I didn't find any real studies at the link though I didn't dig very deeply.

Some claims like mercury are likely true though dated - modern lights use a lot less mercury and the structure to recycle them is now in place - I just have to them in a bin with recyclables, if not I can take them to many home stores. Works making the lights still might be exposed.

Some of it is clearly false e.g., the long tubes are the same as the CFL tube other than shape. The main difference is many of the older tubes used magnetic based ballast though a new fixture would likely use an electronic one like a CFL.

The UV leaked is trivial compared to sunlight.

Dirty electricity ... well ... it pretty much always is. CFLs aren't going to add much to this. You can buy devices to clean up - often times by storing it in a battery and regenerating AC - I have two for my AV systems.

Basically, it appears to me that any problems caused should already be in affect from many other things such as your cell phone (way more of the stuff than a CFL and right next to your head), local cell towers, power lines, microwaves. Basically the only way to avoid the things talked about would be to go live off the land.

The old florescent tubes with the old style ballast did cause some problems because the flickered so slowly (60hz or 120hz - 2x mains) and that caused some people problems (me, for example - I could actual see the flicker on some of them). Also, this often times interacted with the flickering of tube monitors which where for a time commonly close to 60hz. This should not be a problem with modern ballasts (all CFLs have them).

Second vote here for "this is overblown and/or BS".

1) Yes, the CFLs are just fluorescent tubes twisted up in a ball. They have the same phosphorescent/UV trapping coating as the long tubes - otherwise they wouldn't be as efficient as they are.

2) Yes, this is far less exposure than other sources of EMG (electromagnetic radiation).

Good quality CFLs give a nice, clear white light with no Dracula effects. They also come in slightly warmer formulations - or you can use them in ceiling fixtures or wall-washers for overall background lumination, and use halogens or incandescents for table-top/accent/pendant fixtures.

The folks she's interviewing are from the 'electrosensitivity' crowd - they think that EMF's are poisonous. Not just CFL's, but cell phones, power lines, trams, anything using high frequencies. There's never been any substantiation of their major claims, which tend to be very broad.

That said, I hate CFL's and would love for there to be some horror related to their use, but aside from the sickly color and constant buzzing, they're probably as safe as anything else.

CFL's are the perfect Environmental product, because they're ugly and diminish your quality of life. They're like a glowing hair shirt.

I still haven't had time to read about this, but I found this on Google Scholar: http://www.reginarehab.com/Health_Concerns_associated_with_Energy_Efficient.pdf

It's a "mini-report" -- studies in this area have been done by Dr. Magda Havas,Associate Professor, Environmental and Resource Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada. If anybody can take a look at them -- anybody who knows how to read studies -- that would be super. I'm working day and night on a book proposal AND my column, and can barely return e-mail right now! (But, please do write if you need advice or have something to send me! Still need questions and blog items.)

While the idea of banning conventional lightbulbs is patently silly, I find nothing inherently wrong with the CFLs. Since their creation the prices have dropped precipitously, bringing them to within grasp of the old ones, and considering they last much longer (allowing for the odd bum one) they're now quite a good value. I have exactly one type in my house which take a while to come up to full brightness (the little ones in our chandelier) and even then it's under 30 seconds.

CFLs, electric cars, alternative energy resources, etc will all be great ideas, once they are economically viable. Right now, the bulbs have gotten to the point where you don't need to spend extra to use them, so they become a reasonable option. Electric cars are still far more expensive to buy and logistically problematic to use. But that will certainly change. When they're as cheap as a standard car, and have similar trip ranges, speed and power, and are as easy and cheap to repair, they'll become as good a deal as a regular car. Until then, they'll require more money, which means less people can afford them. The answer isn't charge everyone a tax to give to the people who can't afford one, the answer is make them good enough that people will want them, and the more that do, the cheaper manufacture gets, and the lower the price gets.

The free market. It does have its uses, ya, frggin' hippies.

Amy, love the comment about scoring some bulbs. Reminded me of my dear, dear father, God rest his soul, who actually drove to Mexico to buy a fully flushing toilet when our government decided that low flow would be the only toilets sold in this country. As he pointed out...if I have to flush the damn thing five times to get it to work, how the hell is that saving water?!

I got two minutes in before my BS meter went off too. Looking simply at her web page she does seem to be the type to harp on about radio waves and electromagnetic spectrum. I think she is making much hullabaloo about something that has pretty much been proven to be harmless or so small that it not worth mentioning.

Sorry Amy something you thought as a good excuse is not!

Quickly read the report. She mentions a news report who mentions one persons comments which does not link to a scientific study but just a comment that it gives off UV but as to how much and how harmful - nothing. Not even a comparison to the sun. True - Albino's may have to worry but I think regular people should worry more about the sun.

Next wonky deal - going to organization needs to prove that something is wrong to diagnose - shaddy. what about a more neutral third party organization. I mean if I want to prove that all Mexicans are EVIL I just ask the Society of White People who who live near the border about their experiences I will get the answers I want. I am getting a small section of people.

The chart she show is from an online survey. Which has its bad points and flaws. Not very scientifically tested. I bet the deck is very likely stacked with people that do no like CFLs.

Also she mentions a few incidents like some teachers in California having a high incident rate of cancer (cluster). I look for the report and it just talks about their guesses - educated but they thru out the report point to dirty electricity with out actually proving it. Not even a alternative hypothesis on what else could have caused it. In the end it seems very anecdotal.

One thing to remember is that radio waves that which I think the CFLs give off are non ionizing radiation which means they can not alter molecules. Unlike UV or X-Ray.

People take what I comment with a grain of salt I not a trained scientist.

I invited the woman to comment. For me, the problem with CFLs is that they take forever to come on, provide ugly light, and not much of it

I don't mind CFLs, they do last longer, and at Kroger I can buy those that give the yellowish light of lightbulbs and glow at the flip of the switch, no waiting.

I hate some CFLs, like the cheap ones my SO bought at Home Depot. They are slow to come on, but until they do, evetything is dim with a purple-gray color to it. I bought some more expensive oves for a few lamps I have and they are much better. Instant on and true daylight coloring. I don't know if they'll last any longer than a regular bulb or not since we haven't had them that long, but I like my daylight CFLs just fine.

In April 2008, I put together a review of CFL's and some of their difficulties that are not talked about, or printed on the box.

The CFL Advertising Account

The good and bad about compact fluorescent lights. Why the ads are both true and false. How to save and waste money on CFL's.

One of the points:
========
Mike: OK, no problem. Buy 10 CFL's and save $750. Get rich!
Techno: Yeah, if you don't turn them off.
========

My research says that the average CFL will turn on 2000 times before its electronics fail. The recommendation to leave them on for 15 minutes is a crazy interpretation of that fact. Leaving them on doesn't heal them. But, hey, at least if you leave them on for 15 minutes each time, you will get 500 hours use out of them before they fail.

I also present a cost analysis of expected savings.

I'm a fan of the cfl. Bought my first one in about 1995, I think it was close to $20. It really did last about 10 years. Now the ballasts go out all the time but hey, 75 cents a piece! Still I'm perfectly ok with your choice of incandescent lighting so I'll share my secret: the dollar store. I sometimes see 4/dollar.

What I'm really excited about are LED Christmas lights. Not because they save the planet but because I can go all Clark Griswald without overloading circuits.

I replaced a bunch of incandescent lamps when CFLs first came out.

That was a serious mistake -- had I done the math, I would have realized the electricity saving would never offset the cost of the things.

Even if they had lasted more than a month.

Last year, I took another chance, this time replacing exterior lights that stay on a long time during the Alaskan winter, which was also chewing up incandescents at the rate of one a week.

Haven't had a failure yet, which means they have paid for themselves, even before the electricity savings.

I've used one indoors. It is slow (roughly a minute) to come to full illumination. But once it does, I don't notice any meaningful difference with incandescents.

Of course, if my experience echoes CFL reality, then the market, without any help from the nanny state, will see the back of hot-wire lamps.

I was at a major car show recently, where I said -- just loudly enough for the Chevy Volt spokesmodel to hear ... "Oh! A coal-burner!"

The electric car may prodice zero emissions, folks; but that electricity comes from somewehere. Motor Trend had a great article recently questioning the validity of hybrids, when we can come darned close to their MPG (and in some cases better it)- and exceed their performance -with other technologies (Bluetec Diesel, anyone? Eurpoe's got it, why don't we?). Plus, no batteries to dispose of ten years after. Can they be recycled, or will they simply leach heavy metals into our landfills?

I often laugh at the Smart Cars I pass in my 20-year-old Miata. I get 33mpg, have enough trunk / passenger seat room for groceries, frankly feel safer, and am having a LOT more fun!

I'm waiting for someone to come up with the turbo-electric hybrid. That would be killer efficient, it can run on damn near any fluid that burns, and you can get really small and light 400-500 HP turboshaft engines these days. It would be perfect (er, if the exhaust noise problem could be solved). Having said that, where hybrids win is in city driving. On the highway, they have no advantage over up-to-date conventional engines.

Amy, Scientific American published a meta-analysis of the powerline-and-cancer studies back around 1995, and they concluded that it was thoroughly debunked. When extraneous factors were controlled for, there was no correlation. One thing they noticed is some of the studies actually found an inverse correlation between proximity to power lines and the cancers they were studying. I don't know how far back their archives go, but they may still have it somewhere.

@Dave - Turbine-electric hybrid is too obvious - so nobody will ever make one.

The whole "EMF is bad for you" shit has to stop. These people all need to be slapped with a clue by four.

I don't remember where, but some company was setting up a wireless tower in some town, and the townspeople were convinced by some electrosensitivity freak that they were going to sick because of it. They sued, and complained and bitched and moaned. When the time came for the court date, they all gave their wonderful testimony about how awful they've felt (to that very day) ever since the thing was turned on. Then the owner was called upon, and said "Yeah, that's great. We turned it off six months ago."

CFLs and the newer electronic ballasts for the T8 tubes are better than the old magnetic ballasts. No buzz, no flicker, less heat, less backlash current, less EMI injected into the house circuits. They run at 20-120 kHz, so you can't hear or see the switching. I just bought a set of GE 5000K tubes for my office fixture, and they are fantastic. Much better than the 3500K ones that blew out (after 4 years of daily use). I've got 128 watts of lightbulb in that room generating more light than a pair of 300W halogens, without having to crank the A/C to overcome their heat output.

Amy - you're completely right about the bulb ban. Stupid, dumb, asinine - just the kind of thing a Statist loves.

But you and Rush are wrong about the CFLs. You don't need to bash the shit out of them based on your limited experience with low-end shit to justify getting rid of the ban.

But it's too late - the intended effect has occurred, GE closed their last USA lightbulb factory, eliminating all that pollution and introducing more Americans to the Joy of Funemployment!

The Cancer rate is not different for Navy personnel compare to various civilian populations they are stationed around. The normal living conditions on a ship involve working, sleeping and generally being around(within inches to a few feet) high current(power) cables 24 hours a day for years at a time. Most military ships also have systems to intentionally generate a massive EM field to disguise the effects of the large metal hulls. Taken all together the EMF was bad enough to interfere with the proper operation of hand held commercial radios. It also distorted the old CRT computer monitors and TVs. Alas still no cumulative negative health effects after all these years the Navy has exposed it personnel.(I'd say it was a government cover up but I personally spent over 14 years on various ships before retiring with no ill effect noted.)

Look, at the very least, more studies are needed concerning EM fields and what they do and do not do.

And before you dismiss EM fields, keep this in mind...

People have said for centuries that they could "hear" the aurora borealis. This was dismissed by experts as just folklore until a few years ago when scientists found out that even though the aurora is 60 miles up, it does produce vibrations strong enough to shake pine needles on trees. This vibration can cause a low hissing sound. So guess what? Turns out people really can hear it.

We may think we have a definitive answer on EMFs right now, but the cool thing about science is it can always teach us something new.

They weren't hearing the Aurora - they were hearing its impact on the surrounding environment.

Just like you don't hear electricity from those massive transformers, you hear the effect of a massive electrical field passing through coils of wire and inducing a magnetic field through laminated plates of iron, which then vibrate.

The people most likely to believe in electrosensitivity have no idea whatsoever how magnetic fields and electrical fields even work.

The 150 mW signal coming out of your cell phone isn't strong enough to vibrate a water molecule at close proximity. People who claim that their ears get warm are missing the fact that waste heat is a major by-product of electronic devices, and those batteries and output amplifiers get quite warm after a while.

Just because it uses radio waves like your microwave oven doesn't mean it can cook you.

That website instantly triggered the quackery response.

The language ("dirty electricity", as if it's a scientific or technical term), the scatter-shot reference to various authorities by name, highlighting in red... the heuristics are all being hit.

I found their main authority was one "Magda Havas", who evidently also pushes electrosensitivity. In other words, a quack..

Plus there are outright stupid and plainly false claims in the first page. The idea that hosehold CFLs "unlike commercial fluorescents" don't have a UV chield?

The way the fucking things work is by absorbing UV and flourescing in the visible spectrum! Normal CFL in offices tubes don't have some special shielding enclosure either.

Likewise, the idea that they emit dangerous RF radiation is ludicrous on its face.

Typical mommy-forum scaremongering repetition of half-baked bull. Ugh.

Quacks like a duck.

@brian -

My point was that for years and years, even the idea the borealis was making any kind of impact was dismissed by scientists. Ooops.

Your response is rather arrogant and condescending. Really. You're so sure that you have all the answers and that all those answers are correct? You'd stake your life on that?

I'm not saying the reporter in the original piece is right, either. However, the piece raises some interesting theories that possibly merit further study.

Oh, and not for nothing, I'm an BSN/RN, and a big believer in peer reviewed scientific investigation. We learn stuff all the time that contradicts or negates previous information we've been given.

For years and years we've been told that fluorescent lights were perfectly safe. Well, it turns out that those who work nights under fluorescent lights such as nurses, flight attendants and others have breast cancer rates 60 percent above normal, even when other factors such as differences in diet are accounted for. Oh, and this was from a peer reviewed, scientific study.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/19/AR2008021902398.html

If you don't believe that EMFs are a problem, that's fine. But don't call the rest of us idiots because we're not 100% convinced.

UW Girl, that power-line EMF thing has been studied to death since about 1985. It's been thoroughly, utterly, completely debunked. As for the study you linked to, all they did was overlay satellite photos of night-side Earth over areas with reported cancer rates, and they didn't say which specific areas they looked it. The number of confounding factors that they didn't control for is literally infinite. And the claim that fluorescent light has some cancer-provoking quality that incandescent light doesn't have is, as far as I can tell, completely unsupported.

It's an interesting conjecture, but right now that's all it is -- a conjecture. And I'm betting that it will wind up being debunked, because if night lighting did in fact have that dramatic an effect on cancer rates, the effect would have become obvious decades ago. I could be wrong, but I think that they, like so many other people doing similar type studies, are measuring noise.

Here's a somewhat dated but still pretty good article on what happened with the powerline EMF studies:

http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.254/news_detail.asp

@Cousin Dave -

The study was a little more in depth than that. However, you raise some good points, and more importantly, the way you phrased it makes all the difference. I appreciate that you backed yourself up with facts, and didn't resort to calling people who are skeptical of calling EMF studies complete a bunch of dolts.

Conjecture (at least to me) means a hypothesis based upon incomplete evidence. As new and better technology becomes available, and as we increase our understanding of the human body, we discover more. Today's "absolute" is tomorrow "what-in-the-hell-were-we-thinking". We all agree that some questions have been definitively answered. And while I understand that some people may be comfortable with the answers science gives them to certain questions as is, in the here and now, I happen to believe that we should always examine all that we can continuously.

Lewis and Clark could have stopped in Montana. Sometimes there is something more over the horizon.

Your response is rather arrogant and condescending. Really. You're so sure that you have all the answers and that all those answers are correct? You'd stake your life on that?

I'm condescending because this has been researched to fucking death with no statistically significant link between EM exposure and any human disease or disorder. I bet my life on it every day.

Well, it turns out that those who work nights under fluorescent lights such as nurses, flight attendants and others have breast cancer rates 60 percent above normal, even when other factors such as differences in diet are accounted for.

I'll bet you $100 that they did not control for stress.

Oh, and this was from a peer reviewed, scientific study.

So are all the ones claiming AGW is true. Turns out they were all fraudulent.

In general, it's very, very easy to write up an article to "prove" that something is true or false, with dozens of source links readily available all over the internet, or in the olden days, books. This is especially true for things that are "good" or "bad" for your health. If you want a glorious example, look at eggs. I think they've flipped between being horrible for you and being fantastic for you dozens of times and you can find hundreds of articles supporting both sides.

Survey studies in particular are fundamentally unscientific and rife with problems. The largest problems are surveyor bias, extreme difficulty in repeating the experiments, and the large number of mitigating factors such as age, environment, occupation, weight, habits, smoking/drinking, and so on. Unfortunately survey studies are also extremely popular because it's very easy to manipulate the results to both support a cause and look convincing because there are now some numbers behind it. Unless true double-blind testing is done in a very controlled and repeatable environment, a survey study of any kind is fairly worthless. Anecdotal and testimonial evidence is even worse.

The "dirty electricity" thing makes me extremely suspicious (google "dirty electricity"). This is especially because the main website touting the dangers of dirty electricity is also selling devices to "clean" your home's electricity. Incidentally, this is the same device used in the posted video. For the low, low price of anywhere from $545 to $1,525, you can protect your family from the harmful dirty electricity waves from your home! Quite a bargain, eh? Also, "cleaning your electricity" claims to help a myriad of diseases, including AD&D, asthma (this one's BS), cancer, fatigue, diabetes, headaches, etc etc. Sounds like a magic bullet to me.... and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Following pretty much all of their "facts" links on the dirty electricity website, there has actually been animal testing that proves AGAINST electric waves being a factor. The rest of their "proof" links are pretty much all survey studies or tiny footnotes in huge PDFs. About the only study that seemed to have merit was the one linking blood sugar with dirty electricity, although that still looked like it was influenced somewhat by the makers of the electricity-cleaning devices and by mitigating factors since the study was done out of the person's home. In my humble opinion these people are making up a problem in order to sell a solution.

There are a lot of different CFL bulbs out on the market, and quality of light is an extremely subjective thing that varies from person to person. One person's "this is fine" is another's "horrible". Personally I don't notice much difference at all. However, if you don't like the CFLs, then don't use them, since the energy savings are relatively insignificant in the long run. I'm mostly just waiting for LED to become better, since LED is to CFL what CFL is to incandescent and I don't want mercury in my house since I'm prone to breaking things.

Attempting to ban incandescent bulbs is very stupid, though. I highly doubt it'll actually happen, although stupider things have happened in congress.

Dr. Novella has a good summary today on Science Based Medicine (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/). Havas seems to be a lone quack.

Dr. Howard Fisher is cited everywhere as an "expert" on this subject...BUT:

Dr. Fisher won’t tell me where he got his “M.B.B.S.” degree! At one site he lists its source as Banipur Institute of (for) Medical Sciences, Kolkata, IN. He also lists himself everywhere as “Director” of this same institution.

But India’s overseeing board recognizes no such school. It can’t be found anywhere.

Is Dr. Fisher making up his “medical” degree(s)?

I totally disagree with your point but it is your view - I respect that.

I have extreme sensitivity after being undiagnosed with lyme for many years and told I have "fybromyalgia" now I am in agony from emf. and worse the wifi that the neighbors have. the symptoms are varied and unbearable. these devices are not safe; stay wired and stay off the cell. mine nearly gave me a seizure. Magda is no quack, and there are many people with aches pains and migraines that are all caused by rf and emf. a friend will be interviewing her and other experts on an upcoming radio program on KBOO in Portland. this situation is just like second hand smoke in the early days of legislation, let's hope it doesn't take as long to get intense radiation out of our lives as it did cigarettes.