Environment vs human impact

[mousme]

So it turns out that the mercury in those new-fangled lightbulbs is causing major health problems for the workers producing them.

I already knew that there were disposal issues with the bulbs because of the mercury content, but now there's an extra ethical dimension to it. I'm not sure which outweighs the other, or if I can even think of it in those terms.

Comments

...and yet, we keep on voting...

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Environment vs. human impact? You see this as some sort of trade off? Where do you think all that mercury goes when these bulbs eventually burn out? There's no living thing on earth to which mercury compounds are not toxic.

When people vote on things they don't understand or in which they don't have a personal stake, corruption reigns. People who do have a stake, like the makers of the compact florescent bulbs get rotten legislation passed on the backs of people trying to legislate themselves a "green" world but then we find that we didn't know the whole story. It's the curse of democracy. Once you let it out of the bottle, the lowest common denominator, lead by demagogues, rules.

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

FWIW, my husband, who is a former environmental science researcher, is very much opposed to those mercury-laden bulbs. I have never bothered to formulate my own opinion on the matter because he knows more about it than I do.

[kiwano.livejournal.com]

I'm just waiting to scrape together enough cash to replace my incandescents with LED lights instead. Nice thing about living on 12VDC is that I've already got a lot of LED lights to choose from.

[dizietsma.livejournal.com]

The Next Big Thing (tm) will be LED bulbs. They're crazy-expensive at the moment but volume will bring the price down in a year or two. They're supposedly much more efficient even than CFL, and last much longer. I'm curious if they have any environmental problems with manufacture or disposal.

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

I think this is why my brain has increasingly been going "SPLUNGE!" over just about everything. Like the old joke that about being able to find a study indicating everything and anything will give you cancer, my decision-making process is starting to break down in the face of a glut of information that leaves me knowing less than when I started.

This isn't a head-in-sand thing, but a feeling of being overwhelmed. I wonder, at times, what the solution is--or if there is one.

(Here via joane, btw. We game with her in common, I believe.)

[joane.livejournal.com]

(He's kosher! One of Porter's merry men over on 10, and line 20 on the last version of your spreadsheet/cheat sheet. ;) )

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up! :)

Oh, and has mangafairy worked up the nerve to friend you yet? (It's Katie, and suddenly she's being shy ;) ).

[joane.livejournal.com]

Oh, for the love of Pete! No, she hasn't. I shall go pounce.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Hi there, nice to meet you OOC. I am woefully behind on my SG10 reading, sadly. :)

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

Quite alright ;) We seem to be a rather ... pokey group right now. Shouldn't take long to get caught up on our drama.

[taxlady.livejournal.com]

It's a problem. The same problem comes up every time that someone has "the answer".

Now they want to legislate the use of CFCs. They shouldn't legislate the how. They should legislate for a desired result.

Same thing with the city and woodstoves/fireplaces. They want to ban new ones and are thinking of banning them outright. They should be setting a maximum level of pollution coming out of the chimneys. The Finns use contraflow woodstoves for heating and those are virtually pollution free. I don't know if it is still true, but at one time you couldn't get a government mortgage-guarantee on a new house if you didn't have one.

Mercury In Ugly Bulbs - And Elgin, Illinois

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

I've been resisting Savant's love affair with the CFLs because I hate the light they produce, and I hated the way the early ones took forever to light up. I really dislike their light and feel the same way about LED lights.

Elgin, Illinois. I lived near there, took the train there, nearly launched a $37 million development there (didn't go ahead with it, yay, long story) when I was working for a private residential development firm when I got hurt.

Elgin clocks? Does that ring any bells for you? And Elgin watches were particularly popular in WW II among the soldiers, because their numbers glowed. The numbers were painted on by women who would wipe their brushes on their tongues to get a better point for painting on such a minuscule scale.

Yes, eventually, they all died of radiation poisoning. The paint glowed for a reason.

Mercury and Cinnabar

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

And so I'm just now surfacing from an hour-long excursion into editing Wikipedia so that the next person who looks up cinnabar mining for mercury knows it ain't all about teh pretty.