't care that environmentalists have been sold a false bill of goods by greedy light bulb manufacturers who can't wait to offload cheap light bulbs at high prices on the sanctimonious public - environmentalists live for that sort of masochistic thing - however, I do resent having it shoved down my throat. I'm currently stockpiling. In addition to stockpiling, I've made friends w/a plumber who can get me a full flush toilet, full blown shower head, and rig my hot water back to high enough temperatures. When the best sort of thermometer gets banned because it's made of glass and contains mercury and we are simultaneously forced to use glass light bulbs filled w/mercury .. you know the wackier environmentalists need to be stopped.
Up with Capitalism/Down with Unwashed Environutties.
I LIKE the fact that incandescents throw off heat - believe me, in upstate NY in February that heat is not wasted.How about in upstate NY in August? I spent one there, it didn't need extra heat. How efficient is a light bulb compared to a heat pump?
CFL's and LED's produce ugly light - it's harsh and cold...Says somebody who's probably never seen a "warm white" CFL.
... and it's also inefficient.Roughly 4x as many lumens per watt.
The most basic claim concerning CFL's twice longer life (than incandescents) is bogus: after about 40% of their life-span, most CFL's operate at less than 40% effectivenessSounds bogus, and contrary to all my experience (I've been using CFs of one sort or another for about 15 years). You want to support that with something more than your say-so?
When the best sort of thermometer gets banned because it's made of glass and contains mercury and we are simultaneously forced to use glass light bulbs filled w/mercury ..I think you'll find that the 5 mg of mercury in a CFL is nothing like the 1 gram in a fever thermometer. It's also far less than the 20-odd mg emitted by coal plants to run incandescent bulbs to produce the same amount of light over the lifetime of a CFL, and the powerplants' mercury goes into the air, not a landfill.
As someone who lives in a state with contaminated gamefish due to coal combustion, I rather like CFLs.
My problem with CFL's is that they do not go well in places where clear light bulbs are used what are you suppose to replace clear bulbs with?
Is everyone comfortable with the government telling us what kind of light bulb to use?
What about what we eat? What if the government forced everyone eat chicken feed, because it
it is more efficient than feeding it to the chicken, and then eating the chicken?
Everyone had better think long and hard on this, and then decide; if you still like CFL's, then use them. Does "big brother" know best?
I have no particular beef with either Incandescent or Fluorescent; I figure they both have their place in a lighting scheme. But as a comment, I have noticed that quite often I see regular tube fluorescents; in the same room, mounted at right angles to each other. As a young apprentice I was always told to avoid mounting them like this because the split polarity of the each lamp causes a flicker... which was particularly bad for machinists. I suspect that if the effect is not actually visible as flicker that it nonetheless is subconsciously uncomfortable for the observer I wonder therefore if some of the flicker problems referred to be really related to incorrect fitting
Im going to manufacture good ol incandesant bulbs in my garage and you get a free mercury thermometer with every 6th purchase on your punch card. Seriously, were headed twards political disaster and your government is daily taking away your rights for what they see as a just cause. We should be considering what china is outputting with thier coal processes, not the US or UK for that matter even aussie land. concentrate on better means of power production. Please the earth is its own polluter with volcanic activity and underwater fishers. Thier was a pretty funny artical about mt st helen producing more sulfer then the fed allows per state/year in like a week. the old biodegradable foam vs WAX paper = same. ussing methane mills at garabage dumps. I like the idea of water bottles being returnables. common sense of the people, not knee jerk reactions to lobbyists,,, oh, and Ron Paul rules ;)
Im keeping my incandesants period, Ill outsource them from other countries on ebay if I have to
The switch from incandescent to CFL lights did not go well for me: The ceiling lamps would flicker and buzz often following during and for awhile after using the CFL's in them. It would even interfere with other appliances in the rooms: small TV's, and a microwave sometimes. I took em out and now use just incandescent's. The flickering and buzzing went away within another week; the buzzing was unlike the quiet humm from the the cfl and unapparant flicker within the bulb because it continued for awhile in the incandescent bulbs I replaced them with, as well as affecting the other appliances. It was just like a shortcircuit effect.