A very easily overlooked advantage of LED lighting

While everyone is paying attention to the advantages of LED light sources , such as high light efficiency and energy saving, a very important advantage of LED lighting , mercury-free, is often overlooked. We know that mercury is an extremely toxic substance, but almost most of the currently used high-efficiency electric light sources contain mercury, whether it is common fluorescent lamps, compact energy-saving lamps, or high-pressure mercury, metal halide lamps, etc.

Mercury has a very low boiling point and can evaporate at room temperature. When a discarded light source is broken, it immediately emits mercury vapor to the surrounding area, which can instantly make the mercury concentration in the surrounding air reach 10-20 mg/m3, which is 1,000 to 2,000 times higher than the maximum allowable concentration of mercury in the air stipulated by the state (0.01 mg/m3). According to a study on mercury by Stanford University in the United States, 1 mg of mercury is enough to contaminate 5454.5 kg of drinking water, making it unsafe for drinking. The consequences of air and water pollution caused by mercury are very serious. After being eaten by aquatic organisms, CH3Hg will be generated, which is a highly toxic substance. Just half an ear spoon can kill a person. Mercury itself can damage the central nervous system, and the effect of reproductive defects it causes is also very serious. Mercury can also damage the kidneys and liver, and can even cause death under sufficient dosage conditions. Mercury can be transferred in different ways in the soil, water flow, and even in the atmosphere and food chain. Therefore, the persistence, easy migration and high bioaccumulation of mercury make mercury one of the most concerned environmental pollutants in the world. The most serious mercury poisoning incident in history is the Minamata disease incident in Japan, when hundreds of people died because the water in Minamata Bay was contaminated by mercury. Now the Japanese government has learned a lesson and requires all discarded fluorescent lamps to be treated for toxic substances, and requires people who buy ordinary fluorescent lamps to pay double the price to advance the cost of this toxic substance treatment.

Recently, the Chinese government distributed 100 million energy-saving lamps for free. Although the mercury content of low-mercury energy-saving lamps specially made abroad can be reduced to less than 5mg (it is not known whether the low-mercury energy-saving lamps distributed by the Chinese government are such), it does not reduce their harmfulness at all, because the mercury content of one such low-mercury energy-saving lamp is enough to pollute 27.27 tons of drinking water. And 100 million energy-saving lamps are enough to pollute 2.7 billion tons of water, which is equivalent to the drinking water of the entire nation for several years.