Bit OT. CFLs revisited.

Duh, let's see. Asbestos IS a mineral so it's already in the ground outside. :)

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The average screw in CFL light, how many volts and amps does it supply to the wires at the glass bulb? cuhulin

Volts - quite a lot. Amps - next to nothing. See

if you want to know more about how they work (or don't ...)

Arfa

Depends on tubing size, typically 60-100V at 80-260mA. The important thing is the current, that determines lamp power, the voltage will settle at whatever the tube likes it to be. Larger diameter tubes tend to run higher current than skinny tubes, but power density has been steadily increasing as the lamps have become more compact.

sincerely

scratched

cast.

According to this site

And for a home thermometer - 500 milligrams - 2 grams.

As a very small kid I managed to break the bulb of a thermometer in my mouth. Then and ecades on and no known physical or mental impairmtgk erkscf dbf qwkcsfd ..........

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Also as a kid, I had a small pot of mercury that I had 'rescued' from a mercury tilt switch - rather a large one - that was on some lump of junk found on a piece of wasteland where I used to play ... Boy, do you remember the thrill of finding some piece of mysterious 'treasure' like this on those endless summer days ... ?

Anyway, I used to play with the stuff in my hands for hours, so it can't have been *that* readily poisonous. Still, if concerns about the toxicity of mercury makes this rotten government sit back and take stock of what they are doing in the name of the great god Green, and it makes them think again about forcing us to adopt the crappy things by banning sales of incandescents, then that's fine with me, and I'll be up there with the best of 'em, screaming about the terrible dangers of having mercury loose in the home for your children to inhale and swallow !

As a youth, I also used to keep a mouthful of lead airgun pellets to slip rapidly into my gun, instead of having to hunt amongst the fluff in my pocket, or trying to wrestle the box open without dropping them all. They would stay in my mouth for hours, again during those endless summer days of the school break. I don't suppose that you can get any worse than that for potential toxicity, but I'm still around and compos mentis, as are all my mates who used to do the same thing.

Arfa

First thing you hear is CFL's, and nothing about regular fluorescent lamps. which are a dominate lamp in the world. Wonder why !!

greg

Because the average tree hugger doesn't realise they are one and the same thing when preaching how CFLs will save the planet. And missing the fact that an 'old fashioned' fluorescent has a separate ballast which can outlast several tubes while a CFL has it built in so has to be thrown away complete when it fails.

Once upon a time there used to be cheap toys that had blobs of mercury as the "active agent." Think of a 4"/10cm square plastic maze with a clear plastic cover; race your friends to get the mercury blob to the center in the fastest time!

And of course, one *had* to take the mercury out to play with it. I still recall that distinctive smell of a pool of elemental mercury.

I don't recall a smell. I once was in a storage room with shelves and a bunch of old medical research equipment. One of the pressure measuring devices, with plenty of mercury, fell. Of course it was all glass. Mercury all over the place. I just was happy I didn't have to clean it. I'm talking a LOT of mercury. I used to take those mercury batteries apart when i was a kid, and roll the mercury around with my fingers to coat a penny.

greg

I own a few very old mercury thermomenters.(I like to collect all kinds of very old things) When I was a kid, I played with some mercury too, mercury will shine up old coins real good.(mercury is a liquid metal) I haven't checked the old 1940s Honeywell thermostats on two of the walls in my old house (house was built in 1947, it has asbestos shingles on the outside walls) lately, but I think they have mercury switches.

I owned a Daisy pump action BB gun when I was a kid.I still remember sometimes the pump slide (whatever it's called?) action catching the palm of my left hand in that slide.It hurt too. cuhulin

I have 4 or 5 Honeywell thermostats that I have collected and had replaced with digital. The digitals can be had much cheaper though. The Home Depot wants $40 for the old clunker. I thought it was funny when i was checking out of The Home Depot, fellow in front was buying 4 of these thermostats for $120. I kinda mentioned I had 5, but would have been ruff to actually sell mine.

I still have my dads old Daisy slider.

greg

Be real careful of that Daisy BB Gun slider.They know how to move fast and pinch the daylights out of the palm of your hand.

The two Honeywell thermostats on the walls in my house are the original ones that were put there in 1947.They still work just as good as new.They are rectangular shaped and have a small thermomenter on the front of them.That was back in the days when they made them Good. cuhulin

I guess it's because they are firmly fixed in overhead fittings, and the tubes, which are uber-reliable compared to CFLs, are not much handled by kids. On the other hand, when there are zillions of CFLs in every Joe Tow Rag's house, there's gonna be thicko people disposing of all the dud ones any which way, irrespective of what the Recycle Stasi dictate, and their kids, chucking them up walls for the sport...

Arfa

I've never had any sort of thermostat fail, mechanical or electronic. My house came with an old Honeywell mechanical, it worked but I replaced it with a programmable one that can set back at night, it dropped my heating bill considerably and I don't have to manually mess with it.

"Arfa Daily" wrote in news:VD0hj.27550$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe5-win.ntli.net:

I too remember playing with mercury obtained from various sources, coating a penny with it, and the oily feel of the coated penny.

Metallic mercury is hazardous under three circumstances: 1) when heated.

Mercury builds up in the body over time because the elimination of mercury is very slow.

So, if you heat mercury, its high vapor pressure puts a lot of mercury vapor into the air and you can absorb a fatal dose very quickly. If you work in a room where mercury has been spilled, its room temperature vapor pressure is sufficient for you to, over time, build up enough mercury to experience toxic effects.

"The Handbook of Laboratory Safety" (CRC) has an interesting chapter on mercury.

When I was studying chemistry in college, we had an almost fatal accident.

A student was working alone in a lab [never work alone!]. Another student had left, leaving a beaker of Mercuric Chloride solution heating. The water evaporated and the mercuric chloride decomposed, giving off mercury vapor.

The student that had been working alone in the room was found, crawling out of the lab. They got him to the hospital and started treating him immediately for mercury poisoning.

He spent about a week in the hospital, with special chemicals being dripped into his veins to remove the mercury from his body. He said that the treatment felt like liquid fire being pumped into his veins. During that time, he wished he were dead.

His first urine sample, taken after admission, had enough mercury in it to KILL ten people.

Of course, water soluble mercury and lead compounds are much more dangerous than metallic mercury or metallic lead as they are easier to get into the human body.

Normal 'clearance' of mercury is on the order of a maximum of 2 mg per day. So if you are absorbing more than that, you are building up toward a toxic dose.

Of course, children are more sensitive to the toxic effects of heavy metals.

California wants to control your home thermostats.

That might happen in California, but that is never going to happen here, not in my home.Never hatchie, G.I.! cuhulin

That's not surprising. I hate Vicor supplies.

Untill poor old henpecked Richard decided to fix the electricity in the Vicor's Church on Keeping Up Apperances and blew the whole system out.The Beer was pretty good though.