Mercury Contamination Vs. Energy-Efficient Lightbulbs

phyrebyrd writes "How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About US$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 US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health."

Comments

Re:bullshit

[goombah99]

You appear to be clueless. When a bulb break you do not inhale all of the mercury. In fact you probably inhale parts per thousand of it. Meanwhile, you may easily consume 60 fish meals every year or so and 100% of that mercury is entering your body. While lungs and digestive system bay have different uptake modalities for mercury the exposure from tuna would appear to be thousands of time higher when looked at from a chronic exposure level.

Choice of Violations, CFL Wins.

[twitter]

If you are going to laugh at future improvements, you need to go with CFL. It may be difficult to get people to recycle, but it will also be difficult to make coal plants reduce their emissions by 70%. The coal plant emission reductions have been on the books for years but they keep getting pushed back. Environmental groups back CFL because it reduces mercury now.

It would be best to have both reduced emissions and recycling. Mercury pollution is so bad that it's dangerous to eat fish. Reducing the need for electricity is a good idea, unless you like to waste your money on things you could have for cheaper. Reducing the amount of poisons released to enjoy your life style is also a good idea.

I've replaced all of my low occupancy lighting with CFL. Bathroom utility lights, hallway lights, garage and porch lights are easy targets. It's not the money it saves me it's the legwork of constantly replacing ever crappier incandescent lights that made it worth while. I'm hardly there anyway, so why not? High occupancy and quality lighting areas get incandescent, halogen where possible. Bathroom vanity, bedroom, den, kitchen and office space are going to stay incandescent for quality of life reasons. There are better ways to reduce your electric use, but CFLs the path of least resistance.