On May 5, 10:38*am, Peter wrote:
I, and many others of my age, have played with mercury as a kid in the
1940s.
Rub it on a coin and it shined it up.
I'm not sure, but we might have even tasted it.
I remember busting the long florescent bulbs.
There is nothing wrong with me now.

Me too. Many times. *I think that my first few Gilbert chemistry sets
even contained a small vial of mercury. *I also played closely with a
"nuclear energy" set as a young teenager that included several sources
of alpha, beta, and gamma emitters. *I also probably fried my feet to a
crisp in the shoe store fluoroscopes in the early 1950s.

I'm in my mid-60s with no evidence of radiation damage or mercury
poisioning.

This is not to say that mercury and ionizing radiation are not
dangerous, or that what we did is safe. *But it seems that the current
hyperventilation over avoiding mercury levels that are only a small
fraction of what we experienced might be an over-reaction.

Not only that, but the increased power consumption of regular
incandescents over the consumption of CFLs causes the coal-burning
power station to emit more mercury.