compact flourescents, mercury hazard?

[lee houston]

Seems a bit extreme? Mercury hazard and/or yellow jounalism?

lee

[Charles Schuler]

Yeah, EXTREME.

I should be dead ... as a kid I did everything with mercury but eat it. My dad collected the stuff from switches and I'd sneak out his container and puddle some in my hands, coat coins with it, make arcs with it using my train transformer, and gosh knows what else.

Later, I worked as an auto mechanic and we, on a regular basis, blew out the brake and clutch housings with an air hose ... one could watch the asbestos fibers dancing in the sun rays entering the shop windows. Oh, and we washed our grimy hands and forearms with carbon tetrachloride.

DDT is banned and there is strong evidence that the ban has caused more harm than good (especially in third-world countries).

Nuclear reactor development ground to a halt thanks to the media-hyped hysteria.

Yeah, EXTREME.

I am a realist. Darn tootin' that we should constantly be on the lookout for dangerous materials and chemicals: but, let's calm down a bit and choose the important issues by using good science. The media hypes what sells. It is not their problem. It is ours.

[Goedjn]

Both. Plus nutcase consumers with no ability to measure risk, or cope with their own damn problems.

While mercury vapor isn't the sort of thing you WANT to be breathing, the amount in one freaking busted lamp isn't going to hurt you much. The appropriate response would have been to open the window and park a fan in it for a few hours.

disposal of the bulbs in quantity is a problem, though. You could dump them in a crusher and recover the mercury, but that's probably not cost-effective.

[Joseph Meehan]

Yea, really extreme.

[Anonymous]

You forgot to add; Leaded paint, and TONS of lead in the air from leaded gas.