Tags : FTC, light bulbs
FTC Seeks New Labels For Light Bulbs
Washington, D.C. (AHN) – Consumers may soon be deleting the word “watts” from their lighting lexicon and replacing it with “lumens.” The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday proposed new labeling rules for light bulbs that could have Americans changing the way they talk, and think, about the objects that illuminate their homes and businesses.
The changes were proposed as the traditional incandescent bulb invented by Thomas Edison is losing shelf space to more energy-efficient lighting. The newer lights-compact fluorescent (CFL) and light-emitting diode (LED)-are calibrated in lumens rather than watts.
The new rules would require a “Lighting Facts” label on packaging that would list information about brightness, energy costs, expected life of the bulb, whether the bulb provides “warm” or “cool” light, and wattage. The label also would have to specify if the bulb contained mercury.
The new labeling requirements also hope to clear up consumer confusion about lumens and watts, enabling buyers to get the bulb that provides the most light for the least amount of electricity.
In announcing the rulemaking procedure last fall, the agency cited a Canadian study that found people “think of ‘watts as a measure of brightness or both as a measure of brightness and energy.’” Lumens are a measure of brightness, whereas watts are a function of electrical power usage.
The FTC concluded that “a wattage based approach does not work in a market that includes different high efficiency bulbs because the wattage needed to attain a particular light output can differ substantially across these technologies.”
In comments submitted to the FTC in September 2008, the National Resources Defense Council said “Our experience suggests that a very small majority of bulb purchasers know how many lumens they are shopping for. An even smaller fraction know that efficacy is expressed in lumens per watt (LPW), let alone how many LPW to look for or even that higher efficacy is better.”
Public comment on the proposed regulations can be submitted to http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/07/lightbulb.shtm.
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