Terry Dvorak, Editor
The Home and Garden Section
The Sacramento Bee
Sacramento, CA
To the Editor:
Your recent front-page article on the new fluorescent light bulbs (The Bee, October 30) was very interesting. However, there are some possible drawbacks associated with the current media/government push to get everyone on board using the new energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Having grown up in a fluorescent light-enamored household in the 1950s, I developed an early and intense dislike for the flickering long tubed too-bright fluorescent light fixtures. (Our family was so devoted to economic utilitarianism that we even washed our hair with Tide laundry detergent. Later in my hippie days, I discovered the joys of washing my long hair with Herbal Essence shampoo: no more split ends and no more Tide!).
Many office work environments also provided many negative experience of being subjected to too much fluorescent lighting. I still am quite allergic to the notion of using fluorescent lights at home. Some of us also may need to factor in the cost of breakage of light bulbs into the economic equation of supposed energy and cost savings: being old and clumsy, I manage to break about a half dozen light bulbs in standing and sitting lamps each year. If these bulbs were all the fancy new Energy Star compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), these breakages would cost me about fifty dollars a year; with traditional incandescent light bulbs, the cost is a much more modest three dollars a year.
Yours truly,
James K. Sayre
30 October 2004
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