To the editor:

In response to Patrick Winchester’s letter where he expressed concerns about mercury in compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). He asks, “This can’t be a good thing, can it?” Actually, it is. All fluorescent light bulbs contain small amounts of mercury and should therefore be properly recycled. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone should stop installing CFLs any more than it means that businesses should stop using tube-type fluorescent bulbs. The EPA estimates that a coal-fired power plant emits about 10 mg of mercury into the atmosphere to produce the power required for an incandescent bulb versus 2.4 mg to power a CFL over its lifetime. Current CFLs contain only about 4 mg of mercury, and GE and Philips are currently introducing bulbs that contain only 1.4 mg. So even if one assumes that these bulbs are discarded in the landfill, it still represents a net reduction in mercury contamination.

CFLs will last from 11 to 13 times longer than incandescent bulbs. This greatly reduces the amount of material entering our landfills, in the form of discarded bulbs, as well as reducing energy spent on manufacturing the bulbs. A 60W/750-hour incandescent that costs about 55 cents can be replaced with a 13W/10,000-hour CFL that costs $2 (at Home Depot) that produces the same amount of light and is relatively immune to vibration and voltage fluctuations.

Neal Ezell,

Lawrence