I recently telephoned a landfill to ask how I should dispose of an old thermometer—the mercury type. This is the conversation that ensued:
Recycling expert: “Throw it in the trash.”
Me: “Huh? Doesn’t that pollute the groundwater and air?”
“Nope, our landfill is lined. The mercury can’t go anywhere.”
Lined or not, I can’t believe this is a good policy for potentially thousands of residents to follow over a course of many years. Mercury thermometers can break–in the trash truck, for instance–releasing toxic vapors. The cumulative effects in ground and air would seem to be dangerous.
The disposal standards are rated by (how much you toss out) by (how often you throw that much out), and the amount of mercury the average household throws out in a year probably doesn’t add up to much, -1? 2 thermometers, maybe? If you called the local residential landfill up and said “I need to dispose of ten pounds of mercury per week”, they’d have said “We don’t do that here.” Ten pounds of mercury would probably be enough to fill thousands of thermometers. -Also note that most (red) thremometers are alcohol now anyway; only the silver ones have mercury in them. - DougC
is a rather poor ethical decision on behalf of the landfill dude. The small amount of mercury possibly poses very little damage to itself, however it is well known the issues this country has had in medical waste disposal.
My suggestion if you are that worried is to take it to a hospital and ask if they will dispose of it. Their waste is taken to a special landfill probably near some neighborhood where local residents are starting to get pissed off about the weird smells and odd looking mushroom growth (Ferndale, WA -Recomp Waste Disposal).
Please, please don’t throw your mercury thermometer in the trash! I know it is only a small amount of mercury, bit it still has many chances to escape into the environment even before it gets to the landfill, and still has the ability to harm the health of sanitation workers.
Landfills are lined, but they have a leachate collection system to collect all the juices from the trash. The leachate is then treated in a wastewater treatment- type process – and that process can’t remove the mercury from the water. Again, I know it’s just one thermometer, but every little bit counts.
I second the suggestion to contact your local hospital to see if they will take it. Also, since you are in California (I think) there’s a good chance you have a local Household Hazardous Waste program. Call your county government offices and see if such a thing exists near you – I know HHW programs in Indiana accept mercury items for recycling, and if we do it here then I’m sure you’re doing it out there.
A final note – mercury items generally don’t end up even in a special waste landfill. Several companies throughout the US function as mercury recyclers. They extract and retort (or purify) the mercury from thermometer, thermostats, what have you, and the mercury then goes into new products (and reduces the amount of mercury mining that goes on in the world).