When Seventh Generation was born 20 years ago, it was as a skinny digest-sized mail order catalog whose primary products were recycled paper bath tissue and an alien looking $25 dollar light bulb called a compact fluorescent light (CFL) that produced more laughter than illumination.

Flash forward to the present. Lower prices and improved performance mean that many more retailers now carry CFL bulbs, and that growing numbers of Americans are enjoying the energy, money, and environmental savings they provide. Yet there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: CFLs still contain mercury, a toxic metal that can cause harm when absorbed by the body.

Lately, the presence of mercury inside CFLs has been needlessly raising alarms. Crazy internet rumors about broken bulbs requiring clean-up by hazardous materials teams have been fed by a chorus of scaremongering pundits decrying this useful technology as a deadly sham foisted on unsuspecting Americans by hypocritical environmentalist wackos.

None of which, of course, is remotely true. In fact, National Electrical Manufacturer Association standards that went into effect in early 2007 restrict the quantity of mercury in CFLs to between five and six milligrams (depending on wattage). That’s an amount that would fit on the tip of a ball point pen. Experts agree that the small potential risk this minor quantity represents is far outweighed by the enormous environmental and financial benefits CFLs provide. According to the , if every household replaced just one light bulb with a CFL, we’d save enough energy to light over three million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equal to about 800,000 cars.

Still, elemental mercury is an obvious hazard, especially where children and pregnant women are concerned. A volatile neurotoxin, elemental mercury easily becomes an inhalable vapor. When present at sufficient levels, it can cause neurological and muscular problems, kidney damage, and even respiratory failure.

Clearly, precaution is required. Recently, Maine and the Mercury Policy Project released separate reports that offer valuable advice about the care and handling of CFLs. Here’s the rundown:

Were you wondering about how CFLs work? They consist of two basic parts: a ballast and a glass tube. The ballast, or base, regulates the electricity that enters the light-producing glass tube, which contains a gaseous combination of elemental (a.k.a. metallic) mercury and argon or xenon. When these gases are excited by electricity, they emit ultraviolet light. As this UV light strikes the glass tube, its phosphor coating is similarly excited. The result is visible light produced with a fraction of the electricity used by conventional bulbs.