ISLAMABAD, Oct 8: The environment monitoring body has declared over 90 million energy saver bulbs imported last year as health hazardous and called for a plan to safely dispose them of after use, it has been learnt.

According to a senior official of the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Pak-Epa), the compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) contained toxic mercury compound and if the light bulbs were not disposed of properly after use, it could cause pain in joints.

Mercury is in two forms: metallic mercury that is used in thermometers and blood pressure apparatus and mercury compound, an illumination type, which uses electrically-excited gas as the source of light.

Pepco has recently imported around 30 million energy saver bulbs for distribution free of cost while 60 million bulbs were imported by a multinational company and a private vendor.

“We throw these CFLs in the open garbage and dustbins and when smashed these energy savers evaporate the mercury into the air. When the mercury accumulates in the body tissues, it creates severe pain and also causes Minamata disease,” the Pak-Epa official told Dawn.

The mercury accumulation in human body narrows the field of vision and damages hearing and speech, besides creating neurological problems and severe pain in joints and almost all the body parts, he added.

The disease of Minamata is named after a city of Japan where it was first discovered in 1956.  The official added that this disease was caused by the release of mercury into the industrial wastewater from a chemical factory located near the Minamata Bay of Japan.

“When the Japanese chemical company released the highly toxic chemical into the bay, the chemical was accumulated in the fish and when these fish were eaten by the local people of the Minamata city, they suffered from mercury poisoning.”

“We have already prepared a draft of ‘Environmental guidelines for sound disposal and management of mercury in CFLs’ which will be enforced mainly on local electronic industry and importers of CFLs,” said the official.

Pak-Epa, he added, would like to ensure that importers and multinational companies printed health warning signs on how to clear up the smashed bulbs at home. “The draft also envisaged printing of awareness messages regarding the dangerous effects of mercury emission on all packages of CFLs, mainly for consumer awareness,” added the official. “Once a CFL is fused, the costumer should return it to the shop and for returning an expired CFL, he should be given an incentive,” said the official.

According to the draft proposals, fluorescent tube lamps, neon-lamps, high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps, including mercury vapors, metal halide, high pressure sodium and ultraviolet bulbs, were put under the concerns connected with mercury.

He said they would ask the Capital Development Authority and other municipal agencies to install collection points to ensure that CFLs are separated from the rest of the household waste.

The collection points should be set up in central locations of the city like retail shops, post offices, bus stops and even patrol pumps.