Energy-efficient lightbulbs: Shiny but deadly

In their push to tell the rest of us how to live, environmentalists have forced some really bad ideas on the public.

There are electricity-generating windmills, which are not only unreliable, but whose blades we are now told slaughter birds.

There’s “clean” ethanol, whose manufacture requires changes in land use and farming that raise food prices and actually increase greenhouse emissions.

And now come energy-efficient lightbulbs.

Touted as a way to fight global warming (and cigarettes make you sexy), the twisty bulbs have become popular as replacements for Thomas Edison’s trusty incandescent lights.

Unfortunately, according to studies by the state of Maine and the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project, the bulbs pose a risk of mercury poisoning if they break. (The mercury is in there to make them shine brightly.)

In an example of the logic-defying tenacity we’ve come to expect from environmentalists, though, the same studies recommend continuing to use the bulbs because the pennies’ worth of energy they save outweighs the risk of mercury poisoning posed by lightbulbs, so long as people take precautions like never, ever, EVER breaking a lightbulb, and properly cleaning up if one of the bulbs breaks.

By the way, the proper way to clean up after one of these bulbs breaks is as follows, from the Maine study:

If a bulb breaks, get children and pets out of the room. Ventilate the room. Never use a vacuum — even on a rug — to clean up a compact fluorescent light. Instead, while wearing rubber gloves, use stiff paper such as index cards and tape to pick up pieces, then wipe the area with a wet wipe or damp paper towel. If there are young children or pregnant women in the house, consider cutting out the piece of carpet where the bulb broke. Use a glass jar with a screw top to contain the shards and clean-up debris.

According to the Boston Globe: “We found some very high levels (of mercury), even after we tried a number of clean-up techniques,” said Mark Hyland, Maine director of the Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management. During several of the experiments, for example, he said mercury in the air was more than 100 times levels considered safe even after a floor was cleaned.

The US Environmental Protection Agency and the states of Massachusetts and Vermont said this week they are revising their disposal recommendations based on the Maine study.

Now that sounds like a bright idea. …