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LAWSUITS!
I ope that these are the only bulbs being used in the halls and offices of our esteemed congress who voted this crap in.
Well, duh! Of course. UV radiation at some particular wavelength will have the same effect regardless of its source.
Unanswered questions: What intensity of UV radiation is emitted by CFL? How does that intensity compare to conventional tube fluorescent lights? How does that intensity compare to a day at the beach?
Enquiring minds (at least, the ones who paid attention in science class) want to know.
IINM, all fluorescent lighting is of this nature. Time to ban ‘em all?
So, since CFLs are completely identical to tube fluorescents except for the shape and size, does this mean the lamps we’ve been using for decades in every kind of application have been secretly damaging us, and yet no one noticed?
2183 Rayburn House Office Bldg
Washington, D.C. 20515
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“Environmentalists and CFL proponents argue the bulbs are environmentally friendly and economically efficient”
They just fry your skin.
We should be able to sue the idiots in congress for this debaucle.
I mean really. This article is very, very misleading. It completely ignores the major (in fact the only) benefit of the CFL bulb legislation: IT LETS THE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS WHO VOTED FOR THIS PIECE OF CRAP FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES.
With any legislation their are tradeoffs. Here we have added potentially millions to the already large group of Americans who have skin cancer, added hugely to budgets for home lighting and subjected the population of the United States to mercury poisoning from broken CFL light bulbs.
A small price to pay for making our Congress (and George Bush, I might add) feel warm and fuzzy inside.
later
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I also find this article singularly uninformative. How much UV radiation? How does it compare with sunlight? Is it a different frequency?
I’m not saying that there may not be some risk, but how much? We’ve been using CFLs for years, because they cut our electric bill significantly. I think it is wrong to MANDATE them, but we have chosen to use them, since they are very cost effective.
I’d be interested in LED lights, but the cost and the color problem need to be solved first.
They can "argue" that, but it's not true. Mercury vapors are hardly "environmentally friendly," the light is weak and annoying, the lights cause skin damage, and the bulbs last for about five minutes.
IOW, they're another mandated boondoggle to enrich whoever is some big lefty's buddy that manufactures them, and the public be damned to skin cancer and macular degeneration.
The TEA kettle is getting on the boil.
If they give off UV-B, this could solve the Obesity problem.