7 Best CFL Bulbs For The Green Shopper

Over its lifetime, a single CFL can save the consumer $80 or more, depending on local electric rates.

But all CFL bulbs aren't equal. Some have lower mercury content than others, and some last much longer. Unfortunately, you can't tell the best of the best by their labels - or the U.S. government Energy Star logo. Some Energy Star labelled bulbs could not be legally sold in Europe due to excessive mercury content.

An Environmental Working Group investigation has identified 7 bulb lines made by Earthmate, Litetronics, Sylvania, Feit, MaxLite and Philips that trump the rest. These bulbs, listed in our Green Lighting Guide contain a fraction of the toxic mercury allowed by Energy Star, reducing the mercury contamination from a broken bulb. All last 8-15,000 hours, dramatically longer than the Energy Star standard of 6,000 hours, and also offer high efficiency.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[JustAHumanOnEarth]

My blood mercury levels rose just reading this article.

[quindy]

These bulbs will last long if you have updated wiring. In the building where I live it makes no difference if I put in old fashioned or energy saving bulbs - they both last between two to four weeks. When I told that to an electrician he told me the old wiring is the cause. So, don't waste your money on expensive bulbs if your wiring is not up to date.

[sueinmn]

I just watched a special the other night about these bulbs are causing health issues for certain people. They bring on migrains, can cause epileptic seizures and people with chrones break out in rashes. Some health groups are trying to lobby to require warning labels on packaging. It was determined the UV levels are too high for some. Beware and do your homework.

[gjohntheterrible]

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1232049898/ref=sr_pg_1?ie=UTF8&rs=&keywords=led%20light%20bulb&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aled%20light%20bulb&page=1

[JScott]

I bought one like the 3rd one in the pic and it didn't last very long at all-waste of money.
Hope they got better. And what about those LED ones, the 'flashlights' seem to be plenty bright, plus they must be bright enough as they are used in some automobile taillights.

[KillTheMessenger]

Are you using them in a properly ventilated lamp fixture? Unlike incandescent lamps the electronic ballasts in CFLs will fail if they are running hot because of insufficient air circulation. That's not a failure of the design, it's a compatibility problem. Just because one can screw a CFL into a fixture does not mean that fixture is suitable for CFLs. There are warnings on CFL packages but it is easy to overlook them because decades of incandescent use has made us unaware of the thermal problem.

[Specialed]

LED bulbs are far superior in terms of energy usage and environmental impact.

[Wilburrr]

Where can you find them for less than the Bailout?

[gjohntheterrible]

They were selling them at Sams in a pack of 3 for $10.50. That is where I got mine. They might carry it at Lowes or Home Depot I haven't checked though.

[JEP57]

The problem with these flourescent bulbs is the way they look. If I have a nice looking lamp where you can view the bulbs, I don't want those hideous looking corkscrew bulbs wrecking the overall look. Even the bulb shaped ones have that clunky white base where it screws in. If the government mandates these in the future, I'll probably stock up on enough incandescent bulbs to last me several years, unless they can manufacture them in the traditional shape. Then I won't mind buying them.

[KillTheMessenger]

Can anyone tell me why a regular glass light bulb is supposed to be aesthetically pleasing? Truth to be told, it isn't. We have just gotten used to them and they look "normal". But from an artistic point of view there are few things more ugly than a standard issue light bulb. And from a lighting perspective there are few things less functional, either.

CFL's, like regular bulbs, require well thought out fixtures to be good looking. And on top of that they require fixtures which were designed for CFLs to avoid the early thermal death problem that many people describe.

[sueinmn]

incandescent lighting has always been called a "warmer light" for the home. these flourescent lighting are a "cold lighting" but bright for offices. they have changed to different shades of office flourescents. (effects on workers) ever notice how it changes colors of furniture or even your walls? We spend fortunes trying to have that look we like in our homes so I agree these are UGLY. I can think of other areas of long term "saving energy" therefore the enviroment. Plus the little bit of mercury in these do add up! one spill like the TVA in Tennesse costs more in enviroment and $$ losses than I bet all the incandescent bulbs through out the nation.

[ohiomark]

Make sure you Libs don't drop any of these stupid CFL's, because if you do and they break, you will have to call the Haz-Mat Unit to your home to clean up the mercury in your carpet.

[research]

Yeah, the LED lights are now the most efficient,. Cleaner too. No Mercury.

[wdw505]

too expensive though

[KillTheMessenger]

Research, what's the mercury release of the mines which produce Gallium and Indium?

I don't know. But if I had to take a shot at it I would say that I don't want to live anywhere close to them. How about you?

[American04]

Replacing an incandescent bulb with CFL, reduces10 incandescent bulbs containing lead fuses and bases from being dumped into our land fills. The EPA says there is no amount of lead that can be used safely in our homes; mercury today is used in many of our vaccines. Replacing one incandescent bulb with a CFL reduces 250 mg of mercury from our environment produced by coal fire power plants – this is enough to damage a 25 acre lake.

[Gatogorra]

Yes, there's mercury in vaccines and it's in my twins in massive amounts. Their blood challenge tests weren't surprising to us, though-- our son has autism and our daughter had a mysterious language delay that involved an inability to feel pain and up to fifteen tantrums a day. True to form, both children began recovering almost miraculously from treatment...to the tune of $30,000 a year out of pocket. Most of the mercury comes from vaccines but coal-fired plant fumes don't help nor do dump sites, fly ash, etc. Point being, they just don't need any more.

Save natural resources (children). Wait for something better. Until then, use led or incandescent. CFL tend to quietly explode when they age or the base detaches from glass, leaking fumes when turned on. The 4-5 mg of mercury in them is about 200 times what it takes to cognitively injure an infant. True, the hg from CFL is not in as dangerous a form if spilled unless it's heated, burned at the dump, etc., but "not as dangerous" is relative.

[wdw505]

make led lights more powerful and less expensive then.......until then cfl will be used ........i bought and installed a few flats of them at my shop........4' Fluorescent led Replacement are still over 55 dollars if purchased in bulk

[JustAHumanOnEarth]

I agree. I don't want my house filled with HG. Al Gore must have money in GE. I love how they downplay the use of HG in a lightbulb that will most likely expose my kids to toxic levels over time. Just follow the money...

[KillTheMessenger]

CFLs do not release mercury unless you smash them. And even if you did that, almost none of it would enter your body.

But fluorescent lights will lead to significantly lower energy consumption and that will lead to lower mercury release in coal fired power plants.

I understand the fear of mercury and if you are looking for mercury sources, lead etc., you can easily find many many more than CFLs. Without any recycling at all these lamps would only amount to 0.1% of total mercury emissions. If you can detect large amounts of mercury in your children's body, there must be another source and it would be worthwhile to find it.

[irtrad17]

Are LEDs dim-able? CFLs seem not to be and make a weird noise as well. Do dimming light switches conserve electricity?

[Mort]

I don't know about commercial setups, but on the bench they will dim depending on the voltage. Not the swing you find on incandescent, but yes. And they're cool, not hot like all other kinds of lights.

[research]

Yes. Leds are dimmable by all known methods. Led dim with the least change in color as well.

However: Leds are fast. They will flicker awful unless designed with a 60Hz filter.

[KillTheMessenger]

Some CFLs are designed to be dimmed, but in general the electronics in a dimmer and the electronics in either CFLs or LED based lamps do not play well together. I would remove the dimmer and add a light switch with two or more positions so you can have different (but fixed) levels of lighting for your room. That's much better.

[mick7191]

Holy nerdfest, Batman.

[alvdh1]

LED's contain no mercury and prices are beginning to fall. They last for 50,000 hours and are 50% more efficient than CFL's and 85% more efficient than incandescents. When you factor in lower energy usage and bulb replacements, over the 50,000 hours, they are far cheaper than the competition despite the higher upfront costs. If people would stop waiting for lower prices, the demand would pick up and prices would fall. Lighting is responsible for 23% of our electrical consumption. Does anyone remember what a TI calculator cost in the early 70's and what they cost now. The sample principles apply to LED's since they operate with computer chips. I an in no way associated with this site, but Earth LED has some pretty nice LED replacement bulbs. If you have 6" or 4" downlights, Cree, Inc. has fabulous LED replacements that use 12 watts and provide the same quality of light as a 75 Watt incandescent light.

[gjohntheterrible]

I installed a light kit on one of my bedroom fans this past weekend and we brought LED lights. My wife loves them because they are not too bright. The packaging said that they cost 16 cents a year to operate at 40W's.

[ObjectiveRealist]

That's equivalent light output to a 40 Watt light bulb. The power consumption of a single LED is around 1/1000th of a Watt, and several of them together (much fewer than 1000) have the same output (typically measured in lumens, but convertible to Watts) as an incandescent bulb that consumes 40 Watts.

Environmentally friendly advertising still has a way to go.

[KillTheMessenger]

LEDs do not "operate with computer chips". Computer chips are silicon and silicon is a very difficult material to use in light emitting applications. LEDs for visible radiation are GaAs, InGaN, AlGaN and similar III-V semiconductors. These are very different types of materials, even is some production steps are similar. The latest LED technologies use organic semiconductors (OLED) and that's probably where the future has to be.

Unlike silicon both Gallium and Indium are rare elements and it is not clear if we can actually satisfy the world's needs for current type LED products with these semiconductors (only 200 tons of Ga are being produced annually, half of which is already recycled material and it seems to be we make 500 tons of Indium). All of these metals are byproducts of zinc, lead, tin and copper refining, so their environmental impact is large, even though it's not as obvious as with mercury.

Sorry... there is no such thing as a free lunch. LEDs, for sure, are not. Future OLEDs, however, might be as close to the real thing as nature will ever let us come.

[ObjectiveRealist]

With Linux kernel support for 1-wire, USB gadgets or probably several other hardware options, LEDs can "operate with computer chips".
:D

[WilliePilgrim]

Turns out one in five polar bears in Greenland are hermaphroditic and unlikely to reproduce due to bionaccumulation of heavy metals, primarily mercury. I'm all for high efficiency in our energy use, but these compact flourescents bring along with them a suite of problems real and potential, not the least of which is mercury, and as a number of commentors have indidcated, they don't last much longer and they use a lot more energy to make them. Maybe this "debate is over" rhetoric is just as inapplicable to CFLs as it is to AGW.

[OhioVoterAlso]

And a question -- are any of these light bulbs made in the United States?

[wdw505]

no, made in china with extra lead

[gjohntheterrible]

One thing about the Chinese is that they never skimp on the lead.

[mathme]

My screw-in florescent bulbs burn out surprisingly quickly. In my bedroom, I started replacing incandescent bulbs as the burned out in a fixture of 4. I went through 2 florescent bulbs before any of the others burned out and, frankly got tired of replacing them, so I went back to incandescents.

Something I began wondering about was the pollution that goes into the manufacturing and disposal of all of these little florescent bulbs-- not only concerns about the gasses involved, but look at all of that plastic, and don't forget that there are electronics tucked in there-- in the whole scheme of things, are these bulbs *really* all that green? I've decided that I'll most likely hold out for more affordable and practical LED-based lighting-- I've never seen an LED burn out.

[mathme]

And :) --

I feel more comfortable with *no* mercury in my bulbs rather than a little.

[KillTheMessenger]

Do you deliberately smash your light bulbs after use? May I ask why?

[Tom95134]

The low cost CFLs can fail quickly (its a manufacturing thing) so you really have to buy the more expensive ones. Also, unless you get CFLs rated for outdoor use they have a short life due to temperature changes.

[mathme]

If a $10 light bulb is "low cost," then forget it.I won't be chucking the working florescents or anything, but I won't be scrambling to replace them with more florescents, either. Just the other day another florescent burned out while its incandescent compatriots in the same fixture, that have been there since before I installed the now deceased florescent, are doing just fine.

I'm not going to be tossing more mercury, plastic, and electronics into the trash just so I can feel like I'm doing something "green." I even got my family and friends to start using these things, but I've lost faith.

[KillTheMessenger]

I have the cheapest CFLs (25 cents a piece after electricity company rebate) and they last just fine. The "more expensive" is better meme is an industry canard. ALL lighting companies DESIGN their lights to last a limited number of hours. Most of the engineering effort in the R&D divisions is spent on making sure that you will have to replace that light shortly after the guaranteed number of hours.

[HeresHoping]

Does anyone know if you can paint a CFL or LED? Old ladies like me look better in "pink" light but the only pink bulbs I've been able to find are incandescent. Thanks.

[wdw505]

you can buy colored led lights in a wide array of colors........including pink and red

[Sumocat]

I have that problem in my house, and from what I can tell, the problems are with the fixture. In particular, one of my bathrooms has a four-bulb fixture. One of the sockets is different from the other three, and it burned out two fluorescent bulbs within a day. I swapped an incandescent back in, which appeared fine until it burned out a week later. I leave the socket empty now. The incandescent seems to have been more resistant to whatever electrical problem is in the fixture, but the bulbs weren't the problem.

[KillTheMessenger]

That socket does probably not have enough cooling. The electronic ballast of a CFL will fail almost instantly if it gets too hot. Incandescent lamps will survive longer, but if that socket manages to overheat an incandescent, it will, for sure, destroy CFLs.