Light Bulbs Advertised as 'Green' Contain Arsenic and Lead: Study

Those energy-saving little LED bulbs advertised as eco-friendly -- and used in strings of holiday lights and in car headlights -- actually contain toxic lead, arsenic and some other bad stuff, new research shows.

Alarming? Sure. But in a surprise twist, a study author says: Buy them anyway.
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As long as the bulbs aren't crushed, they pose no danger. And for saving electricity, they hands-down beat Thomas Edison's invention, the incandescent bulb, as well as the traditional bulb's successor, mercury-containing compact fluorescent bulbs.

"We're not recommending that people throw them away. These things have a long life expectancy," Oladele Ogunseitan, chair of University of California Irvine's Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention, told Consumer Ally about LED lights.

You may have read appeals from your electric utility to switch holiday lights to strings of newfangled energy-saving "light-emitting diodes," or LEDs. Maybe you own a flashlight or camping headlamp powered by the tiny bulbs. For research published in the science journal Environmental Science & Technology, Ogunseitan and his colleagues examined crushed holiday LED lights in a quest for health hazards. (That such examination hadn't been done before is, in itself, a "surprise," he says.)

Oddly, they found the danger level varied by bulb color.

White bulbs overall appeared to have relatively low toxicity: "they contain less copper and do not contain arsenic or lead," the study states.

Red lights contained up to eight times the toxic lead permitted under California law. In general, brighter, high-intensity bulbs were more hazardous than others.

"We find the low-intensity red LEDs exhibit significant cancer and non-cancer potentials due to the high content of arsenic and lead," the study states.

Breathing toxic fumes from a single broken bulb wouldn't automatically cause cancer, but could prove a tipping point on top of chronic exposure to other carcinogens, according to a university press release. Toddlers could be harmed, Ogunseitan warned, if they mistook the bright lights for candy.

That's not exactly what you want to hear about an "environmentally friendly" light bulb.



What to do: • If your LED bulbs stop working or break open, do what you're supposed to do when your compact fluorescent bulbs go out -- consider it hazardous waste and never toss it in the trash.
• Wearing gloves and a mask, sweep up broken bulbs with a designated broom kept for this hazardous purpose (more tips here).
• Take the contaminated pieces to your community's hazardous-waste facility. (As an aside, chances are a business in your community takes back intact compact fluorescent bulbs, as seen here.)

On the bright side, LED lights tested by Ogunseitan didn't contain mercury, which is one if its touted high points. Compact fluorescent bulbs do contain mercury; when broken, mercury can be released as a vapor. "That's a big problem," Ogunseitan says. "Don't breathe the dust."

LED lights have been considered the next great thing for green lighting, and Ogunseitan says consumers still should buy them. Manufacturers of compact flourescent bulbs haven't been able to find a substitute for mercury after a decade of trying, he says. The makers of LED lights could switch to lead-free soldering to improve their toxic troubles. Until then, he calls for policies at the state and local government levels to make sure that people have ways to dispose of these "green" bulbs responsibly.

Written by Sally Deneen

How to Make Eco-Friendly Home Improvements

Green Remodeling and Repairs Can Make Your Home Healthier
From Earth Talk,

Most homes are not lacking in ways they can be healthier for family and kinder to the environment. For one, indoor air quality is a serious problem affecting millions of homes. Studies show that air within homes can be more seriously polluted than the air outdoors—even in the largest and most industrialized cities.

Changes in Air Quality Call for Eco-Friendly Home Improvements
According to Glenn Haege, a master handyman who hosts a national radio show on home repair, as our homes and apartments have become more energy efficient and airtight, “humidity levels from cooking and breathing tend to increase, causing mold and mildew.” Harmful chemicals, he says, from construction materials, insulation, furniture, carpeting, padding, paints, solvents and household cleaners, drawn by this moist atmosphere, combine to contaminate the indoor air which then stays trapped inside.

Eco-Friendly Home Improvements: Start by Testing Indoor Air
The first step in remedying this problem is to test your indoor air. Pure Air and Envirologix, among others, sell inexpensive and easy-to-use indoor-air quality testing kits. Once you get an idea of the contaminants floating around your home, you can get to work replacing the offending sources accordingly. Green superstores such as the Environmental Home Center, Green Building Supply and Oikos offer a wealth of greener and healthier building supplies and materials. Also, BuildingGreen.com offers a free online “GreenSpec” database with detailed listings for over 2,000 environmentally preferable building products.

Natural Products Can Help with Eco-Friendly Home Improvements
Materials outside the home can also contribute to health problems. One example is pressure-treated lumber, which contains a form of cyanide to keep pests away. Kids who play on backyard jungle gyms and decks made of such material can develop rashes and skin infections. Cedar wood is a naturally pest-resistant alternative that, while more expensive, is a kinder-gentler option that will stand the test of time.

Simple Eco-Friendly Home Improvements Anyone Can Do
Other ways to green-up the home include replacing traditional incandescent light bulbs with more energy-efficient compact fluorescents, as well as switching out conventional hot water heaters in favor of solar hot water heaters or on-demand tankless versions. And for saving on water, replacing traditional showerheads and toilets with pressurized low-flow alternatives can save gallons per day while generating cost savings on utility bills. Likewise, capturing rainwater and shower “gray-water” to irrigate the garden is another smart move.

Do-It-Yourself Resources for Eco-Friendly Home Improvements
Do-it-yourselfers can find hundreds of websites offering tips on green building and repair. Glenn Haege’s MasterHandyman.com and NaturalHandyMan.com both offer a plethora of articles and links and are good resources if you’re looking to improve your own handy skills while staying true to your green ideals. Two helpful books are: Green Remodeling, by David Johnston and Kim Master; and Green Building Materials: A Guide to Product Selection and Specification, by Ross Spiegel and Dru Meadows. For less handy homeowners, finding a handyman well versed in green building issues might be a better way to go. The Natural Handyman Network offers a free online search tool that should offer some promising leads.

Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy: What is it?

The term “renewable energy” describes energy sources which occur naturally in the environment and cannot be depleted as they are used. Renewable energy sources include wind energy and solar energy, among others. These are green power sources—clean-burning, non-depleting energy supplies that won’t pollute the planet or cause any other long-term environmental issues.

Why use Renewable Energy?

Using renewable energy sources rather than fossil fuels such as gas, oil, and coal are desirable for several reasons. First, supplies of these fossil fuels are limited—they will eventually run out, and steps must be taken to provide alternative energy sources to replace them. Second, burning fossil fuels causes pollution, most notably the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that contribute to global warming and the Greenhouse Effect. Burning fossil fuels also causes air pollution and acid rain, both of which have a negative impact on the health of ecosystems and habitats around the world.

By signing the Kyoto Protocol, the UK government has committed to reducing greenhouse emissions by at least 12.5% by the year 2012, and to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by the year 2050.

To help meet this goal, the government has pledged to create alternative energy sources such that 10% of UK electricity will come from renewable energy sources by the year 2010, with the intention of doubling this figure by 2020. Currently less than 5% of the UK’s electricity comes from renewable sources.

What Alternative Energy Sources are Available?

There are several candidates when it comes to searching for an effective solution to the energy problem. An efficient supply of green power from renewable sources might include the following:

• Wind Power
• Solar Energy
• Hydroelectric Power
• Geothermal Energy
• Bio-fuel
• Atomic Energy

Each of these energy sources has some good and bad points, and has the potential to be an efficient source of power in different situations.

Wind Power

Wind is an enormous and never-ending supply of green power, and has already been harnessed and used as a power source for several centuries, in the form of windmills. With cost-effective technology to harness the power of wind already developed, this type of green power is the most popular choice for a clean, renewable energy source. The turbines that generate wind energy work in the same way as windmills do, and the energy they generate is stored in batteries for redistribution through the UK energy grid. The only real downside to this type of energy generation is, of course, that on windless days no energy is generated—however, as more “wind farms” are placed throughout the country, back-up energy can be stored for such situations.

Solar Energy

Capturing and storing the sun’s energy is a popular way of reducing electricity requirements in many green homes. Solar power can be used to heat water, and the sun’s energy can be captured using solar panels or solar cells. Solar panels can be efficiently integrated into the roof of a building, and provide quiet, pollution-free energy.

The main disadvantages of solar energy are that it can only be captured during the day, and that energy capture is reduced on days of medium to heavy cloud cover. However, batteries can be used to store solar energy. Another consideration is that providing solar energy to a home involves large start-up costs, however over the twenty to thirty year life of the solar energy system, very little is required to maintain the system.

Hydroelectric Power

Hydroelectric power harnesses the energy created by running water, and converts this energy into electricity. This is an efficient technology which is widely used in many countries; however in the UK less than 1% of energy is derived using hydroelectric systems. If all possible sites of hydroelectric conversion were developed in the UK, the total energy production would meet around 3% of the country’s electricity needs (the current figure is around 0.8%).

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is heat energy stored deep within the earth. In some areas, this heat rises to the surface of the earth, and can be used to heat water. There is currently one geothermal power plant operating in the UK, and ground source heat pumps are becoming increasingly popular in UK homes. This is an extremely efficient method of generating electricity however the geological requirements of harnessing geothermal energy make it a limited option for use in this country.

Bio-fuel

Bio-fuel is any substance, whether solid, liquid or gas, that is derived from biological material. This broad definition can include almost any combustible biological substance—from cow dung to raw plant materials, alcohols and oil. The most common use of bio-fuels is in powering vehicles, with many new car models able to run on biodiesel (made from oil and fat) or alcohols such as ethanol and butanol.

The main down-side of bio-fuels is that, unlike most other renewable energy sources, the combustion of such fuels produces greenhouse gases, making bio-fuel the least green of the green power sources.

Atomic Energy

Also known as nuclear energy, atomic energy technology harnesses the heat generated by the splitting of atoms. This process is called nuclear fission. Approximately 20% of the UK’s energy is generated using this technology. Atomic energy generation is extremely efficient and produces no greenhouse gases. The most significant draw-back involves safety issues in the handling and disposal of the radioactive waste that is a by-product of atomic reactions. However, the UK government is stringent in adhering to safety policies and there are regulations in place to ensure that atomic waste is disposed of safely.

Pacific Plastic Trash Island by thechicecologist.com

A very troubling recent find in our ocean was a huge ‘island’ of trash twice the size of Texas and more than 30 feet deep. Just imagine a 3 story Wal-Mart sprawling from the Mexico border up from California and Arizona, through Nevada, Idaho and the whole west coast (including Oregon and Washington) and you have and idea what I’m talking about. The overall area of this behemoth is twice that of the Continental United States given its depth. Now imagine that there are TWO of them: the Western Garbage Patch just north of Hawaii, and the Eastern Garbage Patch just east of Japan.

Garbage Island

I can’t say it was that recent, as it was predicted by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) back in 1988 and has been tracked (and growing) ever since. So why has it taken so long to get out to the public and why are there still people who don’t believe in it’s existence?

pacific gyre plastic I keep putting ‘island’ in single quotes because it’s not quite what you may imagine, instead of a big mass of floating plastic bottles and trash, it’s actually more like a plastic soup, constantly moving just below the surface of the water. This is why there are no real pictures of the island and you can’t see it on Google Earth, or in satellite images. Without pictures of a so called ‘trash island‘, people are less likely to believe in its existence and the media has no stimulating images or graphics to catch our attention with.

Additionally the plastics have been affected with photodegradation, which causes the plastic to break down into smaller pieces (while still remaining a polymer) and are ingested by smaller and smaller animals throughout the food chain. This allows the plastic to penetrate the entire food chain from the bottom up.

As an example, say some plankton (very small animals at the bottom of the food chain) eat some of this plastic. Then, a hundred of these plankton are then eaten by a small fish, like a Sardine. Then a Mackerel eats 25 of these Sardines. Then a Tuna eats 10 of these Mackerels. Then you eat a Tuna. Well guess what, you just ate a bunch of plastic, just how much? 100 (plankton) x 25 (Sardines) x 10 (Mackerels) = 25,000 pieces! Through a process called bioaccumulation, the amount of a substance is concentrated as it is passed up through the food chain to the top predator, scary huh?
plastic island

Plastic pulled up from the Pacific Gyre by Algalita Marine Research Foundation

A five-year survey of Fulmars found in the North Sea region found that 95 percent of these seabirds contained plastic in their stomachs. Studies of the Northeast Atlantic plankton have found plastic in samples dating back to the 1960s, with a significant increase in abundance in time.
-United Nations Environment Program


Ocean PlasticAt this point, the best solution is to stem the cause through a reduction in waste entering our oceans, particularly plastics. I am a huge proponent of a reduction or elimination of disposable plastic bottles and plastic bags through reuse of durable goods like metal containers and canvas bags.

Several cleanup ideas have surfaced which vary from a floating recycling plant, to the melding of plastic into a Utopian island. The most practical and organized appears to come from the Environmental Cleanup Coalition which proposes a large floating cleanup flotilla with an accompanying algae and tuna aquaculture operation to supports costs.

Further research and updates on the Pacific trash gyre can be found on Algalita Marine Research Foundation‘s website.

You can't ignore the benefits of eco-friendly schools By Debra Lau Whelan

Maybe it’s the waterless urinals or the geothermal heating and cooling system buried 515 feet underground. Or perhaps it’s the motion-activated faucets or the paints and furnishings made from low-volatile organic compounds. But one thing’s for sure: Great Seneca Creek Elementary is unlike most schools.

Since opening its doors in the fall of 2006, this school in Germantown, MD, has hosted more than two dozen tours for administrators, architects, parents, and the media—just about anyone who’s interested in studying its environmentally-friendly ways. “It’s a place where people feel they can do their work more effectively, because it’s an environment they want to be in,” says Principal Greg Edmundson about his school, the only one in the state to receive certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

The folks at Fossil Ridge High School in Fort Collins, CO, know exactly what he’s talking about. Their 296,000-square-foot building—which runs on wind and solar power and boasts an irrigation pond—recently earned a silver rating from USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, a rigorous set of national standards for environmentally sustainable construction. “This is a dream building,” says Fossil Ridge’s media specialist, Lana Fain. “My students have told me that the space and lighting makes it easier for them to focus. They just love being here.”

Some 50 schools, from California to Maine, have gone totally green—and hundreds more will soon follow suit. Why is eco-friendly design one of the hottest trends in K–12 education? Because the environmental, academic, financial, and health benefits are impossible to ignore, says Bob Moje, president of the Charlottesville, VA-based VMDO Architects, which mainly serves the school and university market. “People are more enlightened now about why it’s good to be green,” he says about the change in attitude of his clients over the last five years. “We’ve gone from people saying, 'We don’t want to be different’ to 'We don’t want to be left out.’”

It’s easy to understand why. On average, green schools use 33 percent less energy and 32 percent less water, according to USGBC. Seneca Creek, for instance, skims about $60,000 off its annual energy bill and conserves about 43 percent—or 360,000 gallons—of water each year. And Fossil Ridge is 60 percent more energy efficient, saving about $11,500 annually on water alone. If all new school construction and renovations starting today were designed green, energy savings alone would total $20 billion over the next 10 years. But there’s more to going green than just dollar signs. With the average school building lasting 42 years, many are aging and beginning to fall apart, says “Building Minds, Minding Buildings,” a 2006 report by the American Federation of Teachers. And currently, 14 million kids—more than a quarter of our nation’s students—attend schools that are considered substandard or dangerous to their health.

Indeed, a growing number of studies show that a school’s physical condition—especially its lighting and indoor air quality—directly affect student performance. “Daylighting in Schools” by the energy efficiency consulting firm Heschong Mahone Group, examined 21,000 students in three elementary school districts in California, Washington, and Colorado and found that kids in classrooms with abundant daylight had up to 25 percent higher learning rates and test scores in reading and math than their peers in rooms with less natural light. A 2005 Turner Construction survey of green buildings found that 70 percent of districts with sustainable schools reported improved student performance. And Global Green USA’s Green Schools Report says that standardized test scores dramatically shot up at Charles Young Elementary School in Washington, DC, after it was overhauled in 1997.

It also makes perfect sense that eco-friendly schools affect absenteeism, teacher-retention rates, and health-care costs. One half of our nation’s 115,000 schools have problems linked to poor indoor air quality, says Global Green, and since students and teachers spend most of their time indoors, more asthma attacks and respiratory infections mean more sick days.

Edmundson, the principal at Seneca Creek, knows the benefits of going green firsthand. So far, he’s had zero teacher turnover, and last year his students met the state’s attendance benchmarks. When it comes to performance, the numbers say it all: 81 percent of his third graders and 87 percent of his fourth graders met or exceeded the state standards for reading, and 77 percent of third graders and 91 percent of fourth graders met the same requirements for math. “Our kids were in the ideal learning environment to succeed,” Edmundson says. “There’s no way you can have a negative return in this type of environment.”

For the past 11 years, the nonprofit group Alliance to Save Energy has worked with school districts to train teachers and media specialists in “green education” that adheres to state standards in language arts, science, math, and social studies. And many states, including California, Maryland, and New York, have been extremely receptive, says Swarupa Ganguli, the alliance’s senior program manager. The whole point is to “cultivate a whole generation of leaders” who are going to lead environmentally-conscious lives, she says.

School Librarian Karen Kibler at Iroquois High School in Elma, NY, is one of the alliance’s most devoted members. She’s spent the last decade showing teens how to teach younger students about everything from recycling to remembering to turn off the lights. Up to 30 members of her Energy Saving Club visit local elementary schools each month to lecture about caring for the environment. Her green movement has spread to the rest of the school, with teachers and even the janitorial staff helping to significantly cut waste and bring down electricity bills.

Seneca Creek School Librarian Lisa Norris has also done her share, spending a large part of last year helping her central office select wireless tablet computers, energy-efficient flat-screen monitors, and other eco-friendly technology. And she’s ordered dozens of print resources, including Angela Royston’s The Life and Times of a Drop of Water (Raintree, 2006), Chris Van Allsburg’s Just a Dream (Houghton, 1990), and such classics as Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (Random, 1971), to help support the school’s green focus.

Media specialists are following Kibler’s and Norris’s lead, taking advantage of the rapidly growing green movement around them. Sandra Latzer of the pre-K–12 Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey is a key member of her school’s green initiative. And Rachel Berkey of Manhattan’s Churchill School and Center, a K–12 school for kids with learning disabilities, has made her library as paperless as possible. But when it comes to making environmentally-conscious decisions, there’s still one area in which librarians feel helpless—textbook purchases. That’s because those decisions are typically made at the district or state level. And although big publishing houses like McGraw-Hill, Scholastic, Penguin, HarperCollins, and Random House now use recycled paper and packaging, the educational textbook market is lagging severely behind, says Erin Johnson, program manager of the Green Press Initiative, an organization that works to preserve endangered forests. The reasons range from the complicated manufacturing process used to make textbooks more durable to the bureaucratic K–12 market. “But it can be done,” Johnson says, adding that textbooks and other educational materials represent about 20 percent of the book publishing market, consuming the equivalent of four million trees. That’s why her nonprofit group is asking school librarians, teachers, state agencies, and parent-teacher associations to urge those who make textbook purchases to raise this important issue with publishers (www.greenpressinitiative.org/textbook-signatory.htm).

What exactly makes a school green? Words like “green” and “sustainable” simply refer to the things we do to reduce our carbon footprint, or the amount of carbon dioxide emissions we produce. Generally speaking, a green school is one that tries to be as kind to the environment as possible. For example, Cow Hollow preschool in San Francisco, CA, is considered sustainable because it has an active compost heap and community garden, uses green products and pesticides, and incorporates eco-friendly lessons into its curriculum.

Green building, on the other hand, refers to schools like the Sidwell Friends Middle School in Washington, DC, which was specifically designed and constructed to benefit students, teachers, and the environment. Although it’s impossible to track the number of schools like Churchill that have adopted green policies, the rising number of LEED-certified schools gives us some idea of just how quickly the movement has taken off. To keep up with the growing trend, in April, USGBC was forced to create an entirely new category called LEED for Schools. Since then, more than 50 new schools have been certified and 400 are registered to become certified, says Rachel Gutter, USGBC’s LEED sector manager for K–12 schools. And an additional eight schools are registered for certification under LEED for Existing Buildings.

Before there was a LEED for Schools, there was the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), a California-based organization that started in 2000 to help districts in the state design and build green schools. Like USGBC, CHPS offers third-party verification that schools have met the highest performance standards, says Charles Eley, CHPS’s executive director.

So far, more than 120 California schools have been built using CHPS’s guidelines, including those in the Los Angeles Unified School District, San Diego City Schools, Santa Clara Unified School District, and the Burbank Unified School District. And seven states, including New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire, have adopted their own version of CHPS.

Recognizing the benefits of high-performance schools, a growing number of districts and state legislatures are mandating sustainable design for future construction projects. New Jersey public schools requires that all new buildings incorporate LEED guidelines; the Pennsylvania legislature passed a bill to provide financial incentives to public schools that achieve LEED silver certification; and Montgomery County in Maryland recently passed legislation that requires all county-built or funded buildings exceeding 10,000 square feet achieve a LEED silver rating. In late 2005, the New York City Council created a set of sustainable standards for public construction projects, making New York the first and largest school district to have green school design, construction, and operation guidelines required by law.

Anne Schopf, a partner at the Seattle-based Mahlum Architects, and the chief designer behind Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Kirkland, WA, says new state and local requirements to go green have led to a lot of pressure from the top down for school districts to tow the line. And although her firm has upward of 20 ongoing K–12 projects in the pipeline, Schopf says, “It’s still an uphill battle” to convince some districts that “you can’t afford not to do it.”

And she’s right. School buildings—an $80 billion industry in 2006–2008—represent the largest construction sector in the country, says USGBC. Yet the cost of constructing a green school only runs about 1.5 percent to 2 percent more than a conventional building, with the payback averaging about two years, says Greg Kats, managing director of Good Energies, a clean-energy venture capital firm, and author of the 2006 report “Greening America’s Schools: Costs and Benefits.” Building a green school can save $100,000 a year—enough to hire two new teachers, buy 150 new computers, or purchase 5,000 new textbooks, the report says.

Going green is the “right thing” for schools to do, says Kats. Otherwise, “their risk of obsolescence is quite large,” he adds. “In five years, every new school is going to be green. So why would anyone want to send their kid to a school that’s unhealthy?”