Why is it that you don't like fluorescent lights?
I recently started switching all my lights to the smaller fluorescent bulbs. They are: brighter, whiter light, last much longer, use less energy. Of course, after a while they start to get dimmer (rather than dying suddenly like incandescent bulbs) - so when I reach that point, I'll just replace them. Despite the higher initial cost, they're saving me a fortune since my wife and kids are horrible about turning off lights. A few minutes on google, using the search terms "fluorescent" and "bad for your eyes" revealed nothing, so I wonder what it is that you know that the rest of us don't know.
The way a flourescent light works is by exciting mercury vapor to emit UV-A and UV-C. The UV-C is absorbed by the phosphor coating and reemitted in the visible spectrum, the UV-A is not, and the UV-A makes it through the glass of the bulb. The UV-C absorbption and reemmission is of course not 100%, what it misses is in theory absorbed by the glass producing heat. The amount of UV-A
should be very small, but under non-ideal conditions, like bad power input, it might not be.
Also, unlike incandescents, flourescents flicker horribly, which is part of why they are painful to look at. Ask anyone with a migraine which is worse: being near a flourescent or staring directly at the sun, and the answer will consistently be that the flourescent is worse. The other part of why they are bad, particularly without a diffuser is because as you said, they are smaller -- the light is more focused and intense, and its this intensity, not the total amount of light, that makes it painful. Similar to why you are supposed to wear eye protection when working with lasers.
I think it's fairly common knowledge that UV is not good for your eyes, contributing to cataracts and macular degeneration. While the amount of UV from the flourescents is not near as much as you get from the sun (they won't exactly tan you quickly...), since indoors even with them is generally much dimmer than outside, your pupils are more dilated and more of the UV that is there makes it in.
Also, the idea of them being
whiter light is wrong, or rather, is pretty much an illusion. Incandescents have a smooth spectral curve, and while it is brighter on the red/orange part of the spectrum than the blue part, there are no gaps. Flourescents have very well-defined spectral lines, emitting mostly only very specific frequencies. One of these happen to fall in the range of the blue-sensing cones in your eye, which happen to be the ones most responsible for color perception. But since it's only at a specific part of that blue spectrum (and much of the greenish range is missing), while the light itself looks whiter, it doesn't reflect off other materials the same as true white light.
