I have been announced by some people in Carmel hospital, that mercury lamps and magnetic ballast were officially banned in Israel and become illegal.
The magnetic ballast ban was told to me by the worker of the technical storage of Carmel hospital that responsible for the orders and issues, when I showed him, the Eltam modern Perfect-Start preheat ballast, at Eltam international website, which can replaces their former discontinued Shaingout Electronic-Start preheat ballasts and that it is the same ballast, but from Eltam and not Shaingout. But he than said that the they are outlawed (Literally "banned") and the israeli electric company, told Eltam and Shaingout to stop manufacturing magnetic ballasts.
Regarding to the mercury lamps being banned, he said me that this was because mercury lamps contains a very large amount of mercury: And what about the mercury in HPS and and MH lamps, which is about sumilar amount as the in the mercury lamps?
I have no more words to say about the nasty behaviors of our government about the environment.
I suspect, that a day will be reached, and the only types of lamps that will be legal in Israel would be the following: CFLs, LEDs and T5s.

I could not find any data to support this

Eltam website lists the L series inductors, which was upgraded in 2010/2011 to B1 efficiency - the 36W ballast for example is taking just 42.5W total which is very efficient

The Perfect Start ballast was not upgraded and it takes 48.5W. However the same performance can be achieved with the new L ballast and Pulsestarter

As for mercury lamps, the amount of mercury in them (22mg) is about identical to HPS (20mg)and slightly more than in high-end MH (16mg). However their long life makes the total amount of mercury in use the same as with good quality HPS and less than MH

Ash: The fact that the Perfect-Start ballast, appears on Eltam international website, don't means that they producing them for Israel as well.
When I showed the Perfect-Start ballast of Eltam in the international website, to the worker in the storage of Carmel hospital, that responsible for the orders of the storage, and said him that this is exactly like Shaingout Electronic-Start, but from Eltam and not Shaingout, he said me that the israeli electric company gave instruction to Shaingout to stop manufacturing magnetic ballasts, and this is the reason why the Electronic-Start has been discontinued.

As far as i know Shingot did not manufacture any ballasts for a while now. They were importing ELT from Spain

I could not find any reference for this

However, i did find a PDF file while searching for it, see my topic