Posted on 01/13/2011 9:14:34 PM PST by george76
As incandescent bulbs are phased out across America in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescents (CFL), a Philadelphia environment expert is warning of a potential danger in the bulbs especially if they are accidentally broken... you need to take special precautions if a CFL bulb breaks.
Open up the windows, Prof. Ryan advises. Leave the room for 15 to 20 minutes and let the room air out. There will be a little bit of mercury that will vaporize. Mercury is a toxin and you dont want to breathe it in...
He says if a bulb breaks you should also turn off your central air or heat for about 20 minutes if you have a forced-air system.
(Excerpt) Read more at philadelphia.cbslocal.com ...
Can we mail out burned out Mercury bulbs to AlGore? Or would he have us arrested?
CFL’s, basically, have 3 colors, RGB, blended together to create white. The blue is somewhere around 430nm, the red somewhere around 615nm, and the green somewhere around 550nm.
The 2700k bulbs have more of the orange/red phosphor, so the light appears more orange/red. Those are the warm whites. The 6500k daylight or cool white bulbs have more of a bluish tint, because they’re using more of the blue phosphor and less of the red.
Incandescent bulbs halogen bulbs, have light spectrums much more similar to the sun. Continuous full spectrum peaking in the visible light spectrum. The sun peaks somewhere in the 400-500nm range, the halogen in the 500-600nm, and the incand. With incands and the sun, you’re getting all wavelengths, in different proportions, with CFLs youre basically getting 3 wavelenths.
They’re not talking about how long the bulb lasts when they’re talking about efficiency. CFL’s are efficient. A 26w bulb does put out about the same amount of light as a 100w incand.
CFLs aren’t as cheap as incands, but they’re down below $2 a piece for the 26w.
I think they should all go to Upton - he’s at the top of the heap in the new Republican Committee chairmen now on Energy and he loves them. Still can’t figure out why he wasn’t booted out and replaced with someone more conservative. But at least it’s not a worry in my house - I have 6 cases of the old fashioned ones of various kinds in my garage. Should take care of my lifetime.
I totally HATE CFL bulbs
They are more expensive and the light they produce is unpleasant to the eye, IMO.
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Ah ha! So that's what models do--they lick fluorescent light bulbs!
You must be kidding!
I shunned them... until GE came out with neodymium bulbs. The color is very pleasing.
These things need a warning label like a pack of cigarettes.
If you break a CFL bulb in your living room, simply open the windows for 15-20 minutes, turn off the heat and leave the house. Go for a drive or something, or just stay in your car with the engine and heat on. When you return, the highly toxic components of the bulb may or may not still be in your house. You must vacuum and, if possible, hand-wash the living room and possibly the entire house very carefully. This should help keep you warm as your house reheats itself. With all burners on “FULL” this should take less than an hour.
It’s a small price to pay for the beauty and simplicity of one of those expensive, ugly, ineffective, headache-inducing “energy saving, environmental” bulbs!
Do ya think?
(Constitutionally) Retarded he is.
“Nice kitty....”
The let this cat out of the bag early...way too early. They should have said nothing about the mercury until incandescents were completely gone.
In the case of car airbags decapitating kids - they knew enough to keep that under wraps, until airbags were fully phased in.
Sometimes even socialists make mistakes.
I don’t know about Lowe’s, but I do know that Home Depot has a drop off for old batteries and fluorescent bulbs. It is usually at the return desk area.
In addition the EPA Police (Mercury Control Division) will visit your home with a few “routine” questions. Have your documents ready and in order, please.
I’m guessing it’s a mercury compound rather than metallic mercury, so it might have different properties.
Heres Mark Steins take on how Gov killed one of Americas greatest invention and U.S. job killing workforce. Send it around:
Most of the people who wring their hands about the safety of CFLs probably spend 8 hours a day sitting under a veritable sea of 4-foot fluorescent light bulbs. Certainly those bulbs have bad stuff in them, too.
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