And the reason the CFLs are made overseas is that they “are deemed too hazardous to manufacture in the US” because of the mercury content. They are too hazardous to use in MY house.

Maybe, but see the David Brooks op ed piece in today’s NYT.
  Incidentally Marie, do you have any idea how little mercury there is in a light bulb?  Larry

“They are too hazardous to use in MY house.”
“Incidentally Marie, do you have any idea how little mercury there is in a light bulb?  Larry”

Has anyone done an analysis of just how much mercury will end up in the atmosphere, in the ground water system, in land fills, in things we eat, etc?

It seems to me that a “little mercury” times 10 to 20 mercury or more light bulbs per home/business times millions upon millions of homes/businesses can equal a whole lot of mercury being relased into the environment.

Yep, we can’t have real light bulbs in our home but there is a 600 watt street lamp at the corner that burns all night.

I tend toward Libertarian under these circumstances.

Don

My parents used mercury thermometers to take my temperature all through my youth.  We all survived.

Marie—I’m stocking up—I’ve made good headway on my favored halogens.

John316 wrote:
“My parents used mercury thermometers to take my temperature all through my youth.  We all survived.”

Well then, maybe you wouldn’t mind PCBs in your water supply or possibly some inexpensive land on the old Love Canal site may appeal to you.

The point that I am trying to make is that when something such as increasing our exposure to to ‘just a little bit of mercury’ in a light bulb is deemed good by a particular political grouping then its GOOD.

But when something is deemed bad, such as PCBs, by the same political grouping, then its BAD.

Can you see the inconsistancy here?  Both of them can be BAD.

If you had bitten down on that mercury bulb thermometer and swallowed the mercury, wouldn’t that be BAD?

So, what happens to all the incubator heat lamps when the law goes into effect?

Stage lights?

How about those that suffer from Lupus?

The mercury component is a serious issue when you consider the dozens of lights per home/business, the millions of homes/businesses, and the decade after decade of use.

What a stupid, thoughtless, wicked law!!!

CFL’s cannot be dimmed either.  Our new church was designed with CFLs in the nave and sactuary to “save energy and be LEED certified”.  Try holding a Good Friday Service with the ambiance of the local WalMart.  Leaving half on and half off just makes the WalMart effect a little dimmer in some parts of the church.

Not to mention the fact, but I shall, that if you break one of the CFLs, it is, at least in California, a HazMat situation calling for very expensive remediation by the fire department.

Additionally, the mercury in a CFL is in a vaporized form, easy to breath if released.

Gosh, aren’t the “green” folks going to be surprised when the hazmat teams show up, or they get a fine from the EPA for improperly disposing of the CFLs?  I guess it won’t matter to them, because after all…they meant well and the intention is all that counts with that crowd.

When I was in junior high school, we had a large bottle (about 6 oz.) of mercury in the science room.  It was always fun to pour out a couple of blobs and cut it with a knife or hit it with a hammer and watch it shatter, then push it back together.  Liquid or solid?  Great fun.  Strangely enough, we all survived and I’m now 58 and haven’t come apart at the seams yet, nor have any of my classmates that I’m aware of.  Nowadays, if a mercury thermometer breaks, the building is evacuated and decontaminated.  Pardon me if I don’t get too upset about the threat of a little mercury.  I also like real lightbulbs.  I tend libertarian on these matters too, Don.

The hazard of mercury in CFLs is something of a bugbear. As is banning incandescents, there is a need for them - sometimes. I’m more worried about standing downwind when someone is burning some Qurans or nylon American flags or getting splashed when someone is pouring bodily fluids on religious symbols. Ick. Of course in some lines of work all of the above are daily hazards.

LOL, evan, I was thinking the same thing! We used to play with the stuff in elementary science classes.

Of course, we also played on metal playground equipment that sat atop concrete and burned our hands and tushies in the summer heat if we weren’t careful. I rarely remember anyone getting hurt but, if they did, they were probably chided by their parents for not being more careful. No one would have even considered suing the city over it. Times have sure changed.

#4. The issue is not the amount, but the concentration. The mercury is in the environment ALREADY. The same applies to arsenic and the whoopdedoo about the use of PT lumber. If mercury is released into the environment in a way that distributed it, then it simply disappears back into the world it came from. If you bite on a thermometer and swallowed the contents - although how one could do this, I don’t know - then you would be in bad shape indeed. The warnings about mercury are all technically correct, the actual threat very small.  Larry

My concern is that someone has decided that it is unlawful for me and every other American to use incandescent light bulbs past a certain date; and considering the EPA and its powers, we will all be required to dispose of the CFL’s in a haz-mat collection (which won’t be at your home, and you will be paying for it) or be fined.  That part hasn’t been broadcast… yet.  There is a lot of money to be made on this switch… and the earth’s health was not at the bottom of it.

Add to that that no one really knew about this law, no one voted on it, or told the American people that they were voting on it. 2007 was under the Bush executive branch, and a Democrat controlled Congress. The same congress that now says they never claimed the health care bill would lower insurance costs, despite evidence to the contrary.

I can’t wait to vote them out in November.

type: “no one KNEW what was being voted on ...”

Of course someone voted on it—it became a law! It seems the SOP for this congress to pass things without publicity and without reading the bills.

Libraryjim,
Sen John Cornyn sent me email patting himself on the back for passing this “green” bill. So he knew what he was voting for. I had previously sent him email asking for a warning label to be put on the box of every CFL. Apparently the office rats put me of the list of people who were “for” CFLs, in error.
I wrote him back asking if he realized that
ALL CFLs were made in China (at the time)
because the manufacture of CFLs had been declared “too hazardous” for the USA.
And that passing the bill meant jobs would move overseas. I got no response to that one.

Capt. Deacon Warren,
Can you use halogen bulbs in your sanctuary? They are dimmable, and they
are more efficient than regular incandescent
ones. We replaced the incandescent ones in the parish hall with halogens, because we wanted to be able to dim them for showing
films, etc.

One more point:

I still have light fixtures that cannot hold CFL’s due to the small size of the globe.  Even the ‘candelabra’ shaped end bulbs are too large (extend too far out) to fit into the light fixture in the bathroom, dining room chandelier and outside porch light.

So, no CFL’s are not all-purpose yet, and if they stop making the chandelier bulbs, I will have to spend quite a bit of money re-fitting my light fixtures.  There should be a government grant to help pay for these things to go along with these stupid bills.

Remember remember
vote on the second of November