They were supposed to be the perfect solution to our environmental woes. If you love Gaia, you had to get rid of those evil republican, right-wing, Bambi killer incandescent light bulbs. Just in case, Congress made sure those evil incandescent light bulbs are phased out and erased form existence by making them pretty much illegal after 2020.  So, once your abode is fully utilizing the new CFLs, you should feel clean and refreshed as morning dew plus you helped save Mother Nature!

Can you imagine anything prettier than this?

But…(there is always a but, the fly in the ointment) apparently CFLs are not that good for the environment or you. If you don’t know by now that the twirly savior of Gaia is filled with mercury, you are in for your own version of the poisoning in Minamata.

Mercury poisoning is one of those particularly nasty ways to slowly die. Mercury attacks the nervous system, slowly destroying it causing pain, reduced brain function…. and death, don’t forget that. And Mercury is the gift that keeps on giving by passing its nastiness to the next generation in the form of grave birth defects.

So, what happens when one of these bulbs break in your house? What should you do? All the answers are in this 3-page instructive by the EPA. It should take you some 6-8 hours to get it clean…maybe. Then again if I were you, I wouldn’t wait for the damn thing to break or die. Just pull the bubls out and dispose of them properly at authorized locations such as Home Depot and then start stocking up on incandescent light bulbs till LEDs drop their prices to where you don’t need to sell your kid’s kidneys to pay for them.