9/23/10

CFL's

LED bulb
A friend of mine asked me recently if I knew anything about CFL's and dirty electricity. No, I did not. So... I got on the internet to look it up.
CFL, first of all, means compact fluorescent lamp, as opposed to the old-fashioned incandescent lamp.
A lot of people, my household included, are starting to switch to CFL's in order to be more environmentally conscious and/or save energy. In Canada, in fact, households will not be allowed to have the old-fashioned incandescent lights after 2012.
The problem is, apparently a number of people are having reactions to their CFL's. Headaches, migraines,  skin rashes and itchiness are a few of the complaints. These symptoms appear to stem from the amount of UV radiation that the light puts out. Since these complaints have surfaced, it seems that the industry is starting to make CFL's that have protection from the UV radiation. But when I looked around in different stores here in Jacksonville, I honestly could not tell which ones had this protection, and which ones did not.
One more fact I did not know when I bought all these CFL's to replace the flood lights in my house: CFL's put out an incredibly strong magnetic field. It not only reaches the up to 800 in the micro-surge meter, as opposed to incandescent bulbs that stay around 26. CFL's magnetic field also oscillate wildly, which is also not good for us either. Since I have known for a while that strong magnetic fields (such as power plants) are harmful to humans, that struck a nerve. Again, I went to the store and looked around, but could not find any information on the packaging that would tell me anything about magnetic emissions.
Since I could not find enough information to put my mind at ease, or merely satisfy my curiosity, I decided to stay on the safe side until I know more about CFL's, and in particular the ones that I have at home. I took out all the CFL's from my house. I put back the incandescent bulbs that I still had, and went and bought LED's (I found them at Home Depot) for the ones that needed replacement. LED's have come down considerably in price, so if you replace them as your incandescents burn out, they are affordable; they also last up to 20 years, which is nice. I did read up on them, and they seem to have no issues as far as UV radiation is concerned. They do emit a slightly higher magnetic field than the incandescent bulbs, but it is stable and stays below 50 in the micro-surge meter, which is the number considered to be safe for humans.
I have not had the time to research info on microsurge meters, but if I do end up finding one, then I will put one of the CFL's back up, and measure its magnetic output, just out of curiosity. But that will still not tell me enough about the UV emission to feel comfortable having them in the ceilings and on the walls around us.


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Posted by at 6:16 PM

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