Even though more people are turning to energy-efficient spiral fluorescent light bulbs, which use 75% less energy and greatly reduce your carbon footprint, they still pose a threat of mercury poisoning.

According to an article in BostonChannel.com, spiral fluorescent bulbs are great ways to reduce your energy consumption because they last 10 times longer than regular bulbs, but since they require mercury in them to produce light, they can also be dangerous to your health if they are broken.

Spiral fluorescent bulbs only have about 1 to 30 milligrams of mercury in them, but if they are broken and you come in contact with the mercury directly or inhale the toxic fumes, you can greatly damage your central nervous system, your liver and your kidneys. This can be especially harmful to babies and pregnant women, who already have weak immune systems.

Check out the Wikipedia page for more about mercury poisoning.

How to Save Energy and Protect Your Health

Despite the risk of mercury poisoning, spiral fluorescent bulbs are still the best types of bulbs to use to save energy in your home. You can use this great page on the Aubuchon Hardware website that gives you a detailed list of name-brand spiral bulbs and how they compare to regular bulbs in efficiency and price.

Here are some ways that you can protect yourself and others from mercury poisoning:

• Don’t touch the mercury inside the bulb if it breaks
• Carefully sweep up broken glass and soak up the mercury with a paper towel
• Wrap any broken bulbs in cardboard or newspaper and tape the package together before throwing it away
• Keep the area ventilated so the fumes can be aired away

I think that if you are safe about how you handle the spiral fluorescent bulbs and dispose of them correctly, then you can protect both your health and the environment at the same time. Not every product can be totally 100% safe for the environment, but if it can cut energy consumption by 75%, then I think that it’s worth our effort to keep it in production…until something better comes along!