One of the points of the book is the disproportionate fear and excessive response of authoritarian followers to perceived threats, an issue which is currently involved in allowing the US government to create a fascist system within the United States. Everyone should read this book. Seriously, I mean it.

Does anyone remember the 50s? My brother and I disassembled mercury hearing aid batteries, and collected and played with the mercury. You can easily plate a penny to look like it’s silver. It does funny stuff when you hit it with a hammer.

We rode tricycles that, heaven forbid, could tip over, and had, heaven forbid, sharp edges. We had scissors with points. My wife, at 11 or so, rode the city bus alone into Philadelphia to visit her grandmother (child abduction figures are, believe it or not, no higher today than they were then—I bet you didn’t know that).

Need I say it, all of us are still alive.

All the time I run into people who are afraid of their shadows. I pity them.

Might want to have researched this one before ridiculing the gov.

While these light bulbs are supposed to last longer, they also make disposal more difficult.

1- Clear the area.
2- Remove all evidence (especially videos) that a light bulb has been broken.

No, they don’t require professional clean-up crew if you break one.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp

Summary:

1) CFLs contain mercury, a dangerous substance: True.

2) While mercury stays safely contained in intact CFLs, it escapes from broken CFLs into the immediate surroundings: True.

3) The amount of mercury contained in one CFL bulb poses a grave danger to a home’s inhabitants: False.

4) An environmental clean-up crew needs be called in to deal with the mercury dispersed by one broken CFL bulb: False

To put this into perspective, a CFL generally contains about 1/10th as much mercury as a mercury based medical thermometer.

If you were to perpetually break and then huff the contents of CFLs, it would be a major problem. However, the primary risk of cleaning up a single broken lamp is cuts from the broken glass, not mercury poisoning.

There have been some completely ridiculous and overblown stories in the US about the “hazards of CFL” that claim that you need to seal the room and call in professionals. Funny, though, as most of the stories are initially published in rabid fundamentalist conservative rags. Coincidence? Me-thinks not.

Is this a little over-cautious? Yes. Are government agency policies and procedures always written to be over-cautious, especially when it comes to issues related to employee health? Also yes.

Further There was not one single “How many..” jokes in the comments. So I guess it is up to me.

How many Parlimantarians does it take to change a light bulb?

Just one but since he is in the house of lords he has one of the the members from the house of commons do it.

Ireland is banning incandescent bulbs from January 2009. Apparently, Ireland is the first country to do such a thing. Oh yeah, the Green Party are in a coalition government here. But before the Green’s government involvement Ireland adopted the WEEE Directive into law nearly two years ago.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKL0660168620071206

They do break from time to time. If the lamp is overhead, you just might want to be wearing eye protection. If you cut yourself, the phosphor coating isn’t something you want in a cut. Neither is the phosphor dust something you should be breathing, hence the damp cloth to wipe up the residue. The mercury in fluorescent tubes is really the least of your worries though as a cumulative environmental poison in the long run it probably should be a concern.

CFL’s contain the least amount of mercury.