Saving Mercury with CFLis and Other Discharge Lamps

Although it sounds paradox, using discharge lamps actually saves mercury in most parts of the world. The example below is for CFLi in Germany, but the principle holds true for most discharge lamps in most parts of the world.

• Fossil fuels, especially coal, contain traces of mercury. If these fossil fuels are burned to generate electricity, the power plant will emit mercury with the exhaust.
• If all regular incandescent lamps sold in Germany today were replaced by quality CFLi with an average life of 10,000 hours, around 26 Million additional CFLi would be sold each year. Thus, 65 kilos of mercury would additionally pass 'over the counter' each year.
• The energy saved by these 26 million lamps is about 7.5 TWh / a, which is approximately the yearly output of the coal-firing Mannheim
   power plant.
• According to EPER[1], this same power plant emitted 193 kilos of mercury into the air.
• A selection of 10 major power plants in Germany alone emitted over 3,000 kg in the same period. None of this mercury is recycled.

=> By saving energy, more mercury can be prevented than is contained in the CFLi used to save this energy.

[1] EPER: European Pollutant Emission Register

How much mercury is 2.5mg?

The amount of mercury contained in a CFLi is very little, i.e. 2,5mg in an innovative DULUX energy-saving lamp. This is a difficult amount to visualize. Some attempts:

• Thermometers containing mercury were once common in households. The mercury contained in these thermometers would be enough for 300 – 1,000 energy saving lamps.
• 2.5 mg of Hg has a volume of less than 0.2 mm³, which will fit on the tip of a pen.
• A German law regulating the maximum content of substances in foodstuffs (SHmV from 1988, revised 1997) allows 1mg Mercury in 1 kg of fish (for tuna, marlin, eels, pike, perch, etc.). Thus, a DULUX contains less mercury than permissible in 3 kg of fresh fish.

If  2.5 mg of mercury evaporate evenly in a room of 10m² (2.5m high), the concentration would just reach the threshold for maximum exposure in the workplace as define by German regulations [1]: 0.1 mg/m³. This value would be permissible as average in an 8-hour shift – each day of a working life.  OSRAM has conducted experiments in which lamps were broken in a room, and the actual mercury concentration measured.

[1] TRGS 900, published by the German Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, 2008. Threshold values vary internationally.

Will mercury be banned?

A global crackdown on the poisonous pollutant mercury was agreed by environment ministers at the end of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Governing Council in Nairobi in February 2009. Governments unanimously decided to launch negotiations on an international mercury treaty to deal with world-wide emissions and discharges of mercury. Although often described as an outright ban on mercury, the eight -point partnership plan actually provides for reducing mercury in products such as thermometers and high-intensity discharge lamps. This might be achieved by the international application of rules like the European RoHS Directive, which already places strict limits on mercury content in lamps. OSRAM supports such regulations, as they are fully in line with our efforts at reducing mercury.