Rare earth metals get rarer, lamp prices escalate

If you are thinking of retrofitting your existing lights with any type of fluorescent lamps, you might want to push this item up to the top of your to-do list because the price of these products is going up fast.

The key factor behind this trend is a growing scarcity of rare earth metals in the U.S.  These materials, which include Yttrium, Europium, and Terbium, are processed into the phosphors that are used to produce fluorescent bulbs. The United States stopped mining rare earth metals in 1999 as part of a natural-resource preservation program. This forced manufacturers to purchase the elements from other countries such as China, which currently produces 97% of all rare earth metals in the world.

Unfortunately, the need for these elements has grown within China itself, causing it to drastically cut back on exports. Not only did this allow China to protect its own resources, but it also forced manufacturers who wanted access to cheaper materials to move their operations over there. So, as the law of supply and demand would dictate, we are paying more both for the lamps still made here in the U.S. as well as those made in China for export.

Without U.S. government interference, there’s no reason to expect this crisis to diminish anytime soon. Some old mines in the United States have been re-opened, but it will be several years before they are operating at full capacity.

 

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