Bad Science!

[torquill]

Just in case anyone else is wondering where the "OMG if an LED shatters in your home you need a hazmat suit to clean it up!!1!" meme is coming from:

LED products billed as eco-friendly contain toxic metals, study finds

It's an important study; LEDs appear to have more than the legal amounts of lead, and other heavy metals such as arsenic can be a disposal and groundwater issue. Where it departs from reality is how it affects the average person.

Oladele Ogunseitan, chair of UC Irvine's Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention [...] said that breaking a single light and breathing fumes would not automatically cause cancer, but could be a tipping point on top of chronic exposure to another carcinogen. [...] When bulbs break at home, residents should sweep them up with a special broom while wearing gloves and a mask, he advised."

Since Mr. Ogunseitan seems smart enough in other parts of this article, I have to assume that the reporter screwed up and quoted his guidelines for disposing of CFLs, not LEDs. Meanwhile, the "hazmat" aspect seems to have panicked non-science reporters everywhere, and I'm now getting OMGWTFBBQ from my alt-health list and social media. Sigh.

I'm going to write to Mr. Ogunseitan and the UC Irvine communications director in the hope they can put out a correction, but corrections never travel as fast or as far as bad science. :/

Comments

[doktor-weasel.livejournal.com]

Never mind the fact that LEDs are pretty damn hard to break. They're pretty much a solid lump of plastic, not a hollow fragile shell. And the toxic materials aren't just rattling around free.

I've heard the hazmat claim about CFLs, but it just comes from uninformed advice to a panicked person. This really is a sloppy piece.

[foogod.livejournal.com]

Actually, CFLs do have a not-insubstantial quantity of mercury inside them which can pose a health risk if not handled properly, so there are legitimate "hazmat" concerns regarding them (which for adults basically boils down to "if you break a CFL, don't get down and sniff the carpet where it broke", but I do agree with some of the warnings against using them in areas infants frequent, etc.)

I do agree, though, that the silliest part about the LED scare is arguably the whole "when you break an LED" part.. I know from experience you can drive over those things with cars and they usually come out fine...

[doktor-weasel.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that CFLs don't pose any risk, what I'm saying is they've been dramatically overblown in the past.

Using gloves and a filter mask is a common sense precaution. The problem was a while back, scare stories about someone who called their state environmental department and the inexperienced person on the other line suggested that they could call a hazardous materials disposal company. The hazmat company was asking for $2000 to clean it up so a bunch of "Don't buy CFLs, they're so dangerous that you need a $2000 hazmat team to clean it up if they break, environmentalists are trying to kill us!!!!1!one" stories were going around. But it was just that the person they called had no clue on what to do about CFLs and their advice was overkill.

As for breaking LEDs, I keep thinking about going all "Will It Blend?" and stuffing them in a blender. "Diode smoke, don't breath this!" That's probably what it would take to get the hazardous materials out on a personal basis. Manufacturing and bulk waste disposal are legitimate concerns, but breaking an LED and getting toxed? No.

[mikz.livejournal.com]

Agree with all of the above. And I'm pretty sure if you take the 'C' out of CFL, and talk about devices that have been over our heads millions of times since before any of us were born, it'll all seem even sillier. But then there'd be one less scare story.

Still trying to convince somebody on FaceBook that the United States isn't going to have an epidemic of measles-related deaths after an incident at an airport over the weekend, too.