OT: Flourescent Lightbulb Mercury Clean Up

[Sam*]

At my home, a lamp with one of those energy efficient flourescent lightbulbs, shaped to be a replacement lightbulb for "normal" lightbulbs, fell and the bulb shattered. I noticed on the lightbulb that it says, "contains mercury". Do I need to take any special precautions in cleaning it up or disposing of it?

Thanks gang,

Sam*

[Tofer]

Well, I'm sure you'll get lots of different responses to this one. My personal feeling is that you should get out the vacuum, suck all the pieces up, forget about it and be done with it. Whatever mercury vapor was in there is gone, and elemental mercury (of which there is probably little, anyway) is relatively harmless, despite common misconceptions about it.

I've heard that you can cool it down to harden it up, and then sweep the pieces into the dustpan, but I'm not sure about it, really. I just don't think there's enough mercury to worry about. I have no idea what the correct procedure to dispose of it is, and I'd hate to see the fire department and special disposal units have to come out because you dropped a bulb (they almost certainly would in a school, unfortunately).

Good luck, and I say don't stress about it.

-Tofer

[davester]

They don't contain enough mercury to harm you just because you're cleaning it up. However, in some states it is now illegal to dispose of them (or any electronic trash) in the regular garbage because the mercury eventually leaks into groundwater.

Here's what EPA has to say:

"Always Dispose of Your CFL Properly
While CFLs for your home are not legally considered hazardous waste
according to federal solid waste rules, it is still best for the environment to
dispose of your CFL properly upon burnout. Only large commercial users of
tubular fluorescent lamps are required to recycle. If recycling is not an
option in your area (see below on how to find out), place the CFL in a
sealed plastic bag and dispose the same way you would batteries, oil-based
paint and motor oil at your local Household Hazardous Waste (HHW)
Collection Site. If your local HHW Collection Site cannot accept CFLs
(check Earth911.org to find out), seal the CFL in a plastic bag and place
with your regular trash."

http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cfl.pdf

[Michael]

Does everybody remember playing with the mercury from broken thermometers when we were little kids? Maybe you've got to be pretty old for that one. We seemed to survive.

I'm with Tofer--vacuum and forget. Maybe toss the vacuum bag if you're feeling concerned.

However, after I wrote the above and before I posted this, I googled "mercury thermometers" and found this site: and the statement that "Even the smallest amount of mercury needs to be treated as a serious issue." While they are talking about thermometers, maybe the amount in a bulb is of concern. They do have suggestions on cleaning it up without bringing in a hazmat squad!


I still think I'd vacuum, toss the bag, and forget it...

[Tofer]

Here's a picture of a man sitting on a bed of mercury:

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTabl...yMiner.JPG

The web site it comes from has some very interesting info:

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTabl...index.html

-Tofer

[Mike Johnson]

You can swallow mercury and if you're healthy, it won't be a problem. You can play with it, and as long as your skin is in good shape, it won't be a problem. Where things can get bad is in inhalation. It's not a bead of mercury rolling around a classroom floor that freaks a school out, but the possibility of that mercury falling in a crack and 30 kids breathing the fumes for five hours a day.

To clean up your broken tube, I'd probably use a swiffer. Unlike a broom or vacuum cleaner, it won't put the stuff in the air. A safer way would be with duct tape -- pull off a long hank and then wrap it back around the tape, sticky side out. Roll it along. It could take a while, though.

Remember, mercury binds to sulfur and changes it from yellow to brownish. You can get powdered sulfur at a garden store. Sprinkle it on the floor then sweep that up. It's handy because you'll know immediately if there is mercury or not by the color change. But sulfur isn't pleasant, either..

[Carm]

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTabl...x.s12.html

Mercury Fountain? Crazy.

Isnt the Mad Hatter "mad" because he used mercury is shaping the rim of the hats?

I did a quick google search and found this site: http://www.hgtech.com/Information/Mad%20Hatter.htm References Alice in Wonderland

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-mad2.htm

http://www.seagrant.uconn.edu/HATTER.HTML

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Waste water treatement plants really, really like to keep mercury out of drains so they do not have to treat their solid products as hazardous waste. Keeping it out of drains also keept it out of rivers, lakes, bays, and the fish that live there that accumilate it at thousands of times higher than water levels. UC Berkeley has a fact sheet about reducing mercury pollution. http://www.ehs.berkeley.edu/pubs/factshe...rcury.html

There is not a lot of liquid mercury in a compact fluorescent tube but it adds up expecially with some utilities subsidizing them at retail stores. If you break a couple of dozen 4 foot 40 W tubes in a dumpster at work and the area drains to a water treatement plant, it can really impact the effluent at the water treatement plant for a couple of weeks when it rains.