Yay! Uber-Bulbs!
OK, so who doesn’t want to save electricity, right? The fancy new lightbulbs [Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL)] were said to be just as bright, energy-saving, and last for years upon years. I’m no enviro-guy, just wanted to save money for the family budget, and so the curly-bulbs seemed a great idea. WikiPedia seems to be on the happy bandwagon for CFLs, too.
We replaced almost all of our old incandescent light bulbs with varieties of the new Compact Fluorescent curly bulbs, except where the fixture needed something else.
We saved power, but then again, we’d spent $ for 20+ of the curly-bulbs. Go figure.
Remember: I was a curly-bulb fan, and installed them in my home, and told other people about the long-term savings.
Busted!
Then we broke one.
“Isn’t this supposed to be deadly amounts of mercury or something?” I asked the wife. Dust on the floor, my hands, and all over the busted curly bulb. I cleaned it up, but wondered if I needed a hazmat suit to do the cleanup, and maybe file an environmental impact report in triplicate.
More about this later.
Burn Out
Then, about a year in, one of the fancy new 5-year bulbs died. “Oh well– must be a quirk.” Then a few months later, another one. And another one.
“Hmph. The old incandescents lasted longer than this,” I grumbled.
Smoked Out
“Honey? Do you smell something burning? I get this smell every once in a while from somewhere.”
Did the man-facing-down-danger routine and checked the house, electrical panel, plugs, and appliances. Nada.
Then, from my bedside lamp, I heard a fizzing noise, and again caught the smell that had been haunting the house for days.
I took the shade off, and found the lit curly-bulb was browned and smoking around one part 0f the bottom end of the glass tube, and acrid smoke was issuing out from it. Switched it off, unplugged the lamp, and removed said bulb (uncomfortably hot to the touch), let it cool, then bagged it and threw it in the garbage.
To this day I’ve no idea what happened to the curly bulb to set it smoking and overheating, nor what might have been in that smoke– burnt mercury? Other hazmat chemicals? Apparently this has happened to other people, too.
I’ve No Idea
After these experiences, I realized that there was a lot I didn’t know about the curly-bulbs, except that the government wanted to ban the old bulbs, that they had mercury in them, that they didn’t last as long as they were supposed to, and sometimes smoked and tried to burst into flames.
The path to wisdom is to admit, when you don’t know, that you don’t know.
What I do know:
THESE BULBS WILL BE MANDATORY BY 2012. Creepy.
THESE BULBS ARE NOT SAFE. Scary.
THESE BULBS ARE POISONOUS. Got that?
THESE BULBS ARE AN UNPROVEN TECHNOLOGY, being enforced for political reasons. Bizarre.
Politics or environmental concerns should not trump science, public safety, long term testing, and the ongoing development of better lighting technology.
The entries to follow will try to explore the origins, consequences, politics, and realities of these so-called miracle bulbs, one of the darling technologies of the politically militant environmental movement, and of politicians seeking to promote green policies.
Please add your stories, thoughts, and comments below.
More soon.
Binks
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Congratulations. I want to know more. I will be back!
Binks,
You nailed it. “Curlybulbs” the ruination of our country.
Our hysterical government has no brain or passion for logic, science or technology.. only leftist Global politics — to the ruin of our Republic.
Thanks for the nod…
In Jesus Christ eternally,
ExP(Jack)
Part of the problem is our old friend, Chinese quality control.
Been there, done that. Not only dangerous…these bulbs promote false economy: not green, not energy saving.
The QA on these was ‘fast tracked’ and done extremely sloppily: they were ONLY tested in upright position (meaning, the light bulb’s base is on the bottom the ‘curl’ above it – NOT sideways or upside-down) lamps with shades open on the top (NOT in any light fixtures which are directly on the ceiling, or where the light-bulb is enclosed in a glass ‘outer layer’).
They were also tested only in ‘room temperature’ – between 20 and 22 degrees Celsius.
Outside of these temperature ranges, the bulb actually uses MORE energy than the ‘old’ ones.
In enclosed spaces, it heats up the area – and becomes extremely inefficient…and potentially dangerous.
But…
The WORST part is that the light emitted by these bulbs have now been listed as a known trigger for SLE (systemic lupus) because it emits light in a spectrum which our immune systems interpret as ‘dangerous’….
Oh – and did you know that a new, highly energy efficient generation of the ‘old fashioned’ light bulbs had been developed and was just about ready for the market? The production, however, was nixed when governments all over began banning ALL ‘old fashioned’ light bulbs – regardless of efficiency…..
We live in fun times, don’t we?
The lightbulbs of evil are mandated by the dimbulbs of evil.
A friend of mine broke one of these in her office and because she knew it contained mercury she called an expert in about clean up. He told her it would cost something like $1,000 to properly do the job, and I think the HazMat suits were required.
And these bulbs are made in China while incandescent bulbs are made in North America. And the light is unwelcoming.
I have half a mind to start stocking up on incandescent bulbs to save my eyesight in my old age. And to not make the wrinkles look so harsh!
We asked the garbage/recycling expert at our municipality how to dispose of CFL bulbs and were told that they can be tossed into the regular garbage bags for curbside pick-up. We had moved into a newly constructed home and found that the builder had installed CFLs throughout (as required by new building code, of course). We replaced the lot with incandescent bulbs; hence, our batch of CFL bulbs for disposal.
Another thought…
I have a couple of lamps that have that 3-way setting — low, medium, high intensity. You can buy special incandescent bulbs for those. I’ve never found any CFLs that will work with them — you only get on/off as a choice.
I, too have had these things burn out. Then the quandry…what to do with them? Put them in the garbage is the ONLY option…poor garbage collectors. Then I had one explode in my basement. Cleaned it up with a dust pan (what else could I do?) I just had a blood screen that told me I had mercury in my system. I had thought it was all from the coal burning plant in our town. I am now going through a chelation therapy that is quite expensive. Thanks GE
My apartment building provides them for free. You just hand them in with a maintenance report and they replace it for you. I guess this encourages people to use them without knowing the risks.
I watched a documentary on the curly bulbs a couple months ago (I think it was TVO but could be wrong — maybe CTV or CBC?). They give off 50 times the UV radiation of regular bulbs, and a number of people have gotten sunburn-like rashes, headaches, etc. from sitting too close to them (e.g. using them in a reading lamp). I experienced this myself, and when I replaced the curly bulb in my reading lamp with the pre-Gore primitive but tested and true Thomas Edison version, the rash miraculously disappeared!
There can only be one logical explanation: either curly bulbs cause UV burns, or Edison discovered more than the incandescent lightbulb — he found a cure for common skin rashes.
Ricardo
Perhaps you can start another blog for the similarly spastic decision to sponsor the innoculation of preteen girls for HPV? (They didn’t think we’d mind the risks since the gov’t gets brownie points?) It astounds me that politicians are so persuaded by ideology/political gain as to ignore science and real life health concerns. Can’t they find anything else to ‘get busy’ about?
I do not agree with most of what has been written here, I do not wish to make comment, however I thought perhaps you may like some peace of mind. CFLs will not be mandatory by 2012. The incandescent bulb will be banned, any energy efficient replacement is a viable alternative for your home. Try LED, Philips MasterLED range is bright and dimmable.
The mandating of these light bulbs is not being done by dimwits or with any environmentally “green” motives in mind whatsoever. There is a huge thing happening these days with new autoimmune diseases cropping up all over the place. I’m not really a conspiracy nut, but if it looks like coffee, smells like coffee,tastes like coffee…well then we ALL need to WAKE UP and take a big whiff of it. Where was Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Chronic Lyme’s Disease in the 50′s,60′s,70′s or even the early 80′s? One would be hard pressed to have even heard them, now I doubt there’s a single person who doesn’t know someone one whose life isn’t being destroyed by any one of these very common but uncurable illnesses. Are we to believe that these diseases are inventing themselves? We are being made sick by the money mongers that lurk within the medical and pharmaceutical industries,our government and the leaders of our entire world, not only political but more important financial-the rest of us are merely disposable fodder from which they suck their money and power from-WE are “The Masses” and our numbers are purposely being carved down into a more manageable number by the power elite who openly promote this so called “New World Order” Sadly it’s being done to us without even a fight,or the least bit of resistance and even more pathetic it’s also “WE”- the taxpayer,the consumer, the working class, that is footing the bill for them.Reduction of the world population by up to 60% has been on their agenda for over half a century.If all this seems to hard to believe then carefully compare the two Agenda’s of Adolph Hitler and of the Bush Administration and many of those in between. I agree,the government mandate of the use of light bulbs that contain mercury which have been found to cause these very same types of diseases,is a far cry from the Holocaust..or is it? Maybe it’s just at a less noticeable pace. For more eye opening information on this supposedly hidden agenda go to http://www.loosechange.com
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