Compact Fluorescents (CFL) Mercury in the house?

Question

I'm not particularly concerned with the overall environmental impact of Compact Fluorescents. I'm concerned with what happens in my house when my kid knocks over a lamp with his football. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand he shouldn't be throwing a football in the house; it's just an example. I also have cats and dogs. The point is, if someone breaks one of these in the home, it puts a nice invisible toxic cloud in the air. What's the best way to clean this up without hurting anyone, and how much exposure is dangerous? Advice welcome and appreciated.

Answer 1

You have a valid concern. Fluorescent lamps typically contain approximately 5-6 mg of mercury (Hg). When the glass envelope is broken, the Hg escapes. Ironically, when a fluorescent bulb is discarded at the end of its life, less Hg vapor escapes, even if the bulb breaks, as much of the Hg diffuses into the phosphor coating on the inside of the glass and the glass itself over the life of the bulb. However, if you prematurely break the bulb, you don't obtain the full benefit of that diffusion process. Some manufacturers are moving toward the use of amalgams of mercury with other metals (e.g., tin, lead, zinc, indium, etc.) to reduce exposure to Hg vapor upon bulb breakage. Nonetheless, even bulbs with less than 5-6 mg/bulb of elemental Hg, breakage can easily contaminate a large volume of air at levels that exceed OSHA's 0.1 mg/m^3 limit for elemental mercury. Moreover, inhalation is a particularly hazardous mode of introduction of Hg into the body.

Due to cheap packaging of CFLs, I had a brand new CFL fall and break on the floor of my kitchen, of all places. I went through a full personal hazmat response to clean it up. I immediately put on a HEPA respirator and nitrile gloves. I have a whole-house ventilation fan, so I turned it on and opened windows on the opposite side of the broken bulb's location to pull contaminated air away from the kitchen. I picked up the larger pieces of the broken lamp and sealed them in ziploc bags before removing them from the house and placing them in the trash. I used a HEPA-filtered vacuum cleaner to vacuum up the smaller pieces and the general vicinity. If one doesn't have a HEPA-filtered vacuum cleaner, a wet paper towel is a better choice than a poorly filtered vacuum cleaner to avoid further spread of Hg contamination. Of course, the cost of procuring a HEPA respirator, nitrile gloves, and a HEPA vacuum cleaner to be prepared for CFL breakage likely exceeds years of energy savings of CFLs over incandescent bulbs, so incandescents may be a less expensive option when all costs are taken into account. I still use a few CFLs in fixtures where breakage is extremely unlikely, but I still use incandescents in many fixtures.

Answer 2

I wonder if anyone makes a shield for them? When I worked in factories we had to put long plastic shields over the long (8 ft) fluorescent bulbs. It capped the ends so contained the bulb pretty good but I think it was mostly to keep the pieces from raining down if one broke.

Maybe you could google something along that line.

Good question though, especially after all the Hg warnings out there. Might be a good project for a budding entrepreneur. The marketing is pretty much all in place.
Life handed you a lemon now you can go make lemonaide, if nobody has beaten you to it.

Answer 3

I'm thinking that the risk of it breaking is so low that you don't need to worry. CFL bulbs are usually coiled and seem like they are made of thicker glass than incandescant bulbs, and to me it seems like it would take a lot of force to break them. And I'm talking about hitting it with a hammer, not the lamp falling. The lampshade frame should provide some protection to the bulb too.