Japan OKs ban on production, trade of fluorescent lamps by end of 2027

About time. I've always hated florescent lights. OK in a garage, but still too common in Japanese households.

There isn’t any ‘safe’ level of mercury exposure.

Fluorescent lamps are used everywhere: in homes, offices, stores, and factories. If people can't buy replacement tubes, they must purchase new light fittings. This will not work in a non-domestic environment.

If you have them in your garage, as I do, best stock up. In many cases, when they flicker or do not come on, the tube is fine. You just need a new starter, which costs very little and is easy to replace. What next? Banknotes because of paper cuts? Nails due to sharp points?

Is there an alternative bulb available?

There are LED tubes available. More expensive but not all of them work with the current ballast light fittings.

Is there an alternative bulb available?

Did you heard about LED?

What a shock. No more traditional blaring lights when you enter any shop. What will we do. There might be a shadow. No im sure they will find a replacement that will cost 10 times more and years down the road will have additional health issues. LED here costs so much. It’s ridiculous.

So people get poisoned by fish from a factory illegally dumping waste, so now we have to throw away our rights to choose what we buy but also throw away our lights and replace them with exorbitant priced led lights, which they will find another story in 10 yrs time no doubt to make people repurchase again...

They are generally more expensive but you can buy LED shaped as tubes and most of the wacky shaped compact fluorescents. We built our house in 2007, possibly peak compact fluorescent time, so ended up with a few of them. They are much harder to find than screw in E26. I always bought warm white fluorescents, but they are still a pretty ugly orange colour. Warm white LEDs are generally way better.

My eyesight is getting old now, so I need bright lighting to read small text. I've had to up the lighting in my office. On the odd occasion I get to relax, I use lamps, not the main lights on wall switches.

Wait. In Japan 99% of office illumination is done via those kind of lighting. Any ideea how much it will cost companies to replace those??

Wait. In Japan 99% of office illumination is done via those kind of lighting. Any ideea how much it will cost companies to replace those??

The process of replacement has begun some time ago. New offices and renewed ones already use LEDs.

Those offices that doesn't they for some cases they can apply for a subsidy to do so.

Aditionally, some offices choose to replace those in the order that they got burned, one or two at the time.. and so on.

The same goes for residencial buildings related for the public areas. For the houses each person is responsible to do so. But most houses has being changing to LEDs since 15 years ago. The area where I live all people I know have been doing so. In my case I just need to replace two bulbs only so no worries there

Didn't know they still exist!?

An office/work environment would replace them when the fluorescent ones burn out. Replacing them on mass in a large office will be expensive. Problem with different color temperatures.

LED tube lamps will work and directly replace almost all Fluorescents, done it already and it works perfectly, don't know about the circular type never had to replace any but I am sure they are available too.

We have one straight floru tube in our house in a custom fitting where it is hidden behind a shoji. I replaced it with an LED recently and managed to get a new one that was 50% brighter with the same form factor. Its a vanity light at bathroom sinks, so brighter is better.

It will depend on the fitting, but I had to remove the little ballast starter thing for the LED tube to work. Some fittings have to be rewired to bypass the ballast.

I've also done the map lights in my car recently, and LEDs are much better than the old bulbs.

If you have them in your garage, as I do, best stock up. In many cases, when they flicker or do not come on, the tube is fine. You just need a new starter, which costs very little and is easy to replace.

Converting existing fluorescent ceiling lights to LED tubes is simple, inexpensive and you get rid of the ballasts and starters forever. No flicker either. Huge improvement. We did it in our garage. A bonus is that the LED tubes last a lot longer.