Now I’ve done it.
After living a good, clean life for nearly six decades I’ve thrown it all away. Well, I didn’t throw it, exactly, I just knocked it off the kitchen counter onto the floor. It shattered on impact.
The warning on the bulb’s housing read: CONTAINS DANGEROUS MERCURY POISONING. DISPOSE ACCORDING TO LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL LAWS.
Yes, of course I panicked! My eight-year-old grandson came running in to see what happened.
“Did it break?”
“GET OUT!” I shouted, “STAY BACK!!”
It scared him. He ran into the dining room.
“IT’S DANGEROUS!!” I said, my grandfatherly tone of assurance stripped from me like a catfish shorn of its skin by a pair of pliers.
“WHY??” he asked. “WILL I DIE?”
I’m not making this up. Every word is true.
“No,” I said, grasping for a sense of experienced, calming leadership. Even as I said it I wondered if the dread mercury poisoning had already found its way into my lungs and blood stream. Is it wafting through the air to my boy? Are our Yorkie and Papillon about to keel over in horrifying death throes?
“Will YOU die?” He sounded slightly less worried, here.
“No. I don’t know. NO! Nobody is going to die.” I said it with authority. I just didn’t quite believe it. “Keeps the dogs out of here.”
And then, because I don’t know any better, I did what I’ve done throughout my nearly sixty years of life whenever I’ve dropped a lightbulb. I grabbed a broom and a dustpan and cleaned the damned thing up.
Oh, did I mention — these cfl wonders are supposed to last fifteen years or more? And this one burned out a year, maybe sixteen months ago?
I tossed it in the trash with the junk mail and spent soup cans. I took it out to the big rubber bin in the back yard, the one that will be picked up by an unsuspecting civil refuse engineer tomorrow morning. Off it goes — my poisonous contribution to the destruction of our environment, Mother Earth; of all things holy.
That was an hour ago. We’re fine so far. The dogs are fine.
I’m cooking dinner in that room.
But, still sporting a trifle bit of concern I checked it out thoroughly on the Internet on several websites. Get this…
One cfl light bulb contains roughly 1/125th the amount of mercury of the old mercury thermometers our moms frequently stuck in our mouths and up our infant rectums.
1/125th.
George Bush signed the mandate into law. Otherwise, I mostly liked him.
The greenies are still ecstatic. Ace Hardware is stocked to the rafters with cfl bulbs and have doubled the price of old, incandescent bulbs. In a year, all we’ll have are the screwy ones. It will be illegal, by federal law, to manufacture, sell or purchase good old Tom Edison light bulbs.
(Which, by the way, are much brighter and whiter in our bathroom.)
Incidentally, in case you care, the cfl bulbs are made in China.
You can mount protests and carry signs and raise hell, maybe start the Clean Light Party. I don’t know.
I’m just gonna keep a broom handy.
And a bottle of wine.
I’m not sure we’re gonna allow you to stay home any more. What’s next?
In order to get a head start on the state and federal goons squads (soon to be showing up and scanning your house with hand-held devices) – about 2 years ago, I began stocking up on those old Tom Edison inventions. Right now, my hall closet looks like the former light bulb isle at my local Wal-Mart. During that time, I also started squirreling away a few of those curly thingy when I found them on sale at Home Depot as the government p.r. tractor plowed full steam ahead with their “Go Green or We All Die” hysteria.
Cap and Trade tax will be covered in another class.
I don’t know if the Arnold/Obama/Nancy gang will actually *come-a-knock-knock-knockin’ at my front door (*El Dorados – ’55) to make sure I’ve done gone completly green, but if they do bust in later and confiscate my stash of bargain Edisons, I wonder if they’ll, first … have to show me their badges? (uhh) Did I say badges?
Badges? They probably don’t got to show us no stinkin’ badges. After all, this was the change some in the club have been waiting for.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll take my old pickup truck for a nice long drive this afternoon. I’m kind of curious as to how many more miles I’ll be able to drive it after the new increases in ethanol kick in. See, my old rig was engineered to run on … corn.
Dont’ sweat it. Those things aren’t dangerous. You’re more likely to die from the possiblity of procuring an infection-filled cut from the broken glass than any noxious gasses that may waft your direction.
However, heed this: before tungsten light bulbs are all but gone, CFLs will also be on their way out, replaced by the much more natural-looking, trustworthily dimmable, and much longer-lasting LED bulbs. They’ll be even more expensive than the old fashioned lamps that threaten Mother Earth, but they’ll last about 10 years.
Update — 18 days later we’re still fine. I’m still fat and old, the dogs still poop in the corner and my grandson is still healthy, happy and annoying.
There was never a hint of hazmat disaster in our kitchen from that dropped bulb. I’m thinking of taking the canary down there just to be sure.
This governmental scare over governmentally-mandated light bulbs is pure bullshit.
This all made me smile – not least because I had my own disaster last night. I was putting up a new light shade and had put the lightbulb on the stairs. Next thing I knew my cat had decided the bulg was a great toy and knocked it onto the hall floor where it broke. Panic ensued! Still, a few hours later and we all seem OK. The canary idea is a good one, except in our case the cat would probably eat it.
I just saw something about this on tv. It talked the
same things you wrote about.
I go to college in Canada and we just now are learning about this in our class.
Thank you for helping me with the last little bit of my
report.
Thanks for the outline of television stuff.
I definitely think that cable tv is going to go away.
Or at least have to change with the times.
Internet tv is definitely the wave of the future.
As broadband speeds get faster, everyone will be watching their tv shows on sites like this.
What does anyone know about this? I doubt there’s a lot more to the subject
I was just watching this on PBS today. They spoke the same things you wrote about.
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