Overreacting and lack of priorities...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55213

This woman is going insane over breaking a single compact fluorescent light bulb in her daughter's room. She's afraid of the miniscule amount of mercury in the bulb, and claims to have to pay $2000 to get it cleaned up.

What the hell? Are people crazy, is that what it is?

The media has gotten people so paranoid about the environmental impact of various things that they're flipping out over harmless amounts of mercury in a light bulb. Hell, when I was a kid I had a bead of mercury I played with for a while; this was before me or my parents knew it was dangerous, and I had a lot of fun messing with it. Am I suffering ill effects? NO!!! And that was probably THOUSANDS of times as much mercury as is in a CFL lamp.

I'm all for saving the environment, but the truth is, you do a lot more for the environment by using CFL lamps (a 13 watt CFL puts out as much light as a 60 watt incandescent bulb) than you do by worrying about the microscopic amounts of mercury in the things. Even if all the CFL lamps in use right now were to break at once, the negative environmental impact would likely be less than that of all the additional energy use required to feed equivalent incandescent lamps.

Wake up, people; don't be stupid. It's called *priorities*. Unfortunately, some people would do anything to come up with a soapbox to get attention, regardless of how negatively it affects everyone else.

-Zorin the Lynx, avid CFL lamp user