A thread in the off-topic board of the israeli computers community HWzone about skin cancer from fluorescent lamps and CFLs, turns into a heated debate, when Ash and I joins into: Google translated URL (Original Hebrew URL) .

The claim is stated as : "Being closer than 30 cm to a fluorescent lamp is a risk of cancer"

And it is BS because of this :

1. Since when is radiation exposure measured in cm ? How about other meaningfull data like hte power of the lamp in question and daily exposure time ? Without those too (or any other usefull data for actual radiation exposure calculation) its meaningless

2. UV not only affects people. Plastics decay, book covers discolor under UV and so on. From your personal experience, do those thing discolor more : A. In a room without windos lit by fluorescents, or B. In a room with a window that lets daylight in. My presnal experience says B. So if you are not scared to be in a room that have a window, dont be scared of fluorescents

Ash: I didn't thought about the option that measuring radiation exposure by the distance from the radiating source is out of turn, and that is other evidence that the warnings about UV radiation from fluorescents and CFLs of the israeli Department of Energy and Ministry of Health, is a conspiracy.

Its not conspiracy. They are interested in people using CFLs, not aoiding them - htere is no reason why would they post any claims suggesting that CFLs aree dangerous - unless they really think that CFLs are dangerous

So not conspiracy, just plain ignorance

Now what might have happened is this : People think tat CFLs are dangerous --> calm them down with some BS data with a condition that will allways be false. For example, nobody really uses a CFL at 30 cm (1 ft) distance - not even in a desk lamp. So the users will think "we are at 30 cm so we are ok"

But then again, it does not really fall under conspiracy since the entire thing of cancer from CFLs is BS anyway, its not like they are hiding some real dangers....