Storm Recovery

A few years ago a really neat new product came out on the market that was called a Compact Fluorescent Light bulb. They started out really expensive and in all sorts of odd shapes that did not fit where a normal incandescent bulb used to fit. BUT,  for a fraction of the power, they put out an enormous amount of light. Typically you are looking at a 75% reduction in power consumed and heat generated.

Now the price has fallen considerably and the variety of bulb configurations and base size has increased dramatically. But (there’s always a but) the price on these new bulb configurations is still very high.

What most people are not aware of is that Federal Congress enacted a law mandating the sunset of the incandescent light bulb, the pride and joy of Tomas A Edison and the device that has lighted the night around the world, because it is “too power hungry”.

What the “They People” have told us in ever possible way is that CFL’s will

• Save Energy.
• Help protect the environment because it produces less green house gasses (CO2).
• Save Money in this time of financial crisis saving and average of $13 per year over a 60 watt bulb.

What the “They People” have not told us about CFL’s is not quite so positive.

• The bare bulb CFL’s are very fragile and break easily.
• All fluorescent lamps or fluorescent tubes are gas-discharge lamps that use electricity to excite mercury vapor who’s vapors are extremely poisonous. The excited mercury atoms produce dangerous short-wave ultraviolet (UVA) light that then causes a phosphor (also very dangerous to breath or ingest) inside the tube or lamp to fluoresce, producing visible light.
• Unlike incandescent lamps, fluorescent lamps always require a ballast to regulate the flow of power through the lamp.  For the most part, dimmers do not work on standard CFLs
• CFL’s because of the long narrow tube construction requires a larger amount of mercury in the tube than the large straight tube bulbs. Many of the older CFL’s had considerably more mercury than the current models do but still much more than the straight tubes have.
• CFL’s often take 5 to 60 seconds to produce full brightness and there is often a 0 to 3 second delay before the CFL turns on at all.
• And as for helping protect the environment, they may reduce the CO2 produced by coal fired electric plants, but what about the truly dangerous mercury released into land fills all over the country from discarded CFL’s.

The bottom line is that if you break a CFL, you are being exposed to very dangerous chemicals. Chemicals that often require a HAZMAT clean up effort or equivalent to remove the threat.  There has been some talk about simply removing contaminated carpet to remove the threat of mercury poisoning.  Additionally, the phosphor that actually produces the light is not exactly environmentally friendly either.

The last point today is that if you are exposed to a broken CFL or the area where a CFL was broken even days ago, there is a very good possibility that you can become contaminated with mercury if you tough the contaminated area. The worse part is, if you go to the emergency room of your local hospital for treatment and decontamination, the chances of anyone there knowing what to do to decontaminate you or your child is almost zero. Further, removing mercury  or any heavier than water liquids from your body is very very difficult.

As usual the unintended consequences of our ill informed representatives in Washington making bad laws have set the the wheels in motion to cause the contamination of thousands of people and thousands of archers of land with mercury and other dangerous chemicals.

If you own and rent/lease real estate you should seriously consider avoiding CFL’s as standard lighting in your rentals. The looks like a law suit waiting to happen.

We in the USA have certainly gotten a large dose of storms and hurricanes and the associated damage this year (2008). And as a result of the damage over the past few years, storm, flood and hurricane insurance has become so expensive that the average person in the areas where this kind of insurance is needed can barely be afforded it if the can even get it.

FEMA has been pushed to the limit and the American taxpayer is getting pretty tired of their tax money being spent on disaster relief for the same people over and over again.  In the past when there was no FEMA people depended on each other to exact disaster relief.

After the great San Francisco fire in the 1800s there was almost nothing left of that great city. But, it was rebuilt by the people who wanted a city by the bay with no help from federal or state government at all.

In many areas of this great rural country, when a barn is destroyed by a fire or tornado, the neighbors just show up with hammers, nails, wood, ladders, food and enthusiasm to build another barn. Granted, with  insurance to cover the loss and reconstruction this happens far too infrequently. But if insurance rates continue to spiral out of control, it will not be long before neighbors helping neighbors will become a much more normal occurrence.

Recovering from the damage dished out by the various spring time storms and hurricanes that have visited the USA and Caribbean is an expensive, time consuming and difficult process. In the past tens of thousands of refrigerators and freezers were simply thrown away because they smelled so bad from being without power and full of spoiled food.

Even houses that did not get flooded but were without power and air conditioning for days are often damaged by mold growing on everything. Untold millions of dollars worth of furniture, furnishings and clothing heave been thrown out because they were covered with mold. Just getting rid of the mold growing on the walls is a difficult and dangerous task that can result in a life time of health problems brought on by short term high level exposure to mold exposure during remediation efforts and long term low level exposure to mold growing in and under houses that the remediation effort was less than completely successful.

There are now several new products on the market that kill mold. There is one that kills mold, spores, bacteria, viruses, and many odors as well called OdorXit ClO2. You may want to try this product because the house your save from mold may be your own.