In article ,
Weatherlawyer writes:
These light bulbs are toxic. They can affect your brain. They contain
small amounts of mercury.
Yes, about 3mg each. Another 2.5mg of mercury is produced by
the generation of electricity to power them. Conversely, about
10mg of mercury is produced to power equivalent filament lighting,
so CFL mercury production is significantly less than that for a
filament lamp.
Also at 3mg, each CFL contains about 1/1000th of the mercury in
the average person's body (3g).
I don't know if that is native mercury or a more reactive compound.
It's native mercury. Long term harm to the body comes from organic
mercury compounds rather than native mercury. The body is not good
at converting native mercury to organic compounds fortunately, but
plants (e.g. vegetables) can if it gets into their soil and taken
up by their roots.
You must dispose of them carefully as incinerators will produce toxic
fumes with them.
Less than power stations do in powering filament lamps.
All that without our having the slightest idea of the damage they have
the potential for.
Fluorescent lighting has been in widespead use since WWII in this
country.
I think the context to be looked at more closely is the need for more
nuclear power stations after most of the last ones went off line at
almost identical dates. (Thanks Margarat.)
Couple that with massive power price hikes and you get the making of a
conspiracy. Do you trust your government?
Government is 10 years too late to start building new power
stations and maintain integrity of supply in the UK.
Would they lie to you?
The problem is in part public opinion. This has stopped
replacement of the infrastructure required to maintain our
supply integrity. It will take large price hikes and/or collapses
in supply to change this. We are just starting to encounter these
now, but expect them to get very much worse as the time to fix
the problem is around 15 years, and it's not even been widely
recognosed as existing yet.
See
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-...f46f4fa4a9973c
for additional background to this.
--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]