CFL breakage mercury danger exaggerated
Published by Eric April 30th, 2007 in Blog/website/news comments, Economics, Environment(updated May 2) WorldNetDaily reported on prefessional cleanup of a broken CFL costing Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine over $2000 (h/t Slashdot). Thanks to Hans Pufal for posting a comment referencing an article with a link to the EPA fact sheet on mercury in CFLs. It turns out that CFLs contain less mercury that would be emitted by power plants to power equivalent incandescent bulbs, and there are recommendations for dealing with broken CFLs which will NOT cost a lot of money.
Seems that the original report on the $2000 cost of cleaning up a broken CFL was exaggerated. See here :
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/compact_fluorescent_lights_are.php#more
for a more reasoned article which claims that, taking into account the mercury emissions from power station, CFL’s are more environmentally friendly than incandescent bulds.