Mercury = death!

I hate environmental crusades as much as the next guy, but the right-wing attempt to vilify compact fluorescent light bulbs is starting to grate on me. Numerous times in the past few weeks I've read about how, because the bulbs contain a little bit of mercury, you'll have to call in the authorities! if you ever happen to break one.

It's too bad, because usually it's conservatives who put chemical risks in perspective: The dose makes the poison. There's about 3 mg worth of mercury in a bulb, about enough to cover the ball point of a pen. If you break a bulb, all you have to do is open a few windows, sweep it up and wipe the area with a damp cloth. Not a big deal, and not a deal at all if you don't break your light bulb.

Let's put that in perspective. A common guideline for fish is that you can have .5 mg of mercury for each kg (1,000,000 mg) of fish. A 6-oz can of tuna converts to 170,000 mg. A back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that, if you consume a can of maximum-allowed-mercury tuna once a week for two years, you will have eaten the amount of mercury that's in that light bulb. Certainly it won't kill you to simply handle it for a bit.

Rather than pretending CFLs are a bad idea on net, conservatives should lobby against making them mandatory. Competing with standard light bulbs forces CFL makers to (A) convince the American people of the substantial cost benefits, (B) find ways to make the product cheaper and (C) work to cut down on the annoying brightness some (in particular, morons who can't spell "fluorescent") find with the bulbs.

UPDATE: I guess I missed this American Spectator piece when it came out, but it's about perfect on the issue.