want to persuade you local big box store to stop carrying product X that contains ancient forest wood, or product Y made from Palm oil taken from South American rainforests? One of the best ways to go about this is to show the offending retailer that there are many people out there who feel the same way as you. And how is this done? Well, by creating a petition, of course!



Back in the day this was a laborious process that involved numerous phone calls and standing on street corners with a clipboard and stack of petition papers. In the Internet age, however, we have much better options — A plethora of e-petition sites that centralize the process of collecting name for hundreds or thousands of different causes.



Some sites you may want to take a look at are:

• Ipetitions.com
• GoPetition.com
• ThePetitionSite.com
• PetitionOnline.com

Are Internet petitions as effective as hard-copy paper petitions? Well, name-for-name, probably not. For one thing people don’t sign online petitions (a petitions site using digital signatures would be nice) and the potential for someone petitioning more than once is high. But at the end of the day you can leverage the power of the web (ie social networking such as facebook, digg, twitter etc. etc.) to get many many more people to attach their name to your e-petition — and their is definately power in numbers!

In my daily exploration of environmentally inclined forums and blogs I come across a lot of information and misinformation about Compact Fluorescent Bulbs. I figured it would be a good idea to blog frequently about CFL misconceptions as I come across them. Additionally, we here at GreenPricer.com have plans to write up a CFL buying guide - where you can get accurate information about which CFL bulbs to buy all in one place.

In the last few years there has been substantial hype surrounding CFLs as one of sure fire ways we can help avoid the looming energy and climate change crisises. Sure CFLs use a quarter the energy of incandescents, last 4-10 times as long, save us money on our energy bill and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released in to the atmosphere. But what of the negatives? According to the comments I see on forums and blogs, the biggest concern with CFLs seems to be the small amounts of the toxic metal mercury that is required for the bulbs to function. The amount of mercury in CFL bulbs varies greatly from brand to brand (anywhere from 1mg to 18mg of mercury) and cause many consumers to question whether the benefits of using CFLs are worth taking the risk that one will break. According to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, elemental Mercury is a liquid that releases mercury vapour at room temperature - vapor that can be inhaled into the lungs and passed into the blood stream. Symptoms of this ‘mercury poisoning’ can be tremors, neuromuscular changes, emotional changes (mood swings, irritability), insomia and headaches among others. It’s important to understand that elemental mercury differs from the much more toxic methylmercury which can cause long term health effects - especially on fetal development during pregnancy. Exposure to methylmercury occurs for example through ingestion of contaminated fish.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) did a study of Compact Fluorescent Lamp Breakage in February where they looked at a large number of different scenarios under which CFLs were broken. They continuously monitored air quality at 1 and 5 feet from the floor over a number of days following CFL breakage. The study results identified potential exposure to mercury vapour from the initial breakage of the CFL as well as ongoing emission from mercury left in the flooring surface. A third potential exposure is the emissions from the broken lamp debris once cleaned up.

The study found that under the majority of their testing scenarios, the initial mercury air concentration exceeded the EPA Referene concentration for mercury (designed to protect against chronic exposure) at the one foot level (where an infant or toddler would be breathing) and many also exceeded at the five foot level (adult breathing zone).

The Maine DEP has published a revised cleanup guidance based on the studies results. You can access it here.

The report stressed that variability among brands/models of CFLs appears to be a significant factor in contamination, however they were limited in their ability to test many models accross many scenarios. In the reports conclusion they state “Variability among brands/models is significantly higher than the variability among the six original scenarios.”

In my opinion the results suggest that a certain level of caution should be used around the installation and removal of CFLs. I would not put CFLs in lamps that could be knocked over easily and I would keep them out of an infants of young childs room. In addition, I will be looking to purchase only those CFLs that contain the smallest amount of mercury in them and are Energy Star qualified (the Energy Star label adds an additional layer of quality control beyond that of say an Underwriters Laboratory). Remember, you get what you pay for - cheap, no-name CFLs may contain more mercury and may not be engineered to the same level as an Energy Star qualified CFL (not to mention that they may perform far worse in terms of bulb life, color rendering and flickering). I will also make sure that, from time to time, I review the latest cleanup guidance - from the EPA or my State environmental agency - should a CFL bulb break and I have to clean it up.

That being said, with some caution, I will continue to use CFLs in my home. I would encourage you all the take a look at the study and its conclusions.

For some other discussion about CFL breakage take a look at a Q&A at Treehugger.com