The Greenie-Wonks are telling us that flourescent lights are the Salvation of the Earth.
Of course, the $2,500.00 cost to clean up should you break one are only a slight inconvenience to (say) AlGore, whose friggin' electric bill is about 200x mine.
But here's another GREAT feature of flourescent lighting:
Guests were evacuated briefly from the Radisson Hotel, 2303 N. Mayfair Road, in Wauwatosa this morning after an overheated light fixture caused a fire in the basement around 7:50 a.m., according to the Wauwatosa Fire Department.
...According to Hevey, the fire is believed to have started when a fluorescent light ballast overheated, melted and dripped into a trash can.
Yah, hey. Save the Earth!!! Burn down your home!!
I'm not sure that's a fair assessment. With that logic, you could say that the Catholic Church legitimizes pederasty, based on the actions of a few bad priests.
ReplyDeleteI once had a plastic lamp shade melt and catch fire from an incandescent bulb. Was it an indictment against all lightbulbs, or just crappy installation on my part?
Granted, there's lots of issues with fluorescent lighting tech, but it's really not the grand conspiracy that you think it is. I wrote a paper this semester, comparing the costs of incandescent, LED, and CFL (compact fluorescent) lighting over 20 years. Maybe I'll do a blog post with the results.
To be fair though they are mostly hyping compact fluorescents which have no ballasts.
ReplyDeleteThe cleanup cost though is a bit of an exaggeration. This came from a story where a women broke a bulb and called the Department of Environmental Protection and was recommended a specialist. Whereas the EPA actual recommendation are that you put them in a sealed plastic bag and then dispose them as you would a battery. A regular thermometer by comparison has 200 times more mercury in them. They only recommend recycling for large operations that use them.
What is stupid though is how some states are staring to mandate their use.
Jimbob, I don't think it's a conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteI think it's stupid, given what LED's can do (albeit they don't quite have "white" color yet.)
And Jeff, when I've broken F40CWs, I just sweep and put into the trash.
The fact that my system is now loaded w/mercury explains a lot!
DAD, Here's the link to my results:
ReplyDeletehttp://shakingoffsleep.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-many-bloggers.html
Once you see the money CFL can save, you won't think it's stupid. $500 can buy a lot of ammo.
LEDs are super-efficient, but they're also unidirectional, which mean you need a sh!+load of them to get that same lighting you would get from one bulb.
I would hazard a guess that if the hippies weren't so pushy about it, more folks would actually like CFLs.