CFLs contain Hg!

According to a story in the Financial Post (Canada), this woman in Maine dropped a compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb as she was installing it in her daughter's bedroom. We'll pick up the story here:

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline,which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges' house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state's "safe" level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a "low-ball" estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began "gathering finances" to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn't cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

Now, I'm all for saving money and have actually installed a number of these CFL units here at the house in Webster, secure in the knowledge that - despite being about 4 times as expensive as incandescent bulbs - I'll save money over the long term.

But something stinks somewhere. Either the hazard associated with mercury is way overblown, or there are a whole bunch of people out there - including a lot of environmentalists - whose motives must be questioned if they desire the widespread use of such lamps. Notes the article:

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.

Then again, one has to wonder what causes such a cleanup to cost two grand. Might it be the bureaucracy?

Cheers...

Checking in...

My shift starts in just a few minutes, so I thought I'd update.

I'm running a sleep deficit, having slept for about 3 hours this morning and maybe 90 minutes somewhere around 6 pm, so this ought to be a pretty interesting shift... (yawn).

It takes 5m30s for my work computer to load my "personal settings," whatever those might be. The funny thing is, I think this is an improvement over the first couple of times I logged into a machine here at NASA.

My status as an Amex customer apparently gets me a subscription to the Small Business version of FORTUNE magazine, and this month's issue had a piece about the fellow who has written a book on the 4-hour workweek. The article is interesting, but I don't really see how any of it is applicable to me, since I am both the lead translator and chief bottle-washer for my one-person operation.

I managed to send out one more translation (and invoice) for April, for a satisfactory month, and remembered to send out invoices and statements to customers for whom "net 30 days" is a foreign concept. The good news is that May 1 is the day that a bunch of February work comes due, and I'm curious to see how long it takes for the payment to get to me; the "30 days, end of month" folks actually pay two weeks later than the stated term.

Off to work!

Cheers...