Study: Eco-Friendly LED Bulbs are Highly Toxic
Study: Eco-Friendly LED Bulbs are Highly Toxic
Posted 02/14/2011 at 8:44am
| by Paul Lilly
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You might be doing Mother Nature a big favor by investing in eco-friendly LED bulbs, but at what cost? Perhaps your health. According to a new US Irvine study, these purportedly safe and environmentally friendly bulbs are loaded with lead, arsenic, and other toxic materials, the Miami Herald reports. These bulbs, which are used in everything from traffic lights to Christmas lights, could increase the risk of things like cancer, kidney disease, and more.
"I wouldn't worry about an immediate release of vapor," said UC Irvine public health and social ecology professor Oladele Ogunseitan, principal investigator and an author of the study. "But still, when these residues hang around the house, if not cleaned up properly they could constitute an eventual danger."
Ogunseitan and his team of researchers came to their conclusion by crushing LED bulbs of different colors and intensity with the intent of simulating acid rain in a landfill, an admittedly "worst case scenario." They then took measurements of toxic material in the resulting liquid.
Despite the low risk from a broken bulk, Ogunseitan says consumers should wear a mask and gloves and use a special broom when cleaning up the mess.
Image Credit: inhabitat.com
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Dresh
February 15, 2011 at 5:28am
Why does this even matter? We'll all be dead 21 December 2012 anyway...
alabasterdragon
February 14, 2011 at 9:48pm
What better way to make the earth heal itself than to get all the people to kill themselves off in the name of protecting the planet?
Kill the planet?! HaHa! This blue green ball will be here long after the human races is erased, just a nother surface nucense to the planet, much like a bad case of fleas.
Except the fleas would be smart enough to know the plan isn't to kill the host, just make use of it until something better comes along. The flea doesn't feel bad that it might be harming the dog, it just lives and does what it was created to do.
So why the heck does that flea seem so much smarter than all these global warming nuts!?!
johnny3144
February 14, 2011 at 11:40pm
as soon as you find another life-supporting planet i can hop on to, let me know.
Carlidan
February 14, 2011 at 10:33pm
Problem with your anology is there is no where else to go. Global warming is not make up science, it's real. Science backs that up. Now you can debate it man made or it just nautral occurences. Scientist are leaning more towards man made. To combat it, we have to find other ways to lessen the use of our natural resources and more focus on using renewable energy.
Silver925
February 15, 2011 at 10:58am
"Global warming is not make up science, it's real."
I believe you are correct! Science can measure 'global warming' and show a cause-to-effect relationship. Where things start to get muddy is what the effect will be. I personally think it won't be nearly as doom-and-gloom as many people think.
We know already that this planet has seen periods in history where the CO2 levels were much higher then anything our global warming effect has (or will) produce. And yet the planet isn't a dead dust ball in space.
Can it (and will it) have a massive effect on the planet? Yes. Will it kill the planet? No. Will it kill off humans? Maybe.
We should respect the planet we have. Just not to the point of blind panic.
r6srider
February 14, 2011 at 8:10pm
Who cares, if you do enough research on anything you will find it's dangerous in some way in some quantity. I'd be more worried about poor quality, and poor build. Like how they found some CFL's would burn a hole through the plastic housing and be a serious fire hazard when they start to fail.
megadan5000
February 14, 2011 at 5:02pm
Pink Starburst candies freakin suck. I bet they have trace amounts of lead and arcenic. Cuz when I put in my led faceted falsies and eat Pink Starburst candies, my tongue glows.
tornato7
February 14, 2011 at 4:16pm
Are Infreared LEDs toxic? cuz I made a few of them explode working on my touchscreen table.
Danthrax66
February 14, 2011 at 3:28pm
This is fucking bullshit America needs to quit coming up with excuses to not go green fossil fuels are running out and continuing to purchase oil from the middle east is funding terrorism. Also other bulbs have fucking mercury in them and that shit is airborne.
Keith E. Whisman
February 14, 2011 at 2:33pm
So are they more deadly if you chew them up first or when you swallow them whole? I'm eating so many LEDs lately. I had no clue they were so dangerous. They are so tasty on my salad, they have replaced crutons as my salad topper.
LEDs should have a label telling you to not eat them like those things that come in your pill bottle that is supposed to suck up moisture. Yeah, those things, they say "do no eat" right on them.
george420
February 14, 2011 at 2:04pm
Caman elready with these headline grabing fear mongering worst case one in a million hypotheticals, get a life.
Rascal69_1999
February 14, 2011 at 1:21pm
I doubt there is arsenic in an edison bulb like led's. Eco friendly what a joke lol.
athlon11
February 14, 2011 at 2:09pm
Blue, green or white LEDs generally do not have arsenic and even if thet do the amount is so infinitesimally small. I know for a fact that not a single product made by Cree contains Arsenic.
cc3d
February 14, 2011 at 1:14pm
So why don't you try ingesting the two and see if you have a natural response?!!
BTW, lightning is 100% natural, so I suppose it won't harm you either?
Atomike
February 14, 2011 at 12:54pm
Arsenic is a natural material. Lead is a natural material. The only thing unnatural here is this study itself.
Nyarlathotep
February 14, 2011 at 12:49pm
So... we should all go back to lighting with candles and gas lanterns. That would be much safer.
Scootiep
February 14, 2011 at 2:45pm
NO NO NO! Those produce harmful greenhouse gasses as well and would surely spell the doom of our planet within seconds of us lighting them. The solution is to go back to only working by sunlight and moonlight when possible. It's the only way to save the planet. In addition to that, we need to start discussing sanctions on mother earth for those pesky volcanos sending our harmful greenhouse gasses. She must be protected from herself the same as any smoker.
Eoraptor
February 14, 2011 at 11:09am
on atom at a time!
Yeah, sure, there's toxic materials in these things, just like there are in plastic milk jugs that are made from petrolium-based plastics!
considering the life spans on these things, I doublt they'll pile up in landfills at the rates old edison type incandescents (most of which ALSO have leaded solder, tungsten, and halons) do.
"These residues hang around the house" Over what? a span of a century? More? In these nano-particle amounts? And as mentioned by other commentators, unless your fondeling and groping these things day in and day out, or swallowing them like tictacs, what's the health risk; they're not getting hot enough to emit particulates are they? and does this pinhead even know what kind of force it takes to break an LED element? you may shatter the casing and electronics, but unless your kids have a fisher price Power Wheels M1A1 main battle tank, you're not going to break the actual LEDs.
but then again, we all know what a paragon of investigative journalism and thourough groundbreaking research the Miami Herald is.
Baer
February 14, 2011 at 10:25am
It sounds like he has dumped CFL and LED lights into the same catagory when in fact they are quite different. Sounds like lazy research to me.
praetor_alpha
February 14, 2011 at 10:19am
I guess we have to start telling kids to not eat the LEDs.
RoboHobo
February 14, 2011 at 10:03am
I wonder, how many toxins would come out of a PC if you smashed with a hammer.
I Jedi
February 14, 2011 at 9:33am
Genius... The hippies found a way to kill us off to save the enviroment... Poison the problem... 1 + for hippies thus far.
ChyITGuru
February 14, 2011 at 9:26am
This is just another ploy to make the "public" aware of the dangers. Its outfits like these guys that try to instill fear in everyone over thing that the ordinary person would care less about. If it was up to these institutions we would all be living in bubbles, the world is dangerous simple fact, but common really? Unless you’re going to take a hammer to the think and then sniff up all the dust i don’t think the risk of getting cancer or dying from it is any greater than the odds of getting hit by lightening and a car at the same time.
athlon11
February 14, 2011 at 9:20am
I work for Cree, one of the biggest LED manufacturers in the world, and I can assure you that nothing that they listed in this is used in any part of the LED manufacturing process, this article is bullshit.
Slurpy
February 14, 2011 at 10:51am
You must work for their IT department then, because that kind of stuff is what semiconducting LEDs are: Group III, IV, and V metals and metalloids. I've uploaded the original JACS article for those of you who aren't lucky enough to work in the materials industry (at least until my bandwidth runs out).
Oh yeah, I spent about three minutes digging through the Cree spec sheets, and saw mentions of indium, lead, and gallium - if you actually put effort into looking, you'll probably find a lot more.
athlon11
February 14, 2011 at 12:11pm
Actually I m an Engineer, I grow Epi on the wafers that is what actually makes the light. There is no lead in the LEDs at all. Of course there is Indium and Gallium, what do you think InGaN is? Trust me,this article is pretty much BS.
Slurpy
February 14, 2011 at 1:13pm
So the article that says the LEDs contain indium and gallium is complete BS, despite the fact that you confirm that the LEDs contain indium and gallium? Feel free to argue lead content, but that article has perfectly good science behind it. Unless you were referring to the fear-mongering Herald article, I won't argue that it isn't crap.
It turns out the PDF I found talking about a lead-containing product isn't actually for an LED, just a "diode," so I will defer to your superior product knowledge that it isn't light-emitting. Though the site is full of sheets saying that no LEDs contained more than one part per thousand lead, intimating it is present, just in quantities less than the EPA or EU would care about.
I've uploaded the supplemental info from that article, too (and it's Environmental Science Technology, not JACS). The LEDs they tested were from Purdy Electronics Corp., and only one tested high on lead, though the article does point out that the LED assemblies are likely to contain lead in the solder joints.
athlon11
February 14, 2011 at 2:07pm
Well, the article is BS in the fact that it would be harmful. Cree does not have any LEDs that contain Arsenic either.Lead may be present in solders but if the parts are RoHS compliant they shouldn't since lead solder is banned by RoHS. Also, for the most part to actually get to the InGaN etc you would have to break up and grind up the packge since most LED ships are housed in a plastic, glass or siloxane material which encapsulates the chip. Overall the points they make in that study are pretty pointless as in any practical situation there would be no way to get to the materials.
TheElite1x721987
February 14, 2011 at 9:18am
I'm not surprised nor am I concerned. Unlike CFL bulbs, LED's are not hollow and do not break easily. In order to get at the toxic materials within, you would actually have to take a hammer or equivalent and purposely smash the LED bulb. I've done it before and those suckers arent the easiest things to break into! This is just some scary little story that certain news outlets want to latch onto. But there is no real danger at all.
LatiosXT
February 14, 2011 at 8:54am
This doesn't really surprise me, considering that transistors and semiconductors require this sort of thing as the doping agent.
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