CFLs and mercury: Worth the hazard?

I think the nation is divided into two lighting camps: CFLers and non.

I'm among those who are gonzo about the energy savings -- they use 75 percent less than incandescents.

Many of the nons don't like the light quality, although that is changing.  You can pick from warm white to cool white, and if it's not bright enough you can easily pick a bulb with a higher wattage.

But then comes the mercury. People who initially find out about it are horrified.  True, it's there. And if you break a CFL, you have to clean it up carefully. But that was always the case with regular old fluorescents, too, and nobody minded then.

Today, the EPA has weighed in again, after a Pennsylvania resident to ask if the energy advantages outweighed the mercury risk. According to an EPA press release, electronics recycling specialist Dan Gallo responded to the writer, saying the advantages did outweigh the risk.

He pointed out that CFLs contain only trace amounts -- five milligrams -- "an amount that would cover the tip of a ballpoint pen." Okay, that's meaningless, I grant you. It's not how much, but how toxic. Anyway, he also said it would take 100 CFLs to equal the amount of mercury in older thermometers. And somehow we all survived them.

A researcher at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Rochester, N.Y., has concluded that the mercury released by a coal-fired power plant to light a single incandescent also is more than that in a CFL. Of course, the power plant mercury emissions aren't concentrated in the living room where you just broke the bulb, butterfingers.

So if you do break one, here's the word from Gallo: