I didn't see this posted here yet, thought some of you might be interested.

Researchers have found abnormal ratios of mercury isotopes in used fluorescent lamps, evidence that low energy nuclear reactions take place inside.

Tiny Nuclear Reactions Inside Compact Fluorescent Bulbs?

I can not help myself, but I have a strong feeling of a hoax:
- Different isotopes mean different amount of neutrons. No element could transform into any of it's other isotope without acquiring and/or releasing a neutron. Regardless what energy transfers that mean (so how potentially dangerous such reaction would be), you need either a source of neutrons, or you would have to deal with their abundance. The first can not be attained without another nuclear reaction. And as neutrons are, when alone, very unstable (they tend to Beta decay and with quite an energy), they would be quite an energetic beta source as a side effect, so no low energy anymore...

Although English is not my native language, I doubt the correctness of this article as it seems to use very primitive phrases (someone said to me...) and the overuse of the Hg symbol instead of using the full name. In textbooks and the like (at least in French), I have always seen the full name of the element in the text (within a paragraph, not in equations and such).  While interesting, this matter has no backbone.

Medved- you're right to be suspicious, the characters involved have vested interests.

Sol- it's an article targeted toward the general public, not scientists, so I doubt that the author has a solid physics background.
You're right though, it is seriously lacking a citation that demonstrates the researchers results.

Yes, I realise it is targeted to the general public, and as such, the use of the Hg symbol should be inexistent, as many people don't know or use chemical symbols on a day-to-day basis...

Anyways, I don't see any benefit for further analysis of this article.

Tiny Nuclear Reactions Inside Compact Fluorescent Bulbs?

I'm smelling a false research (Or a hoax, as Medved described this)

I'm not find any reason for nuclear reactions for being occured inside fluorescent lamps. Mercury have no isotopes.
What more: They did this with CFLs instead of real fluorescent lamps. As there are no evidences of people received cancer from fluorescent lamps in the 100 years of their existance, and only recently they began to claim such (Much like the case with the UV radiation from 30cm from CFLs).

Max, James, Andrew and Stan, come here instantly and give your opinions!

Mercury have no isotopes.

I found an abstract for the original research.
There is a graph showing the mercury isotopes and their % differences from baseline.

What more: They did this with CFLs instead of real fluorescent lamps.

I thought that was odd too - you'd think they would have used some big T12s with lots of mercury to run the experiment.
Since their goal was to come up with a way to identify mercury that gets into the environment from CFLs that were disposed of improperly, it makes sense. Or maybe the smaller lamps were easier for them to handle.

As there are no evidences of people received cancer from fluorescent lamps in the 100 years of their existence, and only recently they began to claim such (Much like the case with the UV radiation from 30cm from CFLs).

I don't think anyone is claiming that the levels of isotopes are dangerous, just that it's an interesting anomaly.

@T12 vs CFL: Well, the CFL's tend to have even more mercury inside than the linear tubes, so if they want to study some mercury, the CFL wouldbring more of it...
New linears, even of high power, have fraction of the mercury dose compare to CFL's - "standard" F36T8 have a bit less than 1mg, low mercury type around 0.3mg, but the CFL's are all at around 3mg...

@T12 vs CFL: Well, the CFL's tend to have even more mercury inside than the linear tubes, so if they want to study some mercury, the CFL wouldbring more of it...
New linears, even of high power, have fraction of the mercury dose compare to CFL's - "standard" F36T8 have a bit less than 1mg, low mercury type around 0.3mg, but the CFL's are all at around 3mg...

Yeah, I was thinking some NOS T12s, but given that the researchers probably don't hang out on lighting-gallery.net looking for cases of unused old lamps, CFLs make sense.

If they want to scare people how better to do it than base their "research" on something which is widely promoted and sold and is probably more in the conscious mind of more consumers than linear fluorescents are?


BG