But I don't want an ionic purifier.

I want to...I want to sing!!

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Hey, nice! CFL bulbs and Ionic air purifiers... Two things you really don't want in living areas of your house, now available in one convenient product!

What's wrong with CFL bulbs?

They contain mercury and burn out faster than traditional bulbs(dispite what that package says).

$14.99... what is that with %8.75 sales tax?

@jbhitter24: 8.75%

They don't burn out faster. I've got both types in my house and sorry, you're wrong unless I got some magic CFL bulbs. 2nd, yes they do contain mercury but from an environmental perspective they introduce less mercury into the environment than incandescent. How? In the U.S. the increased "wasted" energy from incandescent bulbs means more coal burned in power plants to power them. That coal burning releases mercury into the atmosphere. Free for you to breathe as opposed to captured in your CFL.

I've been using a mixture of CFLs and incandescent bulbs for a couple years, and in my experience the CFLs last a whole lot longer. In fact, so far, I haven't had to replace a single CFL, whereas I can't say the same for any of he incancesdents in our house.

However, as for the ionic purifier... it creates ozone, which is arguably worse for your lungs than some of the stuff the purifier takes out of the air. I used to have one, but we had to get rid of it because it was giving my wife mild asthma attacks.

@jbhitter24: $16.30... assuming you're using any computer to post that you have a calculator... hopefully you are capable of calculating that yourself...

@macserv: word

@strider_mt2k: you just killed my wife, she's still laughing... she knew what the video was before i even clicked on it to play... she says "Dorkage FTW"

as sammy baby said: I thought ionic air purifiers have been proven to be pretty worthless. In some homes I've visited that use them, I can smell the ozone and my eyes turn red and burny before too long. Not exactly pure air if you ask me...

why would somebody attach something so questionably useful/useless/harmful to a light bulb?

Doesn't this qualify as a Giz crazy combo?

When you drop this bulb and release mercury into the air, you can screw in another one and it will clean out the mercury with the ionic purifier. See, you can be green and have a built in answer for the anti-greens.

Worthless Disclaimer: Yes, an ionic purifier will not help clean out mercury. And, yes, the mercury claim by some is mostly bunk since incandescents put far more mercury and other pollutants into the air due to the increased energy use.

Only problem is, when ionic purifiers get dirty, they start to crackle and make noise.

Just some reading material on ionic purifiers:

[en.wikipedia.org]

I have a feeling this company is going to make a killing off of selling these to colleges and universities for their housing.

I know I'll be getting one or two to light my room. Hopefully it actually works and I don't need to keep buying air fresheners.

@EQC: If that is a Rick Astley video, I will be quite upset.

@Rand All but one(4 total) of the CFL bulbs I have purchased in the last year have died within 3 months. FYI, all 4 were different brands.

@EQC Thank for bring that up :).

@djdare: it was a reference to another headline today: [gizmodo.com]

@djdare: LOL! right back at ya!

I'm used to the same thing from MY wife!

(Who's more foolish, the fool, or the fool that married him?) ;)

Oh thank goodness. I was worried about my ionic needs, what with Sharper Image going out of business.

@wcnghj: I have yet to have an issue with my CFL bulbs. They're working like champs. If you're blowing that many, you might want to check into the output of the outlet they're going in or something. Maybe you have a lot of surges in your area?

And the whole mercury thing is misleading. From what I've read, there's about the same amount of mercury in one bulb as a few fish.

As a Saskatchewan Roughrider fan, the last thing I think of when someone says 'CFL' is a lightbulb.

So, Giz, you didn't mention that these things don't actually do anything and are thus basically a scam... so I'm going to assume you think they do.

Lazy lightbulbs are for boozers.

No wait, lazy lightbulbs are for Eddie and the Cruisers.

Frig! Lazy lightbulbs are for Hoosiers.

DAMN IT

@halfshafter: Nono

Crazy tight boobs far from Julliard's.

So it cleans a bajillion square feet, but ... not really, since I think I can shit, fart, agitate, ruffle, scratch, cook, and stomp more pollution into the air than this thing could ever suck up.

My throat gets really dry and my contacts literally fall out around those Ionic things... I'm thinking they screw up the air more than they help it...isn't it Ionic? Also, we had an albino ferret whose skin turned a faint shade of blue whenever we had our Idiot beacon on. Thank FSM for return policies...

@Ryan.Reed: Power is very reliable here, we tested the voltage and it is normal 118-122V. Regular bulbs work just fine.

The whole mercury problem is that bulbs are blowing out long before they are supposed to and are polluting more than a regular bulb. According to walmart, the average amount of mercury is 5mg.

The average mercury in a fish is <1mg.

@wcnghj: You seem to be the only one experiencing crappy CFL bulbs. I've had the same results as the large majority here, they last much, much longer than incandescent bulbs.

I'm willing to acknowledge that if you spring for a pricey CFL bulb, it'll last a good long time. But those aren't the issues. Mercury, we've already covered here sufficiently.

My other issue is that the light spectrum (what you actually see when you look through a spectrometer) is all blue and green. Color accuracy is awful, no matter how "warm" or "natural" it claims to be.

The best option I've found now is halogen. I've replaced every bulb in my house with a GE Edison Halogen bulb, usually at a lower wattage than what I had in there. This gives me true full-spectrum light, noticeable energy savings, and bulbs which last thousands of hours, without the mercury.

When LED bulbs or OLED panels evolve to the point where they are inexpensive and can produce true full-spectrum light, I'll jump on board immediately. Until then, CFL is just not a good option, despite billions of marketing dollars spent to convince you otherwise.

CFLs last longest when they are not on a constant on-off cycle. I am not in a position to do the math because of the number of variables, but the lamp you normally light in the living room in early evening and turn off at bedtime is a good candidate for CFL. The closet or bathroom bulbs are more likely to burn out faster than a "properly" operated CFL.

That said, we've replaced every bulb in the house except for the refrigerator and oven with CFLs and have yanked most of the charging transformers. Our electric bill for the last two months of -$41.45 (you read that correctly; we have solar photovoltaic panels) might have been $20 less in credit to us.

And for those of you who think we're horse's buttocks for installing solar, we'll recoup all of our costs and more at resale time.

@vesuvian: "And for those of you who think we're horse's buttocks for installing solar, we'll recoup all of our costs and more at resale time."

Say what you will about the moral merits of solar power, but it is still a net cost at this point. [en.wikipedia.org]

@vesuvian: I think it's freaking awesome. If I lived in an area where solar was feasable, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I'd also use excess power to generate and store hydrogen, and feed it into a fuel cell for power in the dark.

@macserv: the fuel cell will have to wait. We were offered a battery add-on which would have given us about 40 amps of service for about 8 hours. About five years after installation, we would have a huge honkin' toxic lead-acid battery which would need disposal. So it's easier to just feed the grid. Once time-of-day-sensitive pricing comes to our city, we should make even more.

@Pender: You're absolutely right. We did get $2K as an instant tax credit and $8K from our city-owned utility, bringing our cost down to $15K. With tiered pricing in our community (kwh price constant, transmission/distribution cost increases each 250 kwh/month used), there is a quicker payback if you like air conditioning.

Ionic air 'purifiers' are really bad for asthmatics, fyi... www.allergizer.com/50226711/ionic_air_purifiers_aggravates_asthma.php