I will not talk about those old fashioned long “Neon” tubes, b/c I don’t know for sure whether they contain anything hazardous. My guess is they are not hazardous.
The CF (compact fluorescent, cold fluorescent) light tubes, which are used to replace incandescent bulbs, contain 30-50 mg mercury (Hg) each. Hg is BAD BAD BAD. Also, laptop computers mostly contain a CF backlight with Hg also called CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent light) , but the newer and more expensive laptops have instead a “LED backlight” display which is more pleasant on the eyes and does not contain toxic Hg. If you have a CF bulb to dispose, first of all put it into a ziplock bag and that ziplock bag into a second ziplock bag, so that you will not spill Hg in case that the bulb breakes. Both such bulbs and laptop computers with CCFL should be disposed of as hazardous waste.
I first learned about the Hg problem with CF bulbs on the
www.wnd.com website (WorldNetDaily), I didn’t even know that they contained Hg! Wnd has several detailed articles about, go to their website and search the archives. I am a chemist and pharmacist, I found the information given there scientifically accurate.
If you break such a bulb over some hard surface such as tiles, there’s an EPA recommended procedure to clean it up, but I don’t know where to find it online. Maybe EPA website? However I can tell this, based on the fact that old thermometers with Hg have always been a problem in chemical laboratories (and households): go and get fine powdered sulphur, which is a yellow substance used to treat wine (I guess wineries sell it, maybe pharmacies have it too). Sprinkle sulphur powder over the surface abundantly; using rubber gloves and a small mop, clean it up some 15-30 minutes later. Hg loves to react with the yellow sulphur and forms a black product of mercury sulphide (HgS) which is no longer hazardous. This method can also be used to clean up larger amounts (grams instead of milligrams) of Hg spilled from thermometers or old-fashioned electric switches found in the temperature control boxes of air conditioners. If you have larger amounts of Hg, visible liquid drops of it, you have to sprinkle it abundantly with sulphur and keep mixing the yellow sulphur powder with the silver-colored drops of mercury until the silver drops disappear and are transformed into black, amorphous-looking mercury sulphide (HgS) powder. I would clean up the sulphur powder which contains some HgS product into two layers of ziplock bags and dispose of as hazardous waste - just in case that it still contains trace amounts of unreacted Hg.
If you break your CF bulb over a carpet, you are out of luck. According to the
wnd.com article, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) says that you will have to replace that part of the carpet. Although, I frankly don’t understand why don’t they recommend covering the area with a lot of finely powdered sulphur and cleaning it up later with a vacuum cleaner. If you try to clean it up simply with a vacuum cleaner (without using sulphur powder), it will not work because Hg is an extremely dense, heavy liquid that also generates vapors (it is partially vaporized). You will clean up SOME OF IT with the vacuum cleaner, meaning that the whole vacuum cleaner gets contaminated and should be disposed of. Still, most of the Hg will not be picked up, the small heavy droplets will stay on the carpet. Some of the Hg vapors will get air-borne by the vacuum cleaner’s air stream, and the levels of air-borne Hg in the area above the carpet will reach up to 500 times the maximum levels permitted by EPA. Yes, it’s a nightmare. Maybe that’s why EPA simply says to cut out and replace that piece of the carpet. However, the first thing I would do, even before reaching for the utility knife to cut the carpet, is this: I would abundantly sprinkle the carpet with sulphur powder. That will do a good job reacting with any Hg it comes into contact with, and minimize the amount of Hg that gets vaporized above the carpet. After cutting out the carpet, I would sprinkle the hard surface beneath it with powdered sulphur and clean it up 15-30 min later - it cannot hurt and would remove any residual spilled Hg.
Why is Hg so bad? It attacks the neurons (brain, nerves), and it is much more toxic to small children. It’s effects are somewhat similar to lead (Pb) which was banned from gasoline. Imagine your toddler or pets playing in the area where Hg was spilled on the carpet - you really want to avoid that. Since toddlers crawl on the carpet and breath in the air immediately above the carpet, they would be exposed to Hg vapors at levels hundreds of times larger than the maximum level permitted by EPA. I’m not a doctor and don’t know exactly how a Hg intoxication manifests itself, but the neurotoxic effect is irreversible, cumulative, and it can cause mental dementia, I know this. There was an infamous Hg intoxication case in Japan, physically deformed and demented children were born. Btw, I guess pregnant women should avoid Hg.
The CF bulbs look like an unsolved issue. They save energy, but are toxic. What if you rent your apartment, and if the previous tenant broke a CF bulb on the carpet? You will never know it. I sincerely hope one bulb is not enough to cause lasting damage to a toddler, but I don’t really know. Also, the effect is cumulative meaning that the longer the exposure, the more broken bulbs, the worse the health damage becomes.
There was a funny bumper sticker available from
wnd.com, it showed an incandescent bulb and a CF bulb and it said, “I’m pro-choice on lightbulbs.” Initially I thought that this was only a humorous pro-life message. I was wrong. It can be taken that way, but it’s also about the incandescent bulbs - because Congress wants to ban the incandescent bulbs in 2010, forcing all of us to transition to the energy-efficient (and toxic) CF bulbs. Has Al Gore had a hand in this??
) and the other is in a closet.