100 Chinese workers suffer mercury poisoning in CFL bulb factory

Hong Kong
January 7, 2010

More than 100 workers at a Chinese lighting factory have suffered suspected mass mercury poisoning in a case highlighting the lack of safeguards for China's factory workers, state media reported on Thursday.

The workers, with the China-listed Foshan Electrical and Lighting Co., had used liquid mercury on production lines at the plant in the China's southern manufacturing hub of the Pearl River Delta, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

"All six production lines of the workshop used liquid mercury, but some workers seldom took the trouble to wear masks," Xinhua reported, quoting Lu Ruijin, a manager at the firm. Note that this information is coming from the factory management, not the workers. There's a good chance that this may not be the whole story. For example, perhaps the workers were not even issued masks because of the added expense, or perhaps wearing cumbersome masks would have interfered with the fast pace of work and lowered production output.

Following complaints by workers over ill health, 152 workers were identified in tests as having suspected mercury poisoning.

Authorities pledged compensation for affected workers, Xinhua reported, though the state of their health wasn't made clear.

Over the past year, a series of heavy-metal poisoning cases has come to light across China, underscoring the vulnerabilities of workers and the severity of industrial pollution as a consequence of China's rapid economic growth.

A factory in eastern China's Jiangsu province was shut down after causing lead poisoning in more than 50 children, state media reported. Last year, more than 1,350 children in south-central Hunan province suffered lead poisoning after exposure to pollutants from a manganese smelting plant.

Hong Kong-based labour rights group, Labour Action China, said factory workers in the Pearl River Delta, which churns out a third of China's exports, remained vulnerable to chemical hazards and exploitation, including unfair dismissals and unpaid wages.


All those CFL bulbs have to be made in China, rather than the USA, because the EPA's workplace worker protection regulations are so strict it would be prohibitively expensive to take all the proper safety precautions to protect American workers.

 

I wonder how much much waste mercury is actually being dumped into the environment in China because of the phasing out of the incandescent bulb in the Western countries.

Although the CFL bulbs themselves each contain small ammounts of mercury, what is seldom discussed is where all that waste mercury from the Chinese factories ends up.

http://www.politicalforum.com/envir...ricans-outsourcing-their-pollution-china.html

 

[video=youtube;YPWTFuDjSmQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPWTFuDjSmQ[/video]

Trying to reduce pollution by just focusing on your own country is rather stupid when you are ignoring the effects of your policies on the pollution this creates in another country.

This is not just from energy saving bulbs. Many of the environmental regulations in America and Europe that were intended to help the environment actually make things worse by just driving all the production away to China, where costs are lower because they do not have to worry about pollution or worker safety.

 

I can only assume that you campaign this vigorously against the products of other industries when they have industrial accidents? The oil industry for eample, they've had plently of spils and explosions. Dow Chemicals for their accident in India. The nuclear industry for Chernobyl.

I'm right yes? I mean, it's not simply that you have a bee in your bonnet about energy efficient light bulbs...... right?

*Checks Anders post history* Oh dear me.

 

Yes, but the government is not trying to get people to use more oil by banning the alternatives. I am not saying the CFL "energy saving bulb" industry is worse than the oil industry.
But the CFL industry is much worse than the old incandescent light bulb factories, which have mostly all been shut down now.

 

Anders, you've started umpteen threads about fecking light bulbs. It's clear you don't care about Chinese workers, only your ability to buy a declining technology. It is that transparent.

 

so are you calling for the government to make more regulations protecting the working class... isn't that... unrepublican

 

I'm sure none of that mercury comes from their increasing use of coal. Nope, just evil, baby-eating CFL's.

 

So, BP killing workers in a platform explosion and then killing countless animals and jobs in one of the biggest environmental disasters ever - not your concern because the government isn't forcing us to use oil (although, it could be argued otherwise based on their policies that certainly encourage oil usage). But, oh my god, they're forcing newer, cleaner technology, and that's the real travesty? That's pretty crazy. You really don't care at all what damage is done to the environment or people. All you care about is throwing a fit because the government is phasing out inferior technology. I'm waiting for you to go murder people because the government tells you not to murder people.

 

And just how much of our electricity is generated from coal?

The ironic thing is that the countries/states/provinces that have been subsidising/forcing these CFL's onto everyone are also the same countries/states/provinces that had already drastically reduced the number of coal power plants supplying their electricity. In British Columbia, for example, over 86% of the power comes from hydroelectric dams. In California, which has a population of 30 million people, only 1% of the state's power is generated by coal. In Sweden, only 1.1% of the power is produced from coal.

In addition, many of the mercury emission estimates for coal power plants may be exaggerated, and are based on figures for outdated plants that were more polluting than today. Several coal power plants are already using technologies to reduce their mercury emissions:
http://www.wvcoal.com/Research-Development/efficient-and-more-economical-mercury-capture.html

It takes about 5 kilowatt hours of power to make a spiral CFL bulb, five times more than what it took to make the old incandescent bulbs. This is energy being produced from dirty Chinese coal power plants, which are more polluting than those in the West. When doing the calculations for comparison, we should also not forget that those CFL bulbs often do not last nearly as long as the manufacturers claim, especially in several specfic situations. Most consumers who buy a CFL bulb are not going to read the fine print, which tells them that putting it in a ceilling fan or enclosed lighting fixture greatly reduces its lifespan.

 

lol, I'm not clicking on your coal propaganda site.

Let's see your evidence that more mercury is released into the environment from CFL's using energy sources other than coal VS using incandescent lights on coal. You seem to be trying to claim that coal plants and incandescent lights release less mercury that CFL on non-coal energy, which is just hilarious.

I'm bored with your BS.


http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/reviews/news/4217864

 

Why does this folk tale keep doing the rounds? Greater coal power mercury problem was only ever true where untreated coal power dominated,
and is not true any longer. New injection and photochemical techniques along with conventional gasification and wet scrubber use have -and will- dramatically reduce all coal power mercury emissions:
USA Government EPA: 90% reduction by 2018, (phase 1 = 21% reduction by 2010, phase 2 = 69% further reduction by 2018 ):
"On March 15, 2005, EPA issued the Clean Air Mercury Rule to permanently cap and reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants for the first time ever. This rule makes the United States the first country in the world to regulate mercury emissions from utilities."
All about mercury and CFLs and emissions:
http://www.ceolas.net/#li19x

Not only is much of this mercury allowed to vaporize off into the air, or sometimes even dumped into the environment, but it takes more energy to make a CFL bulb than an ordinary bulb; 68% of China's energy comes from coal (versus 36% in the USA in 2012), Chinese power plants are less efficient so have to burn more coal per kilowatt generated, and China's coal is much dirtier than the grade used in the USA.

Seems like environmentalists are willing to sacrifice mercury pollution in their attempts to try to force everyone to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but the environmentalists refuse to admit it.
Instead they try to downplay the mercury pollution, while greatly exaggerating how much carbon dioxide emmissions will be reduced.

The environmental minister in Sweden, Lena Ek, said that all the CFL's being dumped into landfills, and spilling their mercury into the ground water, represented an "acute crisis".
The real crisis, of course, is that those "energy saving" bulbs aren't saving us any energy because the nights are so cold.
(the old bulbs are only "inefficient" because they "waste" more of their energy on giving off heat rather than light)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050961/Thousands-dying-afford-heating-bills.html
The government wants you to "save money" on electricity, then die from the cold! Not particularly a bright idea, huh?

 

[video=youtube;9rHItcPI-TE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rHItcPI-TE[/video]

One Chinese factory worker anonymously described the situation:

"Sometimes the mercury would spill all over the floor. Some of it would mix with the water on the ground. Other bits would spill away, and we were just wearing shorts and sandals."

 

Ah, the good old days of Anders and his light bulb rants.

I'm not sure if the stores sell CFLs any more, but I've still got a house full of them. The later-gen CFLs were very reliable, and the dang things just keep on going. If LED bulb prices were stable, I'd probably buy LEDs and swap them in, but as LED prices are still dropping, it seems more cost-effective to keep the CFLs until they burn out.

And yes, I do take the CFLs to the local toxdrop when they die.

 

Thank you for being part of the 2 to 4%