David,

While I find the twisty light bulb mandate offensive, I don’t think there’s much to the mercury-will-kill-you argument. The average twisty bulb contains 4 miligrams or less of mercury, most of it won’t be inhalable and what would be is equivalent to what you get from eating a couple of cans of tuna. Even the enviros admit it’s a tiny amount of risk. The EPA is, once again, being ridiculous. If you smash a twisty bulb, the worst thing you can do is involve the bureaucracy.

Of course, the enviros recommend you involve the bureaucracy because they are terrified these tiny amounts of mercury will get into fish and make our children stupid enough to, erm, believe their scare stories. Henry Miller and Sandy Szwarc wrote about those stories here a few years back.