i have heard that the led lights are hazardous in their disposal into landfills. what is the truth to this story.

I wonder if you are confusing LEDs with CFLs, which contain mercury?

One of the problems I have is the proper disposal of the new efficient bulbs. It is my understanding that the curly neon bulbs contain trace amounts pf mercury, which can add up over time in landfills. Most poeple will throw those bulbs in the trash and not properly recyle them. In St. Louis, we have 2 main drop off dates a year in our part of the city to dispose of chemicals and other hazardous waste, such as the newer bulbs. I have no problem keeping the bulbs in a basket until that time, but the majority of folks don't go through that effort. It doesn't matter if there is a small group of people who are diligent and trying to be careful and inform as many folks as possible. Being smug about how green one is, when most are not and are just throwing away the bulbs in the regular trash does not alleviate the real problem of toxins seeping into the water table or run off carrying poisons in our streams to our water supplies. It appears these newer incandecent bulbs do not have the chemicals that the new technology bulbs have and for the majority of folks there is a much lesser environmental risk when disposing a burned out bulb in the trash. It is not about wearing a badge of honor on how one person is greener than another, it is important to remember the safty of society as a whole and keep in mind not everyone is green yet.

Some LEDs use toxic metals to produce colors, but as far as I know there are no toxic substances in white LEDs as long as lead-free solder is used in the circuits.

CFLs, although they contain mercury, actually contribute less mercury contamination than comparable incandescent bulbs to the environment in areas where electricity is produced using coal-fired power plants. This is due to their decreased use of electricity.

CFLs can be easily recycled by taking them to any of the 1,973 Home Depot stores across the US. Home Depot will accept all CFLs regardless of where they were purchased.

I love this posting. It is great to see innovation at work, and that setting proper standards can help incent such useful technological development. Can't wait to see those new bulbs on the shelves.

The main reservation I have about CFLs is that nearly all of them produce a higher electromagnetic field than I believe to be safe. (I'm a fan of the Gauss meter.) That doesn't mean they've been proven to be harmful -- but if I sit too close to one, I get a headache. I prefer to err on the safe side and avoid that much exposure. High above a kitchen counter the CFLs are fine, but I'm skeptical about using them in desk and reading lamps. The studies about electromagnetic fields and cancer and brain tumors have provided mixed results, so the jury is still out on their longterm effects.

The main reason I'm happy to hear about this development is that, in spite of a strong commitment to greening my habits as much as practically possible, I don't like fluorescent light everywhere, and I even question whether it's healthy to surround yourself with it. So I have CFLs where people are not going to be staying near them for extended periods, and continue to use full spectrum incandescents of the lowest wattage practical in the other areas. It's all a numbers game, and it does matter if you do a little vs. doing nothing green. We're going to find as we go along that there is no pure choice, but small changes in a healthier, more sustainable direction are still right.

I don't see where in the text there is a comparison of the total power usage for these new generation incandescents versus compact fluorescents. If LEDs are better than either, then I foresee a very short life for these new bulbs.

For now though, I'm going to stick with my nice white (4100K) CFLs over the yellow of even the best incandescents (2700-3500K).

I haven't tried full spectrum yet. The 4100 degree kelvin white bulbs really make me feel as if I've remodeled the whole apartment. The quality of light is so much nicer.

Electromagnetic fields? Are you kidding? Your refrigerator or air conditioner emits a higher electromagnetic field due to its hefty motor. CFLs are 100% safe in that regard, no more dangerous than an incandescent, that's to be sure!

The reason you get a headache is because CFLs flicker on and off very rapidly and some people are sensitive to it. It has nothing to do with EMF.

One of the things i see with cfl replacing incandescents is that you can actually increase the amount of carbon dioxide.Say your home is heated with natural gas,you use 1500 watts of incandescent and you switch to cfl.The difference in electric savings is offset by the additional Natural gas burnt to make up the heat loss.I think it's best to use cfl in the summertime and incandescent in the winter time for a home heated by Natural gas.

Mark- Many studies have shown that the amount of heat emitted by incandescents is negligible compared to the amount of energy used to make that heat. The heat produced by your home's heating system is much more energy efficient than the small difference incandescents would make. I see no problem in using CFLs indoors in the winter (they don't work well in cold temps, so outdoors you'd need something else).

Ikea also accepts fluorescent bulbs for recycling.

Wow - one world government.

Really?

It's amazing how Americans are CONSTANTLY scared of crap like that. Wow. Stop watching so much Nancy Grace.

Anyways, I don't care how they do it... if they make a 30 watt incadescent that outpreforms a 30 watt CFL... then there's no discussion. The reality is, CFL's have problems with disposal and LED's are expensive today... so who knows who wins.

Hey, this might mean that GE won't be shutting down its union-member-staffed incandescent plants and moving all their operations to China where they exploit both workers and the environment! Win-win.

I have dimmer switches on almost all of my light circuits. Most CFLs don't work with dimmers, and I haven't seen a dimmable CFL on any of the shelves in the stores where I shop. I'm really looking forward to these new incandescent bulbs.

Don't appreciate the flippancy, Adam. I do object to CFLs as an environmental solution because of the mercury in them, exposure of workers making them as well as exposure of the rest of us when they break or go into landfill. But doing something about climate change isn't a "bridge too far" for me and my family. We kept our incandescent bulbs and went solar, including hot water solar. Since we're still grid tied we strictly conserve electrical use. In winter I can actually heat my very well insulated studio space with the heat from the bulbs and an efficient wood burning stove, in spring with just the bulbs. In summer and fall our excess solar energy production goes out to our neighbors, displacing some of their grid energy. And we do many other things large and small to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible.

I so agree with you !! there is no way to safely dipose of lightbulbs with mercury especially where I live in Hawaii !! I hate cfls !! the light is disgusting and gives me a headache . How can they call them green when they contain mercury ..A lessor evil is not the answer ! Bonnie on Maui

I'd like to see a safe-disposal refund built into the original price -- You pay $1 more up front and get $1 back when you dispose of the bulb at an approved site. That would get a lot more people on board, I think. (It would be most effective if ALL bulbs had an extra $1 tacked on to the original price, so that CFLs wouldn't suffer from price competition as a result.) This used to work pretty well with bottles and cans, and we're doing something similar with computer monitors now, aren't we? I think I've seen various programs around that are doing almost the same thing, but it's not universal yet.

The city I live in, Racine, WI, is starting to use LEDs in traffic and street lights. They work great except for 1 thing: during a snow storm with wet, blowing snow the traffic lights get covered with snow because the LEDs don't emit enough heat to melt the snow. I still think we're better off with the LEDs but I expect there will be some extra fender-benders in the winter.

oops I meant to say I agreed with ted's comment from Bonnie on Maui

Also not stated is the longevity rating of this updated incandescent bulb with the laser-zapped filament. Probably still about 1/10 that of a CFL rated life. and maybe 1/50 to 1/100 that of an LED bulb.

I suspect any bulb making continued large amounts of waste heat will have the filament burn out and fail sooner than a CFL that relies on an arc or ionization charge transfer to complete the circuit inside the bulb. The cold LEDs can really last a long time too...

ROHS compliant LEDs will win out in the long run.

Longer life
Less energy to produce
Far more photons emitted per watt consumed
No heavy metals

For now tho' full spectrum CFLs are the best choice. As several others have said there is less mercury in them than is used to make an incandescent.

Here's a good tutorial video on LED lights
http://www.national.com/rap/

It's true that electronics (including lights) produce waste heat, and that waste heat offsets your heating bill - in the winter.

However, heat from electricity (or lights) has a much higher carbon footprint than heat from burning natural gas - roughly 4X. At the power plant, say you burn a fossil fuel to produce 1 BTU of heat. Then this gets converted to electricity, at about 35-40% efficiency. Then you have to get it to your house, and then you burn it and virtually 100% of that electricity ends up as waste heat. *However, you had to burn about 4 BTUs of heat at the power plant, to produce 1 BTU of heat at home.*

In the summer it's worse, because you have to do the opposite: remove that heat, using A/C, which is ~35% efficient (I believe), on top of the inefficiency already discussed (to get electricity to your house). So, to displace (via A/C) 1 BTU of waste heat produced by your lights, you have to use about 3X (1/0.35) that much electricity. 4x * 3x is 12x; in the summer, for every pound of CO2 your light bulb is responsible for, you create 12 additional pounds just running the A/C for it!

Very good info. In our case, we're solar, though grid tied. We're on the North Coast of CA, thus no AC (don't have an AC unit, never have), and seldom use lighting except at night for two hours during our long northern summer days as our house has many skylights and big (double glazed for insulation in winter), windows. Ours is also a passive solar home as well as active solar, so even in winter we get a substantial heat boost from sunlight falling on tile mass through a long glass brick wall, substantial enough that we use our upstairs wood stove, the only heating on the second floor, only half a dozen times during the winter. Our downstairs heating system, which we do use in winter, is in-floor hot water and we have hot water solar as well as electrical solar. Thus our incandescent bulbs contribute to our heating in winter, though we use only the lighting fixture(s) we need where we are working. We employ other conservation strategies as well, such as leaving instant on appliances unplugged except when in use, scything our meadow grass by hand, instead of having it mowed by a fuel using mower, offsetting our carbon footprint. And in our area about a third of the small amount of grid power we do use is alternatively generated.
I do understand the math about mercury production of coal fired plants as opposed to CFL content , but in my mind that doesn't make mercury containing bulbs (CFLs), an acceptable environmental solution. No mercury is the acceptable solution and for myself, under our circumstances, until we can do LEDs or a new generation of incandescents, I'm sticking to the old incandescent bulbs.