Re: Re[2]: smoke detector overkill

[king@reasoning.com]

>> 
>> It doesn't have to make sense, it's the law.  Or is it? I don't know.

It doesn't have to make sense.  It's PC.

There are two catalog sales companies called Seventh Generation and Real Goods
that sell EcoFeelGood products.  Their catalogs have always contained lines of
compact flourescent light bulbs that contained no radioactive starter*, but i
really got incensed when they started carrying a line of contain non-radiation
smoke detectors which work off turbidity.

Ten years ago Consumer Reports ran an article on smoke detectors.  CR warned
their subscribers away from the photoelectric models both because they ate
batteries [or had to be plugged in] and because they didn't sense CR's test
fires as promptly.  I wonder how many people will die because their smoke
detector wouldn't sound off until the smoke was visible.  You can't buy
photoelectrics in most stores these days because nobody wants them so they're
not carried in ordinary channels if they're made at all.  I recall an amusing
sidebar in which CR calculated that the firefighters who unsuccessfully tried
to put out a fire in a smoke detector warehouse that burned 10,000 units might
be exposed to a week's quota of radiation, so if another smoke detector
warehouse went up later that week the fire department should consider sending
a different team ;-) .

I shared my opinion with Real Goods, citing the Consumer Reports article with
them, and they solved the problem by taking me off their mailing list.


-dk



* personally, when i break a flourescent tube ... i worry about getting glass
  in my foot [and a little bit about the mercury]