<DIV style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif; font-size:10pt;"><DIV>Several months ago I was asked to write an article on this very subject. My research began by buying CFL's from every lighting manufacturer. The first thing I discovered was ALL are made in China, including the "Lights of America" brand! The reason this is a big deal is when we built our solar home in 1993 every single light was CFL with a few halogen spots in the bathrooms. In 1993 CFL's were only sold by commercial lighting distributors and had to be ordered. Ours were made by Osram in Germany and Italy and we did not have a single lamp failure and did not replace a single lamp until 2 years ago. </DIV>
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<DIV>These CFL's lasted almost 14 years and most were still burning, but getting dim. We had to replace those that finally failed with those made in China and we have had about a 50% failure rate in 3 years, even thought they are labeled as 8 year life. My big concern is after the many state laws that demand the switch to CFL's that have this high failure rate, they will fill up landfills and never last long enough to achieve any payback at all. They also cost much more to ship and take up much more landfill space. Wall-Mart alone solf more than 100,000,000 CFL's this past year and you can bet most will be tossed in the trash, mercury and all, when most fail in the next 3 years.</DIV>
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<DIV>Lots more information in the article if you are interested - <A href="http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/yago107.html">http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/yago107.html</A><BR><BR> Jeff Yago, P.E., CEM<BR> NABCEP Certified <BR> email: jryago@netscape.com<BR> </DIV><BR> <BR><HR>Netscape. Just the Net You Need.</DIV>