Light bulb lunacy........

[CountryGent]

April 26, 2007
By Steven Milloy

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About $4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about $2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favor of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) — a move already either adopted or being considered in California, Canada, the European Union and Australia.

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.


More here:http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20070426.html<!--EZCODE FONT END-->

[Wolfcounsel]

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. --from CountryGent's link

Are they kidding? There's boo-coo money to be made from the clean-up of broken bulbs alone!

[DoctorDoom]

The overwhelming majority of fluorescent lamps of any size or configuration contain mercury in trace amounts. Xenon-based FLs that don't use mercury are possible, but they are about 30% as energy-efficient as CFLs and cost more.

At one time the mercury content was immaterial, inasmuch as the quantity is very small. However, in our enviromentally-obsessed time, no amount is acceptable, and the overreaction to it is ludicrous.

The cost to businesses as a result of the nonsense is staggering. Think of the disposal costs for companies where there are literally tens of thousands of fluorescent tubes in use, and there are crews whose job is to change them. At one time they simply disposed of them. Now they have to be consigned to a special storage area and picked up by companies such as Clean Harbors (http://www.cleanharbors.com/index.html). The disposal costs can easily equal the costs of the bulbs.

Knowing this, what is the reaction of the ecowackos? A: they demand that mercury-free incandescent lamps be replaced with mercury-containing CFLs, because the lower energy use will combat Gorebull Warming.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

[Wolfcounsel]

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." --DoctorDoom

In Algore's case, they first made him into a jackass.<!-- / message -->

[DoctorDoom]

He's a RAT, so that's a given in any case. :evilgrin:

[Rhino]

Something similar happened here recently. Dude broke a fluorescent bulb on his front porch and called the Ohio EPA.

[CountryGent]

My suggestion: When your CFL burns out just do a night run and toss the damn thing into the driveway of the nearest tree-hugging Moonbat.:D

[Rhino]

Light Fingered

Claim: When broken, energy-saving light bulbs (CFLs) loose dangerous amounts of mercury into a home.

Status: Multiple:

CFLs contain mercury, a dangerous substance: True.

While mercury stays safely contained in intact CFLs, it escapes from broken CFLs into the immediate surroundings: True.

The amount of mercury contained in one CFL bulb poses a grave danger to a home's inhabitants: False.

An environmental clean-up crew needs be called in to deal with the mercury dispersed by one broken CFL bulb: False.....

.....Origins: Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs), whose use is estimated to result in a $47 savings in energy costs over the life of each bulb versus incandescents, have had their critics. They take longer to switch on. Regular CFLs won't work with dimmer switches. They can interfere with radios, cordless phones, and remote controls.

They also contain mercury, a fact that causes no small amount of concern in light of how dangerous that substance is. Yet the amount housed in each bulb is very small, about 5 milligrams, which is about the size of the period at the end of a sentence. And, provided the bulbs aren't broken open, none of that leaches into the home.

Like batteries, used CFLs need to be disposed at a toxic waste depot rather than tossed out with the ordinary household trash. Because mercury is cumulative, this poisonous element would add up if all the spent bulbs went into a landfill. Instead, the mercury in dead bulbs is reclaimed at such depots and recycled.

As to the potential for harm posed by mercury escaping from broken bulbs, says the King County Hazardous Waste Program: "Crushing and breaking fluorescent lamps release mercury vapor and mercury-containing phosphor powder. These can be difficult to contain." Yet the recommended clean-up process does not involve calling in a HazMat team says EnergyStar, the U.S. government site about dealing with broken CFLs:......http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp

[Wolfcounsel]

"My suggestion: When your CFL burns out just do a night run and toss the damn thing into the driveway of the nearest tree-hugging Moonbat.:D"



OOOOH! I hope nobody does that. I'm serious. Really. I'm not joking. I mean really not joking. Look at my eyes and you will see that I'm serious. Don't do that, people. Don't. Pretty please with sugar and cream on it and a cherry on top. Uh-uh. That's a no-no.


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[DoctorDoom]

Okay, gotcha. I won't ..... darn it ..... oops, I dropped it on his driveway. Oh, shit!

[DeclinetoState]

"My suggestion: When your CFL burns out just do a night run and toss the damn thing into the driveway of the nearest tree-hugging Moonbat.:D"




OOOOH! I hope nobody does that. I'm serious. Really. I'm not joking. I mean really not joking. Look at my eyes and you will see that I'm serious. Don't do that, people. Don't. Pretty please with sugar and cream on it and a cherry on top. Uh-uh. That's a no-no.


<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->I'm not too far from Cindy Sheehan's hometown--if only I knew where she lived exactly. OTOH, I could just drop the CFL most anywhere in San Francisco and it would probably land in a "Moonbat's" driveway. Perhaps if I dropped it off in the Castro it could be "recycled" into an instrument of gratification.