"Compact fluorescent lightbulbs contain a minuscule amount of mercury, and you can’t safely ignore potential contact with it"
They banned mercury from other uses and now re-introduce into lightbulbs? As much as I like its low power consumption, I don’t really want to use them at home especially with kids around.
Why are you asking this question other than to prod intelligent conversation. You do not need the answer. Fantastic question. Let me applaud your ability to see through the hype laden crap.
Mercury is a poison that is cumulative. You can’t get it out of your body ever.
Mercury hasn’t been re-introduced, it has been in fluorescent bulbs since the beginning. You go into buildings all the time with these bulbs, stores, malls, schools, offices etc. You don’t know how many bulbs have been broken in the building or how it was cleaned up. They are putting less mercury in bulbs today than they did 10 or 20 years ago. I have met 2 people who have had mercury poisoning and both of their Dr.s contributed the mercury to eating tuna, not using CFL’s.
They can be handled safely and the fact that a quality bulb will last about 10 years means you should only need to change it once while your children are living in the house.
If you are so concerned about the safety of your children are you aware of all the chemicals in the food, cleaning products and beauty products they are exposed to.
If you are the type of person that seriously worries about little things like this, you might as well just lock yourself in your home and never come out. You need mental health help.
There are a million other hazards around us with a much higher probability of doing us harm than this. If you live in a city, you are breathing many hazardous materials 24 hrs per day. Might as well drink beer and have a cig.
Many times less mercury is in a CFL (or regular length FL) than is emitted from burning coal to run a regular light-bulb. Mercury has been "reduced" in new coal fired power plants, but the old ones that will continue to work for the next 30 years are not required to reduce their mercury emissions at all.
I agree, it’s all about harming the energy industry, regardless of the cost to you and your family. They don’t just encourage these lightbulbs, they’re going to force you to use them.
I also read that if it breaks in your house you’re supposed to throw out any fabric that it comes in contact with. WTF am I supposed to do, get new carpeting if a light bulb breaks on it?