Posted on 04/30/2007 5:37:31 AM PDT by ncphinsfan
How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$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 favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
It is just another scare story from the MSM.
This is wildly exaggerated.
EPA recommendations are to sweep it up and throw it in the trash. There are no requirements to handle it as a toxic waste site.
The bulb contains Mercury, and resulted in her stupidity in calling Home Depot and following their advice instead of getting a vaccuum cleaner and cleaning it up herself.
“Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.”
Let this be a lesson: Never ask Home Depot for advice.
Au contraire, it lays out the environmental contradiction that is CFL. Eventually, we’ll all pay a pretty penny when some bureaucracy decides that a mercury-contaminated landfill requires superfund treatment. The case of that Ellsworth woman is illustrative of what can happen.
Sorry to inform you. I work in a lab and when one of the bench techs broke a thermometer, we had to call in the hazardous waste disposal team. Mercury is being taken really seriously. No, I don’t think it will come to that in someone’s home. Just be really careful.
Jeez, how many times is this same story going to be posted under different threads on FR? This has to be at least the sixth such dupe. C’mon Mods!
They’ve been around for a very long time, so this is nothing new.
Large companies are required to recycle the large tube fluorescents. Homeowners are not required to recycle CFLs.
A CFL contains about 4 mg of mercury, a thermometer around 500 mg.
In California, you must recycle them. The trash police simply can't enforce it.
If you break one of these things, sweep it up and don't tell anyone, ever.
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Some of the new bulbs are down as low as 1.4 mg now...a drop the size of a period.
From the reports on the Ellsworth woman, she over reacted and all anyone did was "suggest" she do the cleanup. The agencies backed right off when pressed with the abusrdity of it all. But you just wait, there will be no such public pressure whent he macro level cleanup is forced upon us in the future. And I'll wager it will make $2000 a buld look cheap.
Gee what did people do when they broke one of those 36 inch floresent tubes that are in those shop lights you put in the garage?? Those have been around forever. If a floresent bulb breaks sweep it up and throw it away. Give me a break!!!
“Just be really careful.”
I wouldn’t have one of those things in my house anyway. These environmental goofballs are telling me that CFLs are the way to go and I’m just saying “No”.
Okay. There’s no federal requirement to recycle them.
State and local regs may vary.
Maybe Home Depot can offer a class on florescent light bulb cleanup. I got nothing I didn’t already know out of their faux painting techniques class.
Me, too. I have vision problems and fluorescent bulbs exacerbate them. Hate fluorescent bulbs!
When I was a girl, my mother packed up used light bulbs a couple of times a year and took them downtown to the power and light and turned them in for new ones. Mercury has been known forever, and was use by medieval alchemists. We are still around. Nature is the best recycler there is.
Save the environment,
kill an environmentalist.
The environmentalist’s solutions have often backfired. Cases in point the “clean” gasoline additive MTBE found to be a terrible pollutant, the lightweight economy cars that have increased crash fatalities, the banning of DDT sending millions to needless death from malaria etc.
Yet.
Our local Home Depot has a sign up that says to contact some web-site regarding recycling of these light-bulbs. I wonder if you dropped one in the store and broke it if they would close the store and call in the clean-up folks. Pretty expensive overhead I would say.
I’m sure they would just sweep it up then put out the ‘Piso Mojado’ signs so they could mop.
When my mom was a kid the dentist used to let his pediatric patients play with a ball of mercury to get then to cooperate with the mercury fillings.... they seem to be doing alright.
In grade school, we played with mercury in our bare hands in science class...
Mark
Much like MTBE in gasoline... And the ground water...
Mark
I remember that as well.
I am pretty much skipping out on flourescants unless they are really cheap, I have already used LED lamps at home and in my vehicles, basically they are breakproof unless you really get serious like using a hammer as they are sealed in epoxy. They also last much longer usually rated at 100,000 hours or 11 years, also flourescants lose life in time with the on/off cycles, the more often you turn them on the shorter the life.
Why hasn’t anyone advertised LED as the better alternative? I’m willing to say because the customer won’t need a new bulb until next decade and thats not exactly making the best amount of profit. Flourescants will actually not last as long as an incandescant if its cycled the same amount of times, even Mythbusters proved that though its been known for years by office building maintenance crews, thats why they tend to just leave them on all the time so they will last longer.
Perhaps not one, but how about millions of them?
We’ve been selling fluorescents for many decades and we are still alive.
If I was selling a product I knew had to be replaced at a certain point of time I suppose it would keep a person in business, maybe thats why many products that have an unusual long life span are either high priced for the initial profit gain or are cast in poor light by the mega corporations.
I can just imagine $30 printers with a 5 year ink supply would be a big hit, for maybe 6 months.
Speaking of mercury hype, what’s the deal with mercury fillings? Someone I know is lecturing people to have their fillings replaced.
I’m sure a lot of the high prices right now are because the product is fairly new, at least as far as an effective lightbulb replacement is concerned.
True. Personally I don’t care. I think the push to outlaw traditional bulbs is idiotic. The market will take care of it. I’m waiting for LED bulbs to get cheaper and brighter, and they’re working on it. I’ll dump incandescent for those, but not CFL’s. CFL’s you can’t dim.
I agree, a MR16 LED lamp is about $10, it has about 15-30 5mm LEDs, I buy the exact if not higher output LEDs at less than a penny apiece in bulk straight from China wholesale. I bought a case of 50 MR16 12v halogen 50 watt lamps new for $25 on Ebay last year, I am converting these myself. BTW the MR16 works in many track lights and its powered by a 12vdc transformer, mine doubles as an emergency lighting system off a 12v truck battery connected by a relay that switches power from the battery when the house power goes out. There are auctions on Ebay of winning bids of a hundred LEDs for a penny plus shipping and thats not high priced shipping as a hundred fits in a small envelope. I know because I built hundreds of LED flashlights 7 years ago before they hit the mainstream consumer market.
Dim as in a three way bulb, or dim as in: on a dimmer switch?
Some of the best LEDs that I have used are called Luxeon emitters from Lumileds. They are a super LED. They were that ones I used in my flashlights. Currently the 5mm is the least expensive if bought in large quanties.
If I remember right, it works on a dimmer switch but the bulb is really more of a three-way in practice.
These are all 12 volt, correct?
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