The Truth About Fluorescent Lighting

[foliageofluna]

I can't sleep, so you guys get to watch this video that my boss showed me today where a member of the House of Representatives expressed his dissention regarding the bill asking for the removal of incandescent lighting in the U.S. Since I've been in the lighting industry about a year, I've learned /alot/ about this kind of stuff.

Watch this.

Comments

[kirianth]

Lisa, no offense intended, but that video pisses me off. :P

He goes on and on about the EPA regulation for mercury cleanup -- but there was /so/ much more mercury in thermometers that doctors used to stick in patients' mouths. Yes, the average household doesn't have the materials, but perhaps they should. It's a changing way of life. Once you properly learn the safeguards, you use them, and that's that. (As a side note, I'm horrified that some garbage utilities allow customers to throw out the bulbs in the trash!!!)

I'm nearly offended that he doesn't cite /any/ of the new choices for energy, but mentions all the fossil fuels.

Where do you get that the light hurts our eyes? The flickering? The intensity? Wavelength of light? I'm really curious to see where you get your info on those comments.

bennybot and I are slowly changing out all the lightbulbs in our house to fluorescents. (We're trying to use up all the remaining incandescents.) They're far brighter for much less electricity usage. CFLs are way better than the

[foliageofluna]

Some of the information is here

[kirianth]

Yeah, I'm don't think passing a bill mandating fluorescents is a great idea (as he says, it doesn't seem quite Constitutional), but I think his reasons against it could be much improved. But it does make sense that we should think about how to use what energy we produce now more efficiently, rather than hoping that someone will come up with a cure all for the future. Whatever future source for energy we find, we'll still need to use it efficiently

[aellya]

Actually, I can firmly attest to the fact that I don't like flourescents because they hurt my eyes. I'm always turning them off at work because I perfer no light at all or natural light to the light of the flourescents. They really do make my eyes ache and give me freaking headaches all the time. I suffer from chronic migraines so anything that triggers them just annoys the shit out of me. Unfortunately I have one in my kitchen I can do little about. I have considerd just putting a floor lamp in there and never using the overhead because I hate hate hate it's constant erratic flickering due to the fact it doesn't seat right in its notches and the illumination of it kind of sucks something awful too.

I have found that I really like those incandescents that are painted a faint purplish white one that are advertised as providing clean light. I have them in almost all of my lamps.