Dim Bulbs of Bias - RW'ers attack fluorescent light bulbs

ck4829

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Mon Jul-16-07 11:42 PM
Original message

Dim Bulbs of Bias - RW'ers attack fluorescent light bulbs

They say a good story never dies. But a misleading story has quite a bit of staying power as well, especially when the ConWeb is perpetuating those misleading claims.

An April 16 WorldNetDaily article by Joseph Farah on the alleged toxicity of "energy-saving and money-saving compact fluorescent lamps" that "everyone is being urged, cajoled and guilt-tripped into purchasing" featured the case of the Brandy Bridges family, who purportedly faced a $2,000 bill to clean up mercury contamination in their home after a fluorescent bulb broke. Since the family could not afford it and insurance would not cover it, the family "has been forced to seal off her daughter's bedroom with plastic to avoid any dust blowing around. Not even the family pets are permitted in to the bedroom. Her daughter is forced to sleep downstairs in an overcrowded household."

In fact, Farah's article is a big load of scaremongering hooey.

Farah apparently lifted his story about the Bridges family from a an April 12 article in a Maine newspaper, the Ellsworth American. But Farah didn't copy-and-paste the part stating that a four-figure cleanup following a broken fluorescent bulb is unnecessary overkill:

"Officials have said that Bridges has little to worry about and she could easily clean up the bulbs by hand.

State Toxicologist Andrew Smith said it would be unlikely that a person could contract mercury poisoning from the levels of mercury found in Bridges’ daughter’s room."

...

So the bedroom doesn't need to be sealed off! They can air out the room and sweep up the glass! There's absolutely no reason to spend $2,000!

Further, blogger PZ Myers noted another relevant issue: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the amount of mercury in a compact fluorescent bulb, plus the amount of mercury emissions from the electricity needed to power that bulb (as generated by a coal-fired power plant) is still less than the mercury emissions generated for the electricity needed to operate an incandescent bulb.

Farah didn't mention any of this. No surprise -- for being the head of a "news" organization, Farah's own reporting record is abysmal.

Still, Farah followed up with a May 11 column noting that his original article was being used as an "example" of a fallacious charge on the Snopes urban-legend-debunking site. Farah retorted:

"The story was so good, if I do say so myself, it was picked up internationally.

Everything in the story is 100 percent accurate and truthful – and not a word of the original story has been altered.

(...)

Snopes reports my story is an "example" of this ludicrous assertion: "An environmental clean-up crew needs to be called in to deal with the mercury dispersed by one broken CFL bulb."

Now, I dare you. Go read my story and tell me where I, the reporter in this case, suggested any such nonsense."

...

Farah was the most shameless misleader on the subject, but he wasn't alone in peddling an incomplete -- and thus false -- story about the Bridges family.

A May 10 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas took a page out of Farah's notebook,making misleadingly alarmist claims about CFLs. Lucas stated that "Bridges dropped a fluorescent bulb in her daughter's room and it shattered, leaving potentially unsafe levels of mercury inside the rug. At the suggestions of the state's Department of Environmental Protection, she now has to pay $2,000 for a professional environmental clean up. Her seven-year-old daughter sleeps in the family room, as her room is sealed off by plastic."

But like Farah, Lucas descended into scaremongering and ignored information showing that the Bridges case was overblown. And like Farah, Lucas failed to mention that, according to the Ellsworth American, another spokesman for Maine's Department of Environmental Protection points out that it "isn’t necessary to hire professionals at all" for a broken CFL bulb, and that the specialist who responded to Bridges’ broken bulb query was trained to respond to chemical spills.

...

Two months later, this misleading meme and incompletely told story about the Bridges family was still kicking around the ConWeb. A July 5 Accuracy in Media "special report" by Cliff Kincaid and Andy Selepak puts a protectionist twist on scary claims about compact fluorescent light bulbs, claiming that CFL proponents "fail to mention that the bulbs are made in communist China and are potentially hazardous to human health," further attacking General Electric for manufacturing CFLs "in Red China at the expense of American jobs and workers." Suddenly AIM is concerned about American jobs moving overseas?

Kincaid and Selepak went on to claim: "The Washington Times reported on May 3, 2007, that it cost one Maine family $2,004.28 to clean up the toxic mess from just one broken CFL, and that it would 'take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to 'safely' contain all the mercury in a single CFL.' " In fact, the only CFL-related item the Times ran that day was not a news article but, rather, a column (reproduced at the Fox News website) by conservative activist Steven Milloy that was an attack on CFLs, not the balanced "news" article Kincaid and Selepak suggest it is. Milloy has a habit of spouting debunked claims in order to attack global warming and nuclear radiation concerns.

In repeating the anecdote about the Maine family purportedly facing spending "$2,004.28 to clean up the toxic mess from just one broken CFL," Milloy -- and, thus, Kincaid and Selepak -- fails to tell the whole story.

Another thing this whole bunch failed to mention: that they may have been played by Brandy Bridges. The Ellsworth American reported that Bridges "spent roughly two to three hours a day over the past several weeks, talking on the phone and in person and contacting local papers to get the word out on what she believes are dangerous light bulbs." Did WND, CNS or AIM print their articles based on a personal entreaty from Bridges -- with the caveat that they make her look like a victim and hide the full story? Only they can answer.

Either Farah, Lucas, Milloy, Kincaid and Selepak are dimbulbs for not doing basic research to tell the full story about CFLs and the Bridges family, uncritically regurgitating Brandy Bridges' claims -- or, in knowingly peddling such misleading, incomplete tripe, they assume that we are the dimbulbs.

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/outthere/otbulbs.html