CFL mercury hazard

Factual Questions
1

I’m sure this will eventually get bounced to another thread as emotions start rising but I’m hoping to get a factual answer first:

I had heard about compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs before but never really paid much attention to them. I knew they lasted longer, used less energy and were also much more expensive than standard incandescent bulbs. My wife heard that Wal Mart was having a sale on them so she picked up a bunch and I put them into places where the lights are on more often or for longer times, such as my daughter’s bedside lamp.

A couple days ago I saw a news report about the health risk of CFLs. In this article they talk about the hazard created by the mercury in CFLs. I did a quick search online and most of the articles I found either came from conservative sites that demonized CFLs or environmental sites that minimized the threat and tell you how to clean up a spill. I decided that I wouldn’t take any chances so I took the bulb out of my daughter’s lamp.

Just how dangerous are the bulbs if they break? There are no “recycling” or drop off locations for dead CFL bulbs so how should this be safely handled? Are sanitation workers at risk? What about the mercury being dumped at landfills? Can anyone give me straight answers before this turns into a global warming/evil human/evil corporation/tree hugger/extremist (on both sides of the environment) train wreck?

2

Wow. 24 hours and no one has an answer? The butt wiping thread got a response within 15 minutes! :dubious: Everyone who is even remotely knowledgeable about a subject is always willing to state what they know (interspersed with comments form the assorted smartasses who make this board entertaining). Did I actually ask a question that the teeming millions don’t know the answer to?

Seriously, does anyone know about the risk level for CFL bulbs?

3

That would be because there have already been a few threads on this that I don’t have time to go find for you.

4

My apologies. I didn’t realize that this had already been covered and I had must have missed them in my search attempts. I will request this to be closed if that is the case.

5

There’s some discussion of the topic going on in this thread.

6

I don’t have a lot of answers to your questions, but apparently the amount of Mercury in CFLs is pretty small, and CFLs are actually responsible for lower Mercury emissions over the lifetime of the bulb (including power plant emissions) than regular incandescent lightbulbs.

Here is information on the subject published by the EPA: