Radiation warning for low-energy lightbulbs

"the exposure is equivalent to that experienced by being outside on a sunny summer's day in the UK"

So, not much to be worried about then?

Personally, I keep a lizard, so I have these bulbs running for 14 hours a day. Of course, they're behind glass which kills most of it, and UVB doesn't travel that far anyway, and I'm hard-pressed to think of circumstances where you'd be in such close contact with one. Do people actually use these in desk lamps?

Uv-er-reaction?

Was this research done in collaboration with the energy utilities by any chance? First Mercury and now UV. Anyone would think it was a slow news day.

Mine's the one with the Sunblock and the LED torch in the pocket.

Is it worth the 5p saving in my 'leccy bill?

Poisonous vapours when broken requiring special disposal techniques, dim useless light when lit, UV exposure from regular usage... forgive me if i just keep on using my 45W conventional lightbulbs until LED's take off. And I have enough of the things in a box in the attic to see me until about 2050.

sunny summer's day

"... for some if you are within two centimetres the exposure is equivalent to that experienced by being outside on a sunny summer's day in the UK"

Best stop going outside too then.

Finally some UV exposure

Yes! After years of working in offices behind glass I can finally get a little bit of UV on my skin just by turning the light on.

Hmm?

If is put one in my desk lamp and have it really low down over the keyboard, will I be able to get a nice tan on my hands while I type?

Might buy some

I could do with a tan and it sounds like its minority harmful, and cheaper than a tanning place.

@Do people actually use these in desk lamps?

Yup, got one in my old anglepoise lamp that I put on my son's desk to use when he's doing homework. So looks like he's at risk .... wait a minute ... need 1hr+ exposure a day .... phew, no problem then as there's *NO* way he possibly ever do as much as 1 hour homework in a single day!

Worried

Only if you spend a prolonged period within 30cm of one! Shit, you have to be closer than that to get any benefit from the damn things. The backlight on my first Casio watch 30 years ago gave off more light than one of these things!

*pfft*

Justin McCracken??.......... Noooooooooo... Really??

Aaron....

Now we know what affects Aaron (FoTW).

Sitting in a darkend room, only lit by a small CFL next to his keyboard, whilst bent over trying to code that £12b MySQL databse. Maybe he should cover up a little more, sitting in his underpants, clearly is not good enough....

Thats why CFL's are rubbish

The health protection agency seem to have stumbled upon the reason why CFL lights are so crap at lighting up a room, they dump their energy into the room as UV light.

Perhaps some enterprising boffin could develop some sort of coating for the inside of the tubes that captures the UV radiation and re-radiates it in the visible spectrum (maybe some sort of phosphor based stuff would do it) then the lights might actually light up and work.

In other shock news a large range of cheap shoddily made chinese tat has been found to not work particularly well when compared to similar items that have had a little more care in their design and manufacture.

low-energy bulbs damage TV sets

My TV was affected by having a low-energy bulb across the room from the TV. The TV would go on and off by itself. My electric company informed me the radiation from the bulbs can affect the remote control gizmo on the TV set. I lost the picture and could get only the voice.

Be very careful.

i don't know who makes those

But my only complaint with cfls has been that most of them don't last very long and end up being just as expensive (if not more so), than regular incandescents. this is not an ad, and I don'r work for them...but my compact philips earth cfls have been very good over the years. many of them are now 10+ years old and I don't mind the light from them at all... I do wish they made something rated like a 150-200 W lamp, but I have never seen one available for when I do what tons of light, but I'm not looking to roast under a 300-500W halogen.

Incan? What's that?

I replaced every bulb in my house, inside and outside, except a handful which are very rarely used, about four years ago. I've replaced two of the small 15w bathroom mirror bulbs in that time, and none of the others, including the ones outside on timers/motion sensors.

Previously I was replacing bulbs at least once a month in the bathroom and outside bulbs at least once during the winter. Now there's less bugs attracted to the lights, less bulb changing, and less energy use.

The only complaint I have with them is when the house is cold it takes them about 30s to light up all the way, but this is only an issue in the winter when we keep the house around 20c. When it's around 25-26 during the summer they light right up.

As for not lighting up a room, well, that's bollocks. Where I used to have 1 100W bulb I now have 2 '45w' bulbs (which are wattage equivalent to around 8w iirc) and they light up the room as well as the incandescent did.

The power savings is nice, but it's *really* nice not having to seemingly constantly replace bulbs!

My coat is the one hanging on the chair instead of being worn to take another incan bulb out to the trash.

...and they don't last anything like as long as it says on the package

Apparently they last for 7 years. NOT.

Some numbers for UV emission would be useful. At the moment all I've got to go on is the idea that its a 7 watt bulb so its probably emitting about4 watts of which less than a tenth of that power will be UV. I'm quaking with fear.....

Due to the peculiar way that we pay for power (don't ask....) the electricity companies make the same amount of power regardless of how much they actually sell. This leaves them wiggle room to subsidize CFLs. We can get the little ones on offer three for a dollar. They're all over these days -- incandescents are becoming quite the endangered species. CFLs aren't very nice, though, so I'm hoping that the LED emitters are going to come down in price a bit (they're still tens of dollars each) or maybe we can start wallpapering with OLED panels.

Dear charles platt

My Doctor told me a few years ago I had in layman's terms - sunburned eyes.

35 years wandering around out in the New Zealand sun and fresh air, non IT job. Thought I might require some scraping of the Corneas .

Now days I spend less time out there, but I wonder if I need sunglasses while sitting under these UV emitting CFLs

I

Gordon Bennett

Or should that be Gordon Brown? Same effect. Utter shite.

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/3174452/Traditional-lightbulbs-banned-by-EU.html

So, the new dimmer-able (thus energy-saving) lamp me and my blonde Finnish bird just bought to properly illuminate our webcam shenanigans is now (almost) worthless. I'd better buy enough bulbs to last for as long as I'm still capable. Maybe one or two'll be enough.

OK, I get it. Instead of soft, low lighting, it's full chat or nothing.

Now, brings a bit more to the equation.

Imagine if the cupid stunts in the EU decide to implement this on cars. Plunged in utter darkness for about a second (= about 100m) while switching from dipped beam to main. Cute.

Gravestone icon, natch.

Scaring Public can kill our Business

We are light bulbs supplier on the internet http://www.firstlightdirect.com and this kind of public scare stories does nothing but kill trade to our business.

Since this article has been published, which should be read in full to understand the actual impacts that have been suggested, our business has seen an 64% turndown in our weekly sales of these products. And I mean the entire rane not just open cluster lamps.

But of course this story like many published to get public attention, leaves the evidence until the end of the story, and Jo Public tends not to read the entire story but just the punch packing head line that scares everyone to death.

For 20 Years we have been selling these lamps, and I can not recall one example of anyone suggesting "Redness" as the article suggests.

Another concern that I have is that a large number of people use open cluster lamps for conditions such as Seasonal Affective Disorder, as the use daylight 6500K lamps, which have been proven to have some degree of improvements on suffers of conditions such as "SADS".

Now I feel that suffers of such conditions will suffer in silence, instead of using one of the Daylight Lamps that could improve there well being.

So well done to whoever for a headline that will no doubt not be understood by all, but will in my view have an impact on the environment certainly, and people lives generally.

Dangerous angle

<<As to the previous comment about time to warm up... if one was being truly energy-saving, then parts of the house may be allowed to cool to 12C or less overnight in winter. *Then* how long does it take for a CFL to warm up to a decent brightness?>>

Er, parts of our "house" (communal landing/stairway) can get to MINUS 20C in the winter. And, it's dark. 18 hours/day in December. Right, fire alarm goes off. Turn on stairwell light, and may as well hit the fire alarm's snooze button.

Total B****cks

We have UV radiation from all sorts of lighting. The sun. Straight tube fluorescent. Tungsten halogen. The rules are always the same. Limit exposure, use a screen: sun screen, diffuser, light fitting, light shade.

Anyone who is going to sit just 300mm from a bare spiral CFL deserves to get sunburn.

versus incandescent bulb burns?

Anyone stupid enough to work the same distance from an incandescent bulb may also find unwanted side-effects emerging.

1st degree burns followed by 2nd degree with prolonged exposure.

This will lead to scarring and possible deformation requiring extensive redial action consisting of a hard slap and being told not to be so damn stupid.

All the quality bulbs have an anti-UV coating, as have the tube shaped ones on your office ceiling.

The cheap facility managers that buy below market standard quality bulbs are the real culprits here and there are not enough barriers to cause cessation of their dubious activities.

Another "green idea"

Oh Great, the "green" party here is implementing laws here to ban incandescent bulbs here and make us all use these mercury filled, UV emitting, no good in in emergency, cost 10 times as much bulbs. I wonder if can I get a VAT refund on all the dimmer switches I installed. Time to invest in incandescent light bulb futures.

Paris, because she knows how to make films in poor lighting conditions.