[Boatanchors] Replacing 866s with 3B28s

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

There are no recycling programs for the new mercury containing fluorescent 
lamps around here.  The super short lived very expensive pieces of crap just 
go into the Friday trash.  In eight months I went through two of them in 
one open lamp holder in the top of my shop..  Each went into the trash.  After 
the second failure I gave them up as a waste of money and went back to a 
standard 100 watt incandescent.  That was around 18 months ago.  The two lamps 
also cost me (including sales tax) around $25.  If the incandescents each 
fail at 18 months, $25 will supply lamps for 25 years.  Not 8 months.  
Actually, the total is probably around 40 years versus 8 months.  And no mercury 
to worry about, either. 

I
In a message dated 12/29/2010 9:34:47 PM Central Standard Time, 
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com writes: 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <N4ch at aol.com>
> To: <n4vgb at yahoo.com>; <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 5:52 PM
> Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Replacing 866s with 3B28s
> 
> 
> >As far as mercury goes, I doubt it's quite as bad for U as 
> >the  government
> >says it is
> 
> 
>      Its pretty bad. See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease  for some idea
> of what it can do.
>      Pure metallic mercury is not so bad, if swallowed it
> will pretty much pass through the body without being
> absorbed, but mercury compounds are among the most toxic
> substances known.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning
> and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
> 
>      While Wikepedia is often criticized for innacuracies
> the same information contained in the above articles may be
> found in more accepted sources.
>      Mercury is not always treated sensibly in regulation,
> for instance, while mercury cells and batteries are banned
> in most parts of the world, fluorescent lamps are not
> despite the fact that they contain more mercury than the
> batteries do. The descrepancy is evidently due to the
> existence of recycling programs for the lamps.

Robert & Susan Downs - Houston
wa5cab dot com (Web Store)
MVPA 9480