In places that use fluorescent still, I’ve been noticing that the GE lamps are going mercury starved a lot, mainly seen in F32T8s, with them glowing reddish pink, when this was previously an issue with Philips Alto and Sylvania T8s. At the CVS, there are GE fluorescents still used and I see some that are partially or completely mercury starved. I’ve seen it on newer GE F32T8s with no end blackening.

I did see plenty of GE’s mercury starved in the past, but I didn’t see GE’s mercury starved as much as Sylvania or Philips.

The modern GE Ecolux tend to go mercury starved as much as the older Philips Altos did.

At the library, I’ve seen fairly new GE F40T12s mercury starved, when this was never a major issue with them. Previously I’ve only really seen mercury starvation occur on Sylvania T12s and Philips Alto F34s when it came to T12s. It seems like every GE fluorescent is now prone to mercury starvation. The new Philips Alto lamps don’t seem to go mercury starved so I guess those are the best choice now.

The new Philips Altos seem rather decent, the ones from Poland actually seem better than the U.S. made ones. Not sure about the Sylvanias but I don’t think I’ve seen a mercury starved Sylvania with the newer etch style or those that are made in China.

I see this happening quite a lot at work. We have lots of fluorescent lamps still in service and I’m noticing that a lot of newer tubes in general appear to get mercury starvation. They are lit, but super dim purple. The tubes in question are mainly 36 and 58W T8 bulbs.

The ones that seem to do it the most are Osram and newer Aura Super Long Life tubes, the ones made from around 2010-2020. I think the mercury content is very small in all newer tubes, almost right on the edge of what is even possible to make a fluorescent tube work. Mercury starvation seems to happen randomly even on tubes with low operating hours. I guess the pinch seals at the ends maybe aren’t perfect on all tubes.

Philips tubes seem to work good and don’t seem to experience much mercury starvation, but they don’t last at all. They get one end severely blackened after just one to two years, and then they start blinking and get stuck starters or in the case of electronic ballasts they just die. 90% of dead tubes at work are Philips. So Philips tubes must be junk. I have 3 boxes of Philips tubes at home, they are cheap to purchase so I suppose they may be worse quality than others.

Osram seems to last pretty decently, not great but much better than Philips.

Aura is by far the very best tubes, some are 20+ years old and still working, although they’ve certainly lost some brightness due to the crazy number of operating hours they have!

But that goes to show how important strong cathodes are!

I love Aura tubes and I therefore have a small collection of them at home, I don’t have many, but the ones I do have will likely outlast me!