mailing list using mail()

Hi, the combination of PHP and mysql and the ease of use of the mail() function obviously leads me to believe that it *should* be a singe to use php to send customised messages to all my users , of whom I have details in a mysql table by simply running a "select * from table" and then using a while loop to run through every row and sending an e_mail to $user_in_table. The obvious problem here is that ( in my case 17 000 users) this can easily kill the mail server and could also cause the script to timeout or ( if increasing the timeout) kill the server outright. So, what are my options? Should I be attempting this ( if not, how can I keep others that are hosting on my machines from trying this with their own tables) Should I just use one message and append the BCC: line of the one message? Thanks