I just replaced my fourth “long life” mercury laden bulb in my chandalier over the table. They just stop working. You can tap them for a while to get them to come back on, but soon they peter out.
It’s the environmental-industrial-government complex, not the military industrial complex, Ike.
Oh-oh... I would't have one in an eating area. I have had a couple CFLs explode. One in the bedroom, one in the family room. A lot of work went into cleaning up. Now I won't have them in the living areas.
We have a ceiling fixture that holds two bulbs. It is on many hours a day. One bulb is a 100-W incandescent and the other a 100-W equivalent CFL. I change the incandescent about every 3 months. (In fact, the incandescent I changed today was just put in at Thanksgiving.)
The CFL is 3 years old. I have the same dual setup in several fixtures and all of the CFLs are 3 years old. Not one has died, exloded, caught fire. I've had them last over 5 years. If they are dying quickly, you need to complain to your dealer and/or buy a different brand.
My wife didn't even realize there were CFLs in the fixtures until today.
"Mercury laden" fluorescent tubes and CFLs contain about 5 milligrams of mercury each. Old mercury fever thermometers had about 500 milligrams.
I also have a problem with short life of the CFL's. I think everyone should return their failed bulbs to the retailer, then the MFG will get the message.
Go ahead and send them to the land fill. Won’t be anything but Mexicans here 100 years from now.
I use the cfl’s almost all over my house. In places where I need real light I use incandescents. The cfl’s never last as long as the regular bulbs with one exception. I have a cfl in a lamp in my den that is used every night and has not been changed in over 10 yrs. Weird.
The chandelier CFL bulbs are lousy and ugly.
The other CFL styles (twisty, spots) worked well for me and I haven’t purchased replacements in 4 yrs.