The European Federation has banned the use of mercury in thermometers and barometers becaue mercury is dangerous and they might get broken.
In one of my previous jobs I wrote COSHH datasheets for a defence company and mercury is some pretty nasty stuff if ingested. The amount of mercury in a thermometer would make you ill if you drank it but unless you set out to deliberately poison yourself it would be pretty difficult to ingest a thermometer full of mercury and if you were trying to poison yourself you’d probably plump for a bottle of domestos and/or 50 paracetamol. In other words, the risk of mercury poisoning from thermometers and barometers is negligible.
Despite the negligible risk, the EU is banning the use of mercury putting an entire small but specialised industry out of business. They are not, however, planning to put the energy saving light bulb industry out of business despite mercury being used in the bulbs.
Compare the number of mercury thermometers per household and the number of energy saving light bulbs per household, take into account that non-energy saving bulbs are also being outlawed by the EU and which one poses more of a public health risk?
Consistency: one policy area the EU hasn’t claimed.
“….and which one poses more of a public health risk?”
Neither of the above.
The correct answer is the EU itself poses more of a public health risk. What it’s doing to my blood pressure is certain to cause problems.
This just goes to show that we would be Better off out of the whole corrupt EUssr.