Again From Germany there are now some serious concerns about outgasing from the materials in these lamps. On Monday the NDR consumer program “Market” ran a item on this. Peter Braun, an expert in indoor air pollutants said “It is particularly concerning that all the investigated lamps outgascancer-causing substances in use,” These include many known carcinogens including Phenol. The transfer path of the substances is not clear, they may come from adhesives and components within the lamps.
A manufacturer when questioned responded “neither the nature of the substances nor their concentration exceeds the specified limits.” However these substances must be minimised or excluded from the home or workplace as event the tiniest concentrations can cause cancer. In general we are being advised to seal up our houses in efforts to reduce energy consumption from heating and cooling. This obviously reduces the air changes thus increasing the concentration of any atmospheric nasties such as the products of outgasing.
While German consumer organisations and journalists are taking all these things seriously and investigating the problems with CFLi the rest of Europe has their heads firmly buried in the sand. They are totally ignoring the potential future problems being created by widespread use of these so called “energy saving” lamps.
Kevan Shaw 20 April 2011
PS it seems while I was blogging this a certain British newspaper was busy mis-reporting the same story 
Article here
