Posted on 07/11/2009 4:24:31 AM PDT by Scanian
What if in 2025 a husband and wife decide they want to use old-fashioned incandescent bulbs in the sanctuary of their home? Will the light-bulb left defend their right to privacy and freedom of choice?
Don't count on it. Many Americans may not know it yet, but the federal government has already effectively banned the type of light bulb most of us use today.
In 2007, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, mandating that household light bulbs use incrementally less electricity starting in 2012 and culminating in 2020, when they must use less than 70 percent of the electricity conventional incandescent bulbs use today.
Compact fluorescent bulbs already meet this standard. The congressional authors of the law understood they were, in essence, phasing out incandescent bulbs.
They did this, they said, to help save the planet from overheating. But the light-bulb left did not weigh -- or care about -- the unintended consequences of their crusade. One such consequence could be an environment disaster in your family room.
You see, fluorescent bulbs contain mercury -- a bad, bad pollutant and health hazard that the Environmental Protection Agency has been sounding alarms about for years.
This put the EPA in a tough spot. On the one hand, it needed to applaud the politically correct use of fluorescent bulbs to save the planet. On the other hand, it needed to warn people that if they break a fluorescent bulb in their home it could poison the dog, the kid and the wall-to-wall rug. So, the EPA published blatantly self-contradictory instructions about what to do if mercury spills at your house.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
All I can say is dumb, dumb, dumb. And we really have to thank Pres.Bush for this nonsense. Of course Bambi would have intiated it himself if Bush hadn’t done it.
intiated = initiated
LEDs are the future for lighting.
those stupid expensive florescent are good for sh*t
I had a whole case of them from a home remodeling project i had done- they lasted 2 years.
I have a half case left of some incandescents from 10 years ago
Twenty-two cents for an incandescent 75 watt bulb? My eye.
In two decades land fill will be full of mercury. I just sweep them up and toss them in the trash. I don't care what the EPA says. And, millions of people will not either.A actually like the CFL's. They're a lot better than when they first came out. But, this whole idea of presidents telling us what we can and cannot do in our own homes has to stop.
It’s odd, though, that the enviroscreamers of yesteryear never saw fit to urge John Q. Public to don hazmat suits when the fluorescent lamps of that day (e.g. kitchen ceiling circlines, medicine cabinet and basement workshop straight tubes) broke. A broom and a dustpan, maybe a non-electric floor sweeper, and that was that. These old lamps had a lot more mercury per bulb than today’s compacts.
A worse scandal is that we are exporting our brownness to China. Recent factories are safer (kudos in particular to Osram/Sylvania), but mercury poisonings used to be fairly common at CFL plants in China.
Your eye out for bargains, like Wal-Mart. $0.88 a four pack.
Incandescent was "the prettier bulb"...and not much more...
So I stocked up on bulbs last year at Walmart during a sale and have enough to last for 40 years.
WHO is going to know what type light bulb I have under a shade in a light fixture in my home in 2020? Is the Government going to send inspectors around to search peoples homes?
What utter nonsense.......
” These old lamps had a lot more mercury per bulb than today’s compacts.”
Those old lamps made great lite sabers/swords for bored kids also.
Yeah, I've seen them. They last about four weeks. Buying cheap means cheap. Quality incandescent last longer but you pay more for them.
Personally I like the compact flourescent bulbs but that is my CHOICE. The thing to remember is that if you buy cheap ones you get cheap ones.
Most that I have don’t have the flourescent look and some are now several years old and still going strong.
But it is stupid to ban incandescents. Outside of personal preferences and, IMO, someone's God-given freedom to pick whatever lightbulb he/she wishes to use, there are many situations in which CFLs are simply impractical. Any time when you need a lot light in a short amount of time (i.e. people with medical problems related to CFLs, motion activated lights, stoplights, etc.) a CFL simply won't do it. Even if the prices of LED lights (which are supposed to address these problems) come down to something reasonable, it just seems so stupid that government thinks we cannot choose our own light bulbs.
The earliest compacts, put out by independent companies rather than by major lamp manufacturers, often suffered from weak and uneven color spectra popularly described as a “strange cast.” You can still see specimens of these early lamps if you walk into any dollar store.
About 20 years ago, I purchased some old-style carbon filament bulbs for some historic lighting in my house. The bulbs I installed in a hall fixture are still working 20 years later! As they say about carbon filament bulbs; twice the power, for half the light.
Actually, a good many of us have had to limit our time in such places and have had to alter our work environments in order to be able to function. The light fixture right over my desk at work is dark. Some malls I can't patronize because of the lights. I have a time limit in the grocery store. I can't study or read at the local library. Rehearsals for one choir are particularly painful as I get nauseous after about 45 minutes under fluorescent lights.
It's not so much the public areas, but that the government is now dictating what sort of lighting we can and cannot have in our homes. If the question involved pistols, many people on this forum who think this is a non-issue would be shouting from rooftops.
Depends on where they go. In a porch light controlled by nothing but a dusk to dawn photo eye, they will last for over a year.
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