Posted on 02/21/2008 6:29:25 PM PST by Larry R. Johnson
The speeding freight train carrying toxic waste liability for makers, sellers and purchasers of compact fluorescent lightbulbs, or CFLs, was only faintly audible in the distance last spring when this column first warned of it. Now we’re beginning to see that environmentalist-stoked train speed toward its victims, whom President Bush and Congress just finished tying to the tracks.
CFLs and all other fluorescent lightbulbs require special clean-up and disposal procedures because they contain small amounts of mercury, which is neurotoxic at sufficiently high exposures. For example, you’re not supposed to vacuum breakage or toss used bulbs in household trash.
Despite these clean-up and disposal hassles, environmental groups, bulb makers and retailers relentlessly have promoted CFL use as a strategy for reducing electricity consumption and the power plant emissions allegedly causing global warming.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Let there be light!
Now with about the same energy expenditure, we have what seems like 10 times as much light. I can once again read nutrition labels (even when some idiot package designer puts small black print on a red background).
Our house looks a little different from the outside, too. Instead of the warm, incandescent glow that comes from every other house on the block, our house looks like something out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", but by gosh we have light.
She used to complain all the time how dark it was in the house. No more.
I also replaced the lights in the laundry room. Where we once had two 60 watt bulbs lighting a 10x12 room, we now have a bank of four 32-watt, four-foot fluorescent bulbs. You practically need sunglasses.
They're pretty expensive, but I would think there would be enough demand that companies would be jumping on this market - thus lowering the price. It seems a better way to go than those stupid curly-Q bulbs.
How did you get that heavy old mattress up on your scanner?
Why don't they just put a clear plastic shrink wrap over the bulb spiral, and all breakage (and the minute amount of mercury) would be contained in case of a breakage.
It looks like “they” were right..........
Me, too. I’m buying enough to last until I shuffle off this mortal coil!
Just encourage people to use lower wattage incandescents! Sheesh!
LEDs are coming. They’re going to create pretty fast obsolescence for CFLs.
You wouldn't happen to be Tim "The Toolman" Taylor, would you?
"What we need here is more POWER!"
I'm not going to stock up on the old stuff, and I'm not going to buy CFL's. By the time Edison bulbs are banned, 2012, LED's will be out in force. Same lux, lower heat, lower power consumption and longer life ~50,000+ hours. Might cost a little more initially, but will pay for itself in reduced energy and replacement costs.
The originals were pretty bad, I agree. But except for decorative lamps we use them all through the house. And like the savings.
Remember, these contain only a few (1? 2?) percent of what the old fever thermometers held.
THank you!!
Thank you for the applause!
I called this one EXACTLY CORRECT the day they banned the Incandescent lightbulb.
It’s going to be a liability attorney’s worst nightmare...
“........Oh, Mr. Goldwater...where are you.....?”
He died with the America I grew up in.
BTT - Amen!
No, I’m not “The Toolman”, and I don’t even have a need for POWER. But as the middle-aged eyes of this couple continue to lose their flexibility, good lighting becomes more important. I COULD have replaced all those incandescents with comparable (HAH!) low-wattage CFLs, but you only live once. As long as you’re going to contaminate the planet with mercury, you might as well do it right.
I like the way you think.
Spent fluorescent bulbs will be the MTBE of the 2000s. More folly from the left!
Notice how the Philips commercials urging us to switch bulbs have gone away?
Does this mean the end of the Easy Bake Oven?
If these new CFL bulbs are so friggin safe, how bout we dispose of them by smashing them in the ventialtion units at one of Al Gore’s many mansions?
I don’t own one, and I hope that I never will, and my “doomsday” bunker of real light bulbs is growing.
Just like when I had my bathrooms redone, I absolutely refused to replace my toilets. I rebuilt them completely. Aahhh, full flush. And ONE flush.
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