More Fluorescent Bulb Problems, incl. Fires

In my previous, comprehensive article on problems with the new compact fluorescent blubs (CFLs) Link, I did not include mention of fire danger. This was because everything I read at that time indicated it was rare and occurred only with the first CFLs on the market. Now I find that is not the case. Two emails to me have described recent personal experiences with fires from CFLs. Please note, in the second email, that when the incident was reported to the local fire department, the fireman “wasn't at all surprised and said that it was not an uncommon occurrence” and that “the Fire Marshall had issued reports about the dangers of these bulbs.”

The first email is from a Mr. John Brazell. He wrote: “Two or three weeks ago in a motel suite as I reached to turn on a lamp (and very lightly tapped the bulb in the process) the CFL bulb separated, or had previously separated, from its base just as illustrated below.  Fire and sparks shot out several inches and scared the daylights out of me - a definite fire hazard.  I unplugged the lamp immediately.” 

Here is the full text of the second email:

Below is a picture of a CFL light bulb from my bathroom.  I turned it on the other day and then smelled smoke after a few minutes.  Four inch flames were spewing out of the side of the ballast like a blow torch!  I immediately turned off the lights.  But I'm sure it would have caused a fire if I was not right there.  Imagine if the kids had left the lights on as usual when they were not in the room.

I took the bulb to the Fire Department to report the incident.  The Fireman wasn't at all surprised and said that it was not an uncommon occurrence.  Apparently, sometimes when the bulb burns out there is a chance that the ballast can start a fire.  He told me that the Fire Marshall had issued reports about the dangers of these bulbs.

Upon doing some Internet research, it seems that bulbs made by “Globe” in China seem to have the lion's share of problems.  Lots of fires have been blamed on misuse of CFL bulbs, like using them in recessed lighting, pot lights, dimmers or in track lighting.  Mine was installed in a normal light socket. I bought these at Wal-Mart.  I will be removing all the Globe bulbs from my house.  

Paul Rainwater
Fire Protection Training Instructor
Cook Nuclear Plant
1 Cook Place, zone 11
Bridgman, MI  49106

Wal-Mart alone has over 4,300 stores in the U.S. and 4,100 in 14 other countries.  It claims 176 million people visit its stores every week. So they must have sold thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of these problem bulbs already.  Note, too, that while the article says Globe is the manufacturer of the lion's share of the problem bulbs, the problem evidently occurs with other manufacturer, too, though maybe not as much.

Here's another type of problem. Recently I was in a local Ace Hardware store to buy some paint. When I went to the checkout counter with it, there was an elderly gentleman ahead of me who wanted a refund or replacement for a CFL that wasn't working properly. The woman behind the counter said this was her first day on the job and she didn't know how to handle a refund or replacement and would have to get the manager, who was in the back of the store.

While we were waiting for the woman to return with the manager, I said to the man, “It's none of my business, but I'm interested in fluorescent bulbs, and I wonder if you would mind telling me why you are returning this one.” He said, “When you turn it on, only the bottom half of the bulb lights up. You have to wait a minute and a half—sometimes two minutes, but always at least a minute and a half—before the top half of the bulb lights up. My wife likes to read a lot, and she gets very irritated that she has to waste a minute and half for the darn thing to light up so she can read.”

I asked him if he had come to the store solely to return that CFL or if he had other shopping to do. He said he made the trip solely to return the bulb. I've never heard of such trips occurring because of incandescent bulbs, but the cost of the driving and inconvenience of such trips is never included in the claims of all the money you save by buying CFLs. Since the man had no other reason for his trip, the entire cost should have been charged to his cost for CFLs, but he told me he that, even though he had a bad experience, “everyone knows these bulbs save you a lot of money.” I told him the claims of big savings from CFLs were not true, that there were other problems, too, such as false claims about how long they last, damage from ultraviolet light to plastics, fabrics, pictures, and furniture finishes, plus environmental costs and disposal problems. I said if he had a computer, I would tell him were he could read my article on my blog (link) explaining these things. He said he didn't have a computer and never intended to get one.

Finally, there is the news from Germany that consumer protection organizations have demanded suspension of the European Union ban on incandescent light bulbs, citing official tests of danger from CFLs if broken. According to test results released Thursday, December 2, by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), the mercury levels from broken CFLs are twenty times higher than regulations allow in the surrounding air for five hours after breakage. Jochen Flasbarth, President of UBA, said the phase-out should occur “with safer products that have no avoidable health risks” and called the mercury danger “the Achilles heel” of the energy saving bulbs. Yet the U.S. government claims they are safe and promotes them, trying to show it is better at deciding what is good for people than their own choices in the marketplace.

“It can't be that the state bans a safe product and replaces it with a dangerous one,” said Gerd Billen, the leader of the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZVB).

In September the European Union began phasing out incandescent bulbs. The complete phase-out is to occur by 2012.

POSTSCRIPT:  On December 13, one week after posting this blog, I received an email from a man who had installed CFLs in his home about a year ago in order to save money from their much-ballyhooed long lives.  Three of them had already failed far short of their advertised life expectancy.  And on one of them the base had melted and showed evidence of charring. 

Also, three other points should be made about John Brazell's experience above. First, notice that breakage of CFLs can occur for a reason other than dropping them; thus dropping them isn't the only way the dangerous mercury can be released. Second, it is likely that whoever cleaned up the broken CFL in the motel was unaware of the proper cleanup procedure and thus did not follow it. If that person vacuumed up the broken glass, the vacuum would have been contaminated, as demonstrated by extensive testing by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Therefore, if the vacuum was then used in other motel rooms, it would have created a health hazard to future occupants of all those rooms for many weeks, perhaps even longer. The MDEP found there was no practical way to decontaminate a vacuum cleaner, and the pollution it would emit into a room from subsequent use could be hundreds of times—sometimes thousands of times—greater than the allowable safety limit.  (See link.)  Third, we don't know how the broken bulb in this instance was disposed of, but many jurisdictions prohibit discarding broken or burned out CFLs in regular trash, requiring instead they be taken to a toxic waste site.  They do this to prevent the danger of mercury pollution of land and ground water. Since only about 25 percent of broken or used CFLS are disposed of properly, there is a good chance the CFL in this case was disposed of in an environmentally unsafe manner. And the person responsible would have been breaking the law. 

 

Thanksgiving: Obama Fails to Learn the Pilgrims' Lesson

President Obama has failed to learn the simple basic lesson that the Pilgrims, who established the tradition of Thanksgiving Day in 1623 (not 1621, as often claimed), learned the hard way. The bounteous harvest they were gratefully celebrating on that day was preceded by years of starvation. They arrived in mid-December 1620, and half of them died the first year. Though the Indians helped them survive, the colonists were chronically short of food, and their numbers continued to dwindle.

Under the Mayflower Compact, which governed the colony, “all profits and benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing or any other means” were community property in the “common stock” of the colony. And “all such persons as are of this colony are to have their meat, drink, apparel and all provisions out of this common stock.” People were required to put in everything they could—they were forbidden from growing their own food—and to take out only what they needed. It was a policy of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” centuries before Karl Marx seduced millions of people with those words.

The communal system was such a failure that in the spring of 1623 the Pilgrims feared they would not survive another poor harvest. “So they began to think,” wrote the colony's governor William Bradford, “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves....And so assigned to every family a parcel of land.....This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted then otherwise would have been by any other means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content.”

Far from making the people “happy and flourishing,” the communal system, wrote Bradford, “was found to breed confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.” Not surprisingly,“young men that were able and fit did repine [complain] that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children, without recompense. The strong, or men of parts, had no more division of food, clothes, etc. than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labor, and food, clothes, etc. with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them.”

Under the circumstances, there was little incentive to produce food. Severe whippings were tried to induce greater production, but they did little more than increase discontent.

The social disharmony, along with the food shortages, disappeared once the concept of private property was introduced and people could keep whatever they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In 1647 Bradford was able to write “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” Such was the success of the new system that in 1624 the colonists began to export corn, trading it for beaver pelts, other furs, and meat.

In 1624 the Pilgrims took a further step in property rights. The system of assigning land “to every man for his own particular” had certainly increased the production of corn, but the assignment was drawn by lot yearly. Thus there was not much incentive for making improvements to one's tillage when someone else might draw that land next year. The men requested of the Governor “to have some portion of the land given them for continuance, and not by yearly lot....Which being well considered, their request was granted.”

Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America, established in Virginia in 1607, had an experience similar to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Early years of starvation were followed by converting to a system of property rights and a free market, which brought abundance. Under collectivism, less than half of every shipload of settlers survived the first twelve months at Jamestown. Most of the work was done by only one-fifth of the men, to whom the socialist system gave the same rations as to the others. During the winter 1609-10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from 500 to 60.

But when Jamestown converted to a free market, there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure,” wrote the colony secretary Ralph Hamor in 1614. Under the previous system, he said, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now.”

We should not underestimate the significance of the experiences at Plymouth and Jamestown. Property rights and free markets were truly revolutionary and fundamental to capitalism. Without them, all the wealth, progress and human betterment that followed could not have occurred. According to Sartell Prentice, “In England, meanwhile, farming 'in common' continued to be the general practice for another hundred years. Not until the second decade of the seventeen hundreds did 'setting crops for their particular' begin to be slowly accepted in England—and decades were to pass before the new practice became sufficiently widespread to provide an adequate food supply for the population.”

Even today, centuries later, there is still inadequate understanding of the importance of property rights and free markets. A recent BBC poll of 29,000 people worldwide found only 11 percent think free-market capitalism is a good thing. One-quarter of those polled said capitalism is “fatally flawed.”

There is no shortage of people who want a political system that gives them the fruits of other men's labors, as at Plymouth and Jamestown. And there is an abundance of politicians willing to accommodate them at the expense of other men's property. The result is repetition of the collectivist systems (socialism, fascism) that have failed in the past, and no end to the discontent and resentment they engender. But people can be seduced to try them again and again by lofty idealistic statements, eloquent messages of hope, and promises that can never be kept. All of which allow the covetousness of other people's property—whether for personal gain or altruistic, collectivist aims—to masquerade under noble-sounding phrases.

When Barrack Obama was campaigning for the presidency, he promised to redistribute other people's wealth for the collective good. In a short but spirited dialog with a small businessman, “Joe the plumber,” Obama argued that society would be better off if Joe's taxes were increased and the money distributed more widely to those less well off. What is this but a denial of Joe's property right to his own money and a repetition of the socialist distribution schemes that were so disastrous at Plymouth and Jamestown?

Once he was president, Obama came up with a health plan that would require everyone to buy health insurance—as though people's money was not theirs by right but, rather, was part of the “common stock” of community property, to be allocated by the leader for the collective good! And, just as at Plymouth, people who did not cooperate would be punished—not by severe whippings as was done there, but by the more civilized penalty of seizing their property (money) through fines if they refused to buy health insurance.

Contrast the government inflicting pain and penalty to force compliance compared to the benefit and satisfaction—even happiness—from market transactions, which people undertake without force or penalty in order to enhance their lives and are far more effective than socialistic distributions. Obama said, "We are fundamentally transforming the United States of America." He is indeed, wiping out the fundamental principles that allowed America to prosper.

Obama claimed, "This is our moment, this is our time to turn the page on the policies of the past, to offer a new direction." Yes, he is “turning the page on the policies” of property rights and free markets. But the direction he is offering is not new but old. It is the ancient system of four centuries ago, before property rights, those basic rights which are still denied in varying degrees in many countries that have never discovered free-market capitalism, much less embraced it—and whose standard of living reflects that fact. And those countries comprise a large share of the 89 percent of the world's people who do not think capitalism is a good thing—but who look with envy on America's success and demand we redistribute a share of our wealth to them.

"Generations from now,” Obama said, “we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was our time." Yes, and they will be the worse for it—and damn you for it!