Kenneth P. Green:
Photo Credit: Jeff KubinaAs I’ve written before, (here, and here, for example) there are many good reasons to remove the ban (pardon me, “unattainable performance standard that will serve as a de-facto ban”) on incandescent light bulbs.
Now there’s another reason to add to the list of objections. Besides being expensive, undimmable, slow-to-brighten, giving off ugly light, and containing mercury, compact fluorescent bulbs apparently give off UV radiation that will damage your skin.
According to Caroline May writing in the Daily Caller:
New research funded by the National Science Foundation has scientists warning consumers about the potentially harmful effects energy-saving CFL light bulbs can have on skin.
The warning comes based on a study conducted by Stony Brook University and New York State Stem Cell Science — published in the June issue ofPhotochemistry and Photobiology—which looked at whether and how the invisible UV rays CFL bulbs emit affect the skin.
Based on the research, scientists concluded that CFL light bulbs can be harmful to healthy skin cells.
And wearing sunblock to try to save your skin just makes it worse!!!
You know, I garden and so does hubby, but our doctor found that we both needed more vitamin D.
He said the reason was sunblock, and hats.
Imagine now this on top of that.
I’m glad I stockpiled so many old-fashioned bulbs.
We won’t be looking to buy new bulbs for about ten years (unless the Obama Civilian Defense Corps starts doing home inspections).
Maybe before we run out enough studies and unforeseen bad consequences will lead to a lift of this ban.
The timing for this is excellent. We have all ready shut down the last factory that produces them in the USA. I guess this will be another product we can buy from China. After awhile one could think these idiots in congress are trying to destroy this country.
I still don’t know where to dispose of these HazMat warning eliciting CFL’s. Scopes of course chooses to underplay the danger saying that the amount of mercury is small, but we’ve been warned for decades about the dangers of any mercury being released into the environment. Just read for yourself the handling requirements of florescent bulbs:
Scopes handling instructions
Broken CFL: Cleaning Up and Dealing With a Haz-Mat release in your house
How to Clean Up and Dispose of a Broken Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb (CFL)
It is as if the hypocritical environmentalist crowd now accepts the release of mercury into the environment so long as some energy is saved. I say this because the enviro-wacko crowd is oblivious to the fact of basic human nature in that most people will not bother with the careful handling these bulbs require but will just toss them in the trash with the rest of the garbage, where they can be dumped into landfills, where the mercury will eventually pass into the aquifers or will run off into our waterways.
The biggest idiocy of this whole thing is that while the industry (and our government,) started phasing out incandescent lamps and cranking out CFL’s, they surely knew that environmentally safe LED bulbs were being developed. Yet instead, the far-left politicians decided to jump on the CFL bandwagon and wrote legislation to force us to switch to CFL’s, (against our better judgement,) rather than wait a little longer for the mass production of LED lamps.
@Ditto:
Ditto, most major hardware stores have a drop-off point for these nasty bulbs.
Yeah, when Bush wanted to deal with the reality that we cannot (with today’s known technology) get 100% of all mercury and arsenic out of our water supply the liberal media went ballistic.
Now, it appears Obama has exposed children to very increased skin cancer risks through these horrid bulbs on top of that…..
Obama has foisted so much mercury on our children with these bulbs and the same media is mum.
Our media – so bought and sold.
..and the Double envelope CFLs they recommend also means reducing their light output still more 😉
There is more irony about CFLs, eg leave them on, waste energy, switch
them on-off, shorten their life,..
Basically, bulbs are the wrong way to use fluorescent lighting
technology, best in long tube form, just like LEDs have natural
lighting advantages in sheet form.
CFL/LED natural advantages are largely compromised in offering
politically pushed incandescent-copying lighting…
“The Deception behind the arguments used to ban light bulbs and other products”
13 point referenced rundown http://freedomlightbulb.org