In August of 2008, one of the frequent posters who goes by muralimanohar on my Freedom v.3.0 community boards posted a series of articles about studies showing the grave dangers of using compact fluorescent bulbs (or CFL’s) in the home nd workplace.  The first article she posted from WorldNetDaily presented some very alarming information:

Compact fluorescent light bulbs have long been known to contain poisonous liquid mercury, but a study released earlier this year shows the level of mercury vapor released from broken bulbs skyrockets past accepted safety levels.

Following a story reported by WND last year about a Maine woman quoted $2,000 for cleaning up a broken fluorescent bulb, or CFL, in her home, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection studied the dangers of broken CFLs and the adequacy of recommended cleanup procedures.

The results were stunning: Breaking a single compact fluorescent bulb on the floor can spike mercury vapor levels in a room – particularly at a child’s height – to over 300 times the EPA’s standard accepted safety level.

Furthermore, for days after a CFL has been broken, vacuuming or simply crawling across a carpeted floor where the bulb was broken can cause mercury vapor levels to shoot back upwards of 100 times the accepted level of safety.

Read the rest of that article here: 1 broken bulb pushes contamination to 300 times EPA limits

And yet January 12th 2009 cover story of TIME magazine featured a warning that the world must begin to seriously consider its energy crisis, and that the time to fix it is now.  Here is how the article opens:

This may sound too good to be true, but the U.S. has a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn’t pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn’t depend on the weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn’t accelerate deforestation or inflate food prices; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn’t raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn’t take a decade to build. It isn’t what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it’s already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don’t need to import it.

This miracle juice goes by the distinctly boring name of energy efficiency, and it’s often ignored in the hubbub over alternative fuels, the nuclear renaissance, T. Boone Pickens and the green-tech economy. Clearly, it needs an agent. But it’s a simple concept: wasting less energy. Or more precisely, consuming less energy to get the same amount of heat for your shower, light for your office and power for your factory.

[snip]

There are two basic ways to save energy without deprivation or daily effort. We can use more efficient machinery, like fuel-efficient cars that guzzle less gas, or those pigtailed compact fluorescent light bulbs that use 75% less power than traditional bulbs, or state-of-the-art refrigerators that are three times as efficient as 1973 models.

Article source: America’s Untapped Energy Resource: Boosting Efficiency

Interestingly, back in September, 2008, WorldNetDaily had a follow up on the incumbent campaign to promote the CFL:

Amidst all the current financial chaos, amidst global pandemonium and the spiraling economy, amidst the dangers from terrorism … you’ll be glad to know that the U.S. government is still hard at work protecting us from a threat so vile, so evil and so dangerous that it dwarfs all those other petty international and domestic concerns we face as a nation.

I refer, of course, to the incandescent light bulb.

[snip]

As an aside, it’s never been explained to me why, if compact fluorescent light bulbs are so superior, they warrant their own personal disposal facility to keep from poisoning the air, groundwater, etc. Nor has it apparently occurred to anyone that the energy required to conduct this specialized recycling of CFLs and corral the dangerous mercury completely offsets the potential energy savings over incandescents. The extra time, energy, cost and gas requirements for people to deliver their used CFLs to recycling facilities also counterbalance any individual savings in energy consumption. And how about the fact that almost all CFLs are manufactured in China under staggeringly hazardous and environmentally dangerous conditions by non-union state slaves?

[snip]

I don’t mean to cast doubt in anyone’s mind about the true environmental benefits of CFLs. After all, doubtless the medical complaints, the potential for groundwater contamination and the EPA requirements for cleaning up a broken CFL are all just right-wing nutjob conspiracy tactics to get We the Sheeple to bitterly cling to our incandescents just like we bitterly cling to our guns and religion.

The transition from incandescent to CFLs won’t be easy, of course. Mandated transitions never are. People tend to approach these things kicking and screaming because most folks have an annoying habit of wanting to think for themselves. Fortunately, the government schools are working on squelching that penchant, and in a few more generations we’ll be just like those genetically altered kids in the Star Wars “Attack of the Clones” movie. Can’t wait.

Don’t be alarmed when some houses burn down after CFLs are installed in circuits with dimmer switches or in track lighting (where they often smoke and cause fires). Also, people with light-sensitive medical conditions may suffer migraines, seizures, vertigo related to heart disease and other maladies. Even some green sites warn against a total ban on incandescent light bulbs, but doubtless they’re secretly in the pay of big oil companies or something. Besides, who cares? We should all do our part to save the earth, no matter what it takes or who has to suffer or die.

Article source: I guess I’m just a dim bulb

And so here we see again the extremes of opinion and typical alarmist polarities as a fundamental change in lifestyle is proposed.  So what is the stance of perhaps a moderate?

Strangely, it comes from a site called Ask Treehugger:

I quote:

Question: I have been in the process of converting to an all CFL household only to find out by trial and error (and some googling) that CFL’s fail very quickly in track lighting and recessed fixtures. In my online searches I have stumbled upon some real horror stories about people who have broken the bulbs in their homes which has resulted in thousands of dollars worth of cleanup to remove the mercury.

Response: Although mercury is a toxic pollutant, mercury exposures from broken CFLs are not likely to harm you and your family. This is due to several factors, including the amount and duration of your exposures and the specific type of mercury that you are exposed to.
Mercury in CFLs are present as elemental (or metallic) mercury. Once spilled, you can be exposed to elemental mercury by touching it, after which it can be eaten and/or absorbed through your skin. More importantly for health, you can also be exposed to mercury through the air, as elemental mercury vaporizes readily (essentially becomes a gas) and can thus be inhaled into your lungs. Breathing elemental mercury into your lungs is generally more dangerous than if you ate the mercury or absorbed it through your skin. Once inhaled, the mercury vapor can damage the central nervous system, kidneys, and liver.

These toxic effects are why any mercury spill should be handled carefully, including one that results from a CFL breaking. Having said this, careful handling does not mean that expensive or complicated clean-up of the spill is needed or that you should be worried about you or your family’s health, if a CFL were to break in your home.

This is because CFLs contain relatively small amounts of mercury — EPA estimates this amount to be 4-5 milligrams (mg) in a typical CFL. A spill of this amount of mercury is not likely to present any excess risk to you or your family. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows why.

Read the rest of the article here:  Ask TreeHugger: Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous?

But don’t be fooled by the se;f-conscious name of the source; the article is written by Helen Suh MacIntosh, a professor in environmental health at Harvard University.

In response to this thread, Freedom v.3.0 user Teens pointed out:

Just as an FYI – whatever rigorous testing you think products and chemicals are put through before they can be introduced to industry or to the public does not exist. A bare minimum of testing is conducted on consumer products and little to no testing is conducted on chemicals.

When something is discovered to be toxic it is the result of independant testing conducted by concerned scientists/public interest groups and the validity of such tests are immediately called into questioned by the companies promoting the product. So much (unwarranted) controvery is created and the regulating bodies take years to sift through the test results. The time it takes for a product to be taken off the market or deemed as toxic is laughable.

So where does that leave us? Ideally with a a slightly better informed set of considerations so that we can make our own decisions and come to our own conclusions.

I recently purchased a Sun Blaster bulb for my home so that I can grow some indoor herbs for my cooking, as I love gardening but have no yard. The package promotes the 75% savings (of what I don’t know, presumably energy? Electrical costs?), high output and of course “healthy energy efficient indoor lighting.”

Warnings on the back of the package caution:

• Minimum operating temperature is 8 degrees C/18 degrees F
• Use in dry location only
• Not for use in total enclosed / recessed fixture
• Do not use with dimmer or adjustable circuit
• Lamp contains mercury disposal properly (sic)

And then lists the following website: www.lamprecycle.org that turns out to be an information resource for what when and where to recycle, as opposed to a recycling center in itself.  I recommend checking it out and following some of the outbound links, particularly so as to find a recycling solution for your own CFL’s.

Summary:

Companies once sold nuclear fallout shelters, green-colored Palmolive and even duct tape to protect us from the scourges of humanity and nature (usually humanity).  Now the compact florescent bulb is taking center stage as the solution to “oil” and global warming.  There is some merit to that, as I suppose there is to living in a bomb shelter in the event of a nuclear holocaust.  But be informed when making your decision.  Recognize that as the alarms go off, companies will rush to capitalize on the heightened emotional climate and this rush may lead to not only sub-standard and knock-off, illegitimate products, but also a bum-rush by ill-informed consumers that could create more problems than solutions.

Skip forward ten years to the new cover of TIME wherein we are asking ourselves what to do with the millions of CFLs in homes and landfills containing trace mounts of mercury that we now have to clean up.

Cooler heads will prevail.