Science Features
By Shabtai Gold May 8, 2007, 17:49 GMT
'Great mystery' solved with discovery of Herod's tomb
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How interesting that the biggest arguements on this site are about politics, and religion...
Both revolve around unprovable prophecies and false promises
Your right sp4, they got run off by facts over on the global warming stories and ran over here. Maybe Christians are paid by Big Oil. Yo, Tonny What exactly do you believe about volution and the age of the earth, I know everything just happened for no reason. When is the next Ice Age?
We see it most everywhere we go; the big push to go green and save the environment. It's even in the movie theaters, and that’s where Lisa Coots of Miami says she got the idea to switch out her traditional light bulbs to the new compact fluorescent bulbs.
Coots made her decision after seeing Al Gore's documentary about global warming 'An Inconvenient Truth'.
Besides saving the environment, the new CFL save you money and last longer. This all sounded great to Coots, who put the new bulbs in her daughter's bedrooms, the living room and closets.
What she says she didn't know is that the bulbs can burn longer because they contain Mercury, a liquid metal which has been linked to a host of neurological problems. Coots says she didn't know there was a toxic chemical in the bulb and didn't see anything on the package warning of the proper disposal of the product.
'The package did not say anything about it containing any mercury or how to dispose of it,” Coots said. If she had seen it contained mercury, she said, would not have bought the bulbs, especially because she has three young children at home.
'I think it's very scary' she said.
The warning on the packages are in small print and some are hard to read. They are also voluntary, with many of the CFL's being sold and distributed with no disposal warning at all.
Brandy Bridges of Prospect, Maine broke a CFL in her daughter's bedroom, with the glass and mercury landing all over the shag carpet.
Bridges knew enough not to vacuum it, but worried about getting all the mercury out of the carpet. She says she called Maine's Department of Environmental Protection and the agency sent over a specialist who found elevated levels of mercury in the room.
Bridges says the specialist told her not to clean it up herself and referred her to a hazardous materials cleanup company who estimated the cost of the cleanup to be two thousand dollars.
While cases like Bridges are rare and she was told later by the DEP that she could have cleaned it up herself. parents like Coots worries about exposing her kids to the toxic chemical.
While the amount of mercury in CFL’s is minimal, Stephen Webster of Florida's Department of Health says you do need to be careful.
'There's one to two drops of mercury inside this not very much,' Webster said, 'but still enough to raise some concerns and you should avoid being exposed to mercury.'
The bigger fear is that million of people are like Coots, unaware unaware that the CFL’s cannot be tossed in the trash when they burn out.
Webster says the agency is trying to educate the public about sites available in Dade and Broward Counties where you can properly dispose of your burned or broken bulbs.
The question is just how many people would take the time to do that, instead throwing the bulbs in the trash, the mercury then ending up in our landfills and eventually in our groundwater.
Webster says 'Our primary concern is that mercury over time possibly getting into the ground and contaminating our groundwater because once mercury gets into our groundwater it is very difficult and very expensive to clean up.
Webster agrees more needs to be done to make disposal easier for consumers to make sure the toxic material does not end up in the water or air. Webster says its going to be a challenge the public needs to be educated the public needs to be aware of what they are buying.
Still Lisa Coots is worried we might be putting the cart before the horse, marketing the technology so aggressively while some consumers are still in the dark about the proper disposal, making for a possibly toxic future for her children.
What a pathetic example of people living in a Nanny State. So a few drops of mercury were dropped - an inspector found 'elevated levels of mercury' in the rooom = yes, but were they anywhere near dangerous levels ? Then considering $2000 for disposal by a specialist company. How on earth are stupid people like this going to survive in the coming climate change - whether too hot or an ice age doesn't matter, they won't cope with either
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