Last major U.S. factory making incandescent light bulbs closes
Virginia manufacturing plant will take its jobs to China, where making eco-friendly CFLs is cheaper.
Photo: jamesrbowe/Flickr Thumbnail photo: ZUMA Press
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My children, ages three, two and one, all received acute mercury poisoining from the breakage of ONE of these CFL bulbs.
My three year old was playing in the living room and knocked over a lamp. This lamp had a CFL in it. (Since we saw no warning on the box not to use in lamps, etc. and did NOT know how serious it is when they break) My three year old was in the room for a few minutes after the bulb broke before my wife realized what happened and removed them and opened the windows..... More
I am personally sick of the pseudo-science surrounding the "Green Movement." It's a sick joke that will do more harm to people and the earth if allowed to proceed. Mercury filled light bulbs and hybrids that are environmentally 1/3 more damaging to manuafacture than a Hummer with 1/3 the Hummer's operational life span is not my idea of green. Disposing of these instruments is going to be increasingly problematic.
Legislating compliance is in a word tyrannical. I'll replace all my.... More
CFL's are just as bad:
* Amount of mercury that can cause mercury poisoning: 0.05mg
* Approximate amount of toxic mercury found in CFL bulb: 5mg
* Approximate amount of mercury in a watch battery: 25mg
* Amount of mercury waste produced by fluorescent bulbs in landfills: nearly 30,000 pounds
* Number of sealed plastic bags the EPA recommends wrapping a CFL in before disposal: 2
* Minimum number of clean-up steps for a broken CFL: 9
Via: .... More
Amount of mercury that can cause mercury poisoning: 0.05mg PER CUBIC METER in vapor form.
Worst case scenario air contamination from CFL breaking and somehow all mercury content vaporizing in a standard size room: 0.02mg PER CUBIC METER.
The actual amount of mercury you would be exposed to in a typical break is about the same as a bite of tuna fish. If you cleaned it up poorly and stayed in that room for 24 hours, the exposure becomes on part with 7 oz of Albacore. This is.... More
Co2 is not a pollutant... That's a recent phenomenon passed by legislators. It only took humanity about 10,000+ years to figure out that the ******** that comes out of liberal mouths is a harmful gas. Best course of action? Self-sacrifice. I suggest that all radical environmentalists and global warming enthusiasts take one for the team. Rid the world of your hazardous pollutants and give the rest of us a fighting chance.
More high paying blue color jobs going to China and being replaced by minimum wage jobs at WalMart. The reason government workers make more is because the only jobs left in the private sector are minimum wage jobs. It is not that the government pay has gone up, it is the private sector jobs pay has plummeted to minimum wage.
The real story here is about the need to be out in front when it comes to green technology. The article clearly (but slowly) explains that if GE had invested in CFL technology development in the 80s the business would not have gone to China. The U.S. could have had dominance in the market for efficient lighting if our companies had worked on the innovative green technologies when they had the lead in technology.
There is a consistent trend of companies with no-longer-competitive plants.... More
Uh, you want fries with that? Were are these jobs going to be created?
This is, by far, the dumbest piece of journalism I have ever read regarding incandescent lighting and the future of lighting. These jobs are being rapidly replaced here and abroad with light fixture manufacturing, retrofit and sales jobs in the LED sector. As we apporach the deadline on the ban for incandescents these jobs will accelerate in numbers.
With a little outside of the box thinking, the new employment in LED's would dwarf the number of manufacturing jobs lost in the phase out of.... More
When it comes to Obama's promise of jobs, spit in one hand and put the results of his promises in the other and see which one fills up first!
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When we must don hazmat suits to clean up a broken CFL lightbulbs then be sure to dispose of them at an appropriate toxic waste center (ha!), we must all realize that these bulbs are a massive environmental disaster in the making.
Imagine the contaminated ground water with mercury all over the country!
This CFL bulb campaign should be aborted for all future generations!
Coal powered plants emit more mercury generating the extra electricity that incandescent bulbs require. If you google something simple like MERCURY CFL COAL POWER PLANTS you will find the info in about 30 seconds. Try the Popular Mechanics link as it's an easily digestible one.
