Mercury, Like the Planet, Gets Around
I opened my closet door the other evening after work and was instantly freaked out.
What littered the floor of the closet looked like bits of shredded paper that my dog had chewed up. Unfortunately, it was far more threatening and the clean-up was much more complicated than I had expected. The bits of thin white scraps were actually broken pieces of a compact fluorescent light bulb that had fallen off of a shelf and shattered all over the closet floor. Normally, with a broken light bulb, some sweeping up and perhaps a final vacuuming is all that's required. Not so with a CFL, because as I'm sure all of you already know, the bulbs we're all supposed to be screwing into our sockets to save energy and the planet contain the highly toxic mercury. So what's a freaked-out person to do?
I went onto the web and googled "broken CFL bulb" and learned that there are some very strict government guidelines for cleaning up and disposing of the residue from these broken bulbs. For starters, you are not allowed to vacuum up the mess, as it could send mercury vapors into the air. Same goes for sweeping. You'll contaminate the broom. Never mind mopping it up, either. And if it gets on your clothing, you can't put it in the washing machine for the same reasons. Mercury, like the planet, gets around. So if you too suffer from this broken bulb syndrome, here's what the government says you need to do. And by the way, I think I'm switching to candles. (Click for further instruction. You can also learn more about going green in your own home by clicking here)
Before Clean-up: Air Out the Room
Have people and pets leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through the breakage area on their way out.
Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.
Clean-Up Steps for Hard Surfaces
Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass pieces and powder.
Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.
Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.
Clean-up Steps for Carpeting or Rug
Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.
If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken.
Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.
Clean-up Steps for Clothing, Bedding, etc.
If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage.
You can, however, wash clothing or other materials that have been exposed to the mercury vapor from a broken CFL, such as the clothing you are wearing when you cleaned up the broken CFL, as long as that clothing has not come into direct contact with the materials from the broken bulb.
If shoes come into direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from the bulb, wipe them off with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place the towels or wipes in a glass jar or plastic bag for disposal.
Disposal of Clean-up Materials
Immediately place all clean-up materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area for the next normal trash pickup.
Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing clean-up materials.
Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area. Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they require that broken and unbroken mercury-containing bulbs be taken to a local recycling center.
Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rug: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming
The next several times you vacuum, shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system and open a window before vacuuming.
Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.
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This is more about not freaking out than anything else. Mercury is far less toxic than many of the insecticides and herbicides that some people store by the gallon in their garages. It's far less toxic than ordinary gasoline. So what's all the fuss about? It's perceived toxicity. It's the fear that something that one can not see and can not easily measure will linger around and act as a slow poison. No amount of scientific evidence about the physical properties of mercury can calm that fear, so I won't even try.
Less toxic than gasoline? Certainly not on an equal-weight comparison basis. What other basis of comparison is there?
mercury is NOT benign. Its extremely toxic and it tends to accumulate in the body, binding to brain, liver and kidney tissues.
The toxicity of mercury depends greatly on the chemical form and its valance state. But all forms of mercury are quite toxic.
It's important to understand that mercury is an element, meaning it will not break down, EVER (okay, maybe in another 15 billion years after the sun engulfs the earth).
Compounds such as hydrocarbons (gasoline consists of hydrocarbons) eventually break down -- some compounds do so quickly, for instance under the sun's UV radiation. Mercury, lead, cobalt, cadmium, etc., never break down in this way and therefore persist in the environment forever.
Is there no incentive for someone to create a energy efficient non-toxic alternative? Save the environment but poison your family is a hell of a trade-off.
It's on its way, in the form of new LED technology. Within a few years we'll have lamps that use _even less_ energy than compact fluorescents, cost less, and will be able to be built in a greater variety of shapes and sizes.
Win all around.
Are your sure your neighbor who has that perfect lawn is not using weed killer by the gallons? If you are not, you might want to go over and talk to him about not poisoning himself, you and your family. Good luck with that. And make sure he is not an NRA member.
LED bulbs are coming.
Even better, I've seen prototypes for LED strips that can make bulbs themselves obsolete.
Simpler instructions for cleaning up a broken CFL light bulb:
Evacuate home of all living residents (unless they've touched the broken shards, then tape them to the wall while wearing thick rubber gloves), go to garage, collect gasoline or other flammables and distribute liberally throughout the home. If you have gas burners on your stove, turn them all up to high.
Exit home, light match and throw into home.
Run.
Seriously. People should be cautious with mercury, but unless you're working with a specialized form of it, it's not going to kill you or damage you unless you're constantly exposed to it. I used to clean up mercury in the lab all the time and I'm just fine. And I'm just fine. And I'm just fine.
Calm down.
Yeah...it sounds like the page for mercury got glued to the page for plutonium.
Hahaha. Good one. :)
Let's not get bogged down in common sense, people.
Good info. I still love my CFL's because my electric bill has been slashed big-time because of them. Try as I might to turn the lights off when I leave a room, I too often leave them on for extended periods of time for security reasons or for my dogs (I'm especially bad about turning off my closet light), but if I ever get sensor-activated lights that will turn off for me, I may switch back to incandescents.
People have become a bunch of hypersensitive paranoid sissies.
Why not just call the hazmat team?
When I was a kid my teacher had a glass jar with mercury about an inch and a half deep. We would roll it out on a floor or a desk and play with it. No one died. No one got cancer.
"Why not just call the hazmat team?"
Because you don't want to be sent before a judge for getting a bunch of hazmat guys hospitalized for abdominal pain after rolling on the floor of laughter for an hour and a half.
The total mercury in a case of CFLs would not give a single person serious poisoning if they would ingest all of it.
killthemessenger
This is true but misleading, and you should know better. You are correct in your conclusion, but for the wrong reasons. There are about 5mg of mercury in a typical compact fluorescent. The issue is not ingestion, so t=why are you taling about ingestion?
the issue is inhalation. And the 5 mg from a fluorescent bulb can contaminate a room for quite a while. Most of the mercury will adsorb on the phosphor and glass fragments, so far less than the 5mg will wind up in the air.
But living in the same room as droplets of mercury is hazardous, absolutely, and it will create hazardous levels of mercury vapor, especially if heated.
Great article. Changing bulbs is so last century.
Lighting Science Group Corp. has some wonderful solutions.
http://lsgc.com/
isn't this what you enviro's pushed for? I am stocking up on regular light bulbs so i won't have to use these piece of junk cfl bulbs
If you get your electricity from Coal, you will be emitting more mercury into the air where it does the most damage.
A little education goes a long way. I appreciate the clean-up tips provided in this article.
Critics of CFL bulbs need to understand that the coal-fired electrical power plants pump out mercury and other toxic materials during the combustion process. It's a fact that over the life of a CFL bulb, the lower amount of electricity consumed by the CFL bulb compared to an incandescent producing equivalent light correspondingly reduces the mercury emissions of coal-fired power plants considerably more than the content of mercury in the CFL bulb.
It might also be worth mentioning that coal-fired electrical power plants also pump radioactive elements (i.e. Thorium, Radium, etc) into the air. This is because coal is not pure Carbon and contains toxic substances (i.e. Arsenic, Mercury, etc). So-called "clean coal" is PR flatus. A really "clean coal" would have to somehow filter out everything but Carbon and then sequestrate the CO2 combustion product either through photosynthesis or somehow entrapping the gas. If we could harness the CO2 to feed algae (along with sunlight) and have the algae produce synthetic fuel, then we could start towards a closed cycle and remove dependence on fossil fuels -- but that requires a lot of R&D before we're there.
I want a cleaner Earth and work towards that goal on a daily basis. I hope you can enjoy my avatar. :-)
This issue is not the breakage of a single bulb. The key problem is that 300 million bulbs per year are going in landfills. Each bulb contains more mercury than OSHA recommends for a person to be exposed to per year. That's one annual dose per year for every man, woman and child in America going into our ground water. (Mercury is quickly converted in groundwater to methyl mercury which is can be absorbed through the skin by fish, animals and humans). Those who would deny harm because lower energy usage decreases power plant mercury emissions are missing the point. Power plant emission are high only because the Bush administration allowed them to remain high and will soon be lowered. LED lighting is available, economic, contains no mercury and will outlast your wallpaper.
IF CLFs are properly disposed off, they do not land on landfills. Landfill mercury is never going to get back into the food chain again if landfills are properly managed.
OSHA is a standard for people who are exposed to chemical substances at the workplace. They recommend limits of .025 mg/m^3. A single CFL contains 3-5mg mercury per bulb, newer bulbs have half that much or less. That's enough to create the OSHA limit concentration in 200m^3 of air. A room of 150 square feet contains about 40 cubic meters of air. In other words: if you air out the room five times completely, most of the mercury will be gone.
So unless you keep that room airtight, break maybe one bulb a week and spend 40 hours a week in there, you will be fine.
LED and CFL are the perfect example of how market forces will decide the outcome of a new technology. But if GM and Big Oil manufactured CFLs do you think we'd ever hear that LEDs existed? Now you understand why we can't seem to get the technology green technology right now that will replace the combustion engine, that's because the oil and auto industry own all the patents, and we pay the cost - big time.
is you worry so much about CFLs just get one of the many CFL bulbs with a plastic blub surrounding the glass coil. IKEA has them, other places sell them as well. if they fall and break the glass coil the mercury is contained in the plastic blub, and sometimes they'd just bounce if you drop it.
Before you freak out at the mercury content of cfls, the long tubes in your work area contain 4 grams of it, compared to less than a gram in a cfl of equal lumen output.
Thank you for pointing this out. Seems like a real failure of risk-assessment to me that people freak out about a broken CFL bulb, but don't have a similar reaction to long flourescent tubes sticking out of a dumpster.
Here's a green tip: In places like closets, where lights are turned off and on frequently, regular incandescent may be preferable, because CFL fixtures are not designed for short on-off cycles.
So I wonder what will be scary and deadly about LED lighting...
When are companies going to stop putting deadly materials in consumer items? This is especially crazy considering how easily bulbs can be broken.
The 'green' label has been so cynical devalued by big corporations that it has been rendered meaningless. I just scoff in disgust when I see things like the Toyota commercial where are a car driving through a city causes grass and plants to grow as it drives by because of how 'clean' it's emissions are. It's not even an electric car they're showing, but a regular gas burner with reduced emissions, so in truth they are just putting out less poisons, but poisons nevertheless. The CFL bulbs are worse than this, though. Anything containing easily released mercury is not 'green' in anyway.
This campaign to put CFLs into every home reminds me of similar stupidity in the past, when companies started putting asbestos into common building materials or PCBs into fridges. When you basically have to follow haz-mat procedures to clean up a broken light bulb, it shouldn't be in a home.
The procedures listed in this article are insane and won't make a difference. The mercury in a CFL bulb is entirely in vapor form in the bulb. Since the mercury also has a sufficient vapor pressure at room temperature and pressure, it will stay in vapor form and end up outside the house. Before that however, the mercury will end up diffusing itself in the air and not be a serious hazard. When ever a pollutant gets mentioned consider the concentration of the pollutant, if it is low enough to not be hazardous, don't be concerned. In any case, zero is not an attainable number for any substance.
If you want to freak out about something consider the roughly 1,000,000 asbestos fibers you inhale yearly from naturally exposed deposits of various types of asbestos. Yes, that is from asbestos deposits that have been exposed through entirely natural processes. Consider also that asbestos in the home is not particularly dangerous unless disturbed. Even then one exposure to chrysotile asbestos will not doom you. It will dissolve in your lungs, if it even ends up there.
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