Elemental mercury - the pure stuff - isn’t that bad because your body doesn’t readily absorb it. Mercury vapor is bad, but unless you’re heating the broken lightbulb parts on your stove it’s not much of a worry. Organic mercury compounds are the biggest hazard because your body can absorb those and some are extremely toxic BUT that’s not the form of mercury used in any sort of lightbulb.
Putting the broken bits in a glass jar or plastic bag has as much to do with avoiding cuts from the broken bits as from anything toxic.
If it’s in the bin already just leave it and let it go with the next garbage pickup. Digging around won’t improve matters. The only exception I’d make is if your county has regular “household hazardous waste” collection days, in which case if you want to be a good citizen take the bits there.
Elemental mercury will vaporize extremely readily at room temperature and pressure. I don’t have the numbers to back me up, but I’d feel safe saying that any mercury in the bulb would have vaporized within minutes. That’s not a good thing, incidentally, but as has been made clear by now, it’s nothing to lose sleep over.
Um, no. It’s elemental mercury. Low pressure mercury vapor is necessary to the luminous efficiency of fluorescent tubes because it emits medium-wave UV, needed to cause the phosphor coating to fluoresce. Before sealing and evacuating, a small drop of liquid mercury is added to the tube, which mostly evaporates the first time the tube is fired.
Oh, please - a blob of liquid mercury doesn’t boil away to nothing instantly. Yes, there is vapor present, but as noted elemental mercury is not the most hazardous variety and the amount of such vapor would be very small. I wouldn’t encourage deliberately breaking and sniffing mercury-containing bulbs, but the amount of vapor from just one bulb - and that’s what we’re talking about here - is not enough to cause human illness.
It’s like worrying that merely touching a lead fishing weight will cause lead poisoning. It won’t. Sure, a teeny weeny bit of lead probably enters your system by doing that, but it’s not enough to make you ill and the amount is so small your body’s own systems can eventually excrete it. Ditto for elemental mercury. No point going out of your way to expose yourself, but no reason to be afraid of it, either.
I called the company that made the light fixture, Canarm. (the no-name bulb was packaged with the fixture) They are in Canada. The guy on the other end couldn’t tell me what form the mercury was in, nor what to do after the fact, because their company doesn’t make the bulb. The EPA and other sites I’ve read seem to indicate the mercury is contained in some kind of powder coating on the inside of the tube. The lighting person in Canada suggested I call Sylvania and ask them what is in their bulbs. I pointed out that knowing what’s in Sylvania’s bulbs isn’t going to help me figure out what’s in his company’s no-name brand made in China. (Yes, he told me the bulb was made in China.) He finally offered to call their guys in China and find out. I’m still waiting for the answer.
Anyway, just for fun, I called Sylvania and told them my situation, leaving out the fact that no Sylvania bulb was involved. They told me that Sylvania’s flourescent bulbs contain mercury vapor, in a very small amount (5mg I think?) and if it breaks, the vapor immediately dissipates into the air. Moral of the story? Buy Sylvania bulbs in the future and don’t inhale if one breaks in front of you.
I forgot to mention, the bulb that broke was never lit - I don’t know if that means the mercury never vaporized, and is a solid after all. I’m not going to fret about the garbage can, especially if the mercury was a vapor.
