More Mercury Factoids: Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, Part 3 – Stop Reading Steven Milloy and Go Buy the Light Bulbs

Note: this is part of a series: earlier posts can be found here and here. I hope this is the last post I have to write on this topic. It truly is a non-issue. But I doubt that I’m going to be done with this any time soon.

If you’ve come searching for information on CFLs and mercury because you read an article by Steven Milloy (notorious for coining the term “junk science”, and no I’m not dignify his effluvium with a link from Impact Analysis) or a news article which quoted him uncritically, I’m not going to warn you to “consider the source”. Head over to PZ Myers if you want an opinion about the quality of Mr. Milloy “journalism”. However, if Steven Milloy is the one who got you all worried about this, let’s face it, you got owned. Read on, and you might be able to change that.

Mr. Milloy quotes two facts in his article – that the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) detected a mercury concentration in air 6-fold higher than a tolerable level in the bedroom of Ms. Brandy Bridges’s home, and that the DEP recommended she contact a cleanup contractor to mitigate the spill; the problem with a cleanup contractor is that they quoted Ms. Bridges a price of $2,000. Let’s start with the second one. Now the Ellsworth American news article that was the original source for this story also says that the DEP inspector recommended to Ms. Bridges that she didn’t attempt to clean up the spill, and call a cleanup contractor. The state’s version of the story was:

The homeowner expressed particular nervousness about exposures to mercury even in low numbers. Based on that concern, the responder explained two ways to minimize exposures to mercury: one way was to wear respiratory protection and another way was to hire a clean-up contractor. Since the homeowner did not have any respirator protection, the responder referred her to a commercial clean-up contractor. The responder further suggested that the homeowner talk with their homeowner’s insurance company to see if her policy would cover the cost of a professional clean-up contractor.

The DEP inspector also encouraged her to speak with a state toxicologist, who said that the potential mercury exposure was low and of negligible concern. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t feel that Ms. Bridges got the best advice here, with regard to mitigation. Respiratory protection (i.e. wearing respirators) clearly wasn’t the right answer. Respirators are only for limited-duration use, involve professional judgment to select the proper type for a particular hazard, and require user training and fit-testing to be effective. However, telling someone who’s concerned about chemical exposure to simply not worry about it is generally ineffective. It is better if you can recommend that they take some kind of tangible action; it may not be necessary to reduce risks, and it may not have high effectiveness. What it accomplishes is to provide some sense of individual control over the situation, which is a factor in reducing anxiety and outrage over a health risk situation. Taking into consideration the air monitoring data collected by the state, a course of action that could have provided some benefit, could have given the homeowner the sense of managing the situation and would have been much cheaper than calling a cleanup contractor, would have been to go out to a home improvement store, buying a box fan, sticking it in a window, open a second window to provide some draft, and ventilating the room for a day.

Citing data selectively to make your point is a time-honored tactic of deception, and Mr. Milloy used it effectively here. Recall what was said in his news story:

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter.

Dang, and I had just said I wasn’t going to link to him either. Oh, 300 billionths of a gram corresponds to 300 nanograms and, as discussed in a previous post, 300 nanograms per cubic meter of air is EPA’s Reference Concentration (RfC) for elemental mercury. Milloy’s screed about CFLs, global warming and environmentalists and their fruitcake ideas about mercury, all spring from this “fact”. Of course, it’s inaccurate and misleading, and one wonders why he even bothered citing it. As Ronald Reagan once said, “facts are stupid things”.

Ok, so there’s a real story here. Returning to the Maine DEP’s report:

When a Department responder goes to the site of a spill, there are typically two types of instrument measurements that they would take. The first is an evaluation of the source of the spill. This is to identify any hot spots or areas of concern, to determine the extent of the spill, and whether it has been tracked extensively throughout the home. This helps determine the extent of the effort to clean up the spill, if any. This type of measurement is generally at the floor or point of impact. The second type of measurement taken are those readings that are more useful for homeowner exposure and are typically in the “breathing zone”, at an intermediate height for children and a higher height more appropriate for adults.

When the Lumex mercury detector was positioned inches over the spill, the concentration detected was 1,939 ng/m3. The state’s report goes on to characterize this finding as follows:

Moving the Lumex instrument six to eight inches in either direction or up toward the ceiling dropped the value significantly. To visualize the area of high readings, it could be covered by a dinner plate.

So, for Mr. Milloy’s “fact” to really be correct, that the Maine DEP found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter, someone would have to crouch down onto the floor and inhale air from an area within six inches from the broken bulb. And they would have to do this daily for their entire lifetime to be exposed to a level six-fold higher than the safe level.

The state of Maine’s inspector also made some “breathing zone” measurements, sampling room air at a 3 foot level, which provides a better indication of the concentrations in air which someone might be breathing on a regular basis. Those concentrations were 31 and 49 ng/m3, which are less than the 300 ng/m3 RfC. In fact, most of the measurements were below 300 ng/m3, and the state’s report said,

Based upon this information, the State Toxicologist assured the homeowner that the potential mercury exposure would be very low and likely of negligible health concern.

But you don’t hear any of this from Mr. Milloy. At this point there’s only speculation as to why his readers weren’t given a more complete rendition of the facts. Perhaps it’s as creationist Duane Gish said during the McLean vs Arkansas Board of Education trial when accused of misquoting geological data refuting the creationist notion of a “young Earth”, “you have to stop quoting somewhere”.

I guess so. But at some point, you also have to stop listening to claptrap. You probably shouldn’t look to anything Steven Milloy says as a reason to not buy CFL bulbs.