Broken CFL

Reminds me of a time where a lab device tipped over and spilled mercury all over the place. It was some kind of storage device as I can recall. I gladly left the room, while some poor fool had to wipe it up.

greg

Where I have a CFL that gets "bump" exposure (workshop, trouble light) the CFL is bagged in a freezer grade plastic bag with a tight tape wrap around the base. Not perfect, but better than a totally exposed bulb.

John

Where I have a CFL that gets "bump" exposure (workshop, trouble light) the CFL is bagged in a freezer grade plastic bag with a tight tape wrap around the base. Not perfect, but better than a totally exposed bulb.

John

I am amazed that the mercury in CFLs is getting so much attention. There has been mercury in all fluorescent lamps since their inception. If you break a four foot tube there is a lot more mercury there than in a CFL.

David

snipped-for-privacy@jecarter.us wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

you don't wipe a spill like that,you vacuum with a trap bottle.

When I was in USAF PME (precision measurement equipment)school in Denver,during the exam for the Pressure,Temperature and Dimensional block,an instructor had set a pressure regulator FAR too high,and even though the student being tested configured everything right,as soon as a valve was cracked open,the high pressure caused a mercury barometer to spew mercury like a fountain,mercury all over the test room. they had to evacuate,shut down the room,and clean up before testing could resume. at least a pint of mercury got spilled,IIRC. Cleanup took quite a while.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

Ah for simpler times... Back in High School chemstry class one of the students dropped a 1/2 quart jar of Mercury on the floor.

"That shit's expensive" so we were all on our hands and knees chasing it around with 3x5 cards scooping it back up and dribbling it into a new jar.

And tell me I'm not the only one that looked forward to "Replacement fluorescent lamp day" at the local market. My friends and I would run off with 50-60 8' lamps and go have an epic sword fight until they were all broken.

Jeff

I haven't seen a hot/warm CFL burst (yet), but I've had 3 of 'em start to strobe, and then the glass spiral tubes got very hot, and may have broken by themselves, but I was present each time, and shut them off.

I'm no specialist, but spilling cold mercury may not be the same as releasing hot mercury vapor.. although I'm fairly certain that avoiding either exposure is a good idea.

And as was mentioned, long tubes weren't ever scrutinized as much, and look how many decades they have been used in massive quantities. Also, I believe that mercury was present in early latex paints, intended to replace the lead paints as a safer solution.

-- Cheers, WB .............

Liquid mercury is not terribly hazardous, the problem is with vaporized mercury such as found in CFLs.

CFLs get used in places that long tubes aren't - trouble lights, etc - and they are rarely in a fixture that provides some type of cover, which is usually the case with a long tube fixure in living or office areas. Workshops and warehouses can be exceptions, depending on their age.

My concern is making the cleanup of tiny glass shards easier - don't want one of the grandkids to run barefoot through the garage and wind up with glass in her foot. The potential mercury containment is just a side benefit. On the other hand, a damaged but bagged CFL will probably be accepted at your local CFL recycler.

John

Ditto here, back in the lat 1940s or so it was quite common for kids to rub mercury on silver coins to give them a marvelous sheen which only lasted a few hours before darkening through whatever chemical reaction took place.

Jeff (Who spells his first name with one less "e" than Mr. Angus.)

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.8*10e12 furlongs per fortnight.
> 
> 
> "That shit's expensive" so we were all on our hands and knees
> chasing it around with 3x5 cards scooping it back up and
> dribbling it into a new jar.
> 
> And tell me I'm not the only one that looked forward to
> "Replacement fluorescent lamp day" at the local market.
> My friends and I would run off with 50-60 8' lamps and
> go have an epic sword fight until they were all broken.
> 
> Jeff

Rubbing mercury on coins was still a fairly regular pastime in the early

60s. too.. lots of kids/teens would do this, as small quantities of mercury were quite prevelent in many home workshops then.

-- Cheers, WB .............

You mean like this?

The bottle is about 40% full. I used the missing mercury for various illegal and entertaining purposes. Re-silvering ancient sextant mirrors was one of my sidelines. I've also supplied some mercury to several doctors for refilling their mercury sphygmomanometer. The typical CFL bulb has about 3mg of Hg. When full, the bottle had a net weight of about 2kg of Hg.

As usual, much of what we know about mercury is alarmist and wrong:

"Therefore, if all 272 million CFLs3 sold in 2009 were sent to a landfill (versus recycled, as a worst case) ? they would add 0.12 metric tons, or 0.12 percent, to U.S. mercury emissions caused by humans."

`

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com               jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com               AE6KS

On 1/27/2011 8:50 PM Jeff Liebermann spake thus:

That's interesting. Of course, it tells us *nothing* about how alarmist and wrong what we "know" about mercury is; all it tells us is that the amount of mercury in CFLs is much smaller than the total amount of mercury let loose by human beans. Says nothing about mercury's toxicity.

(I guess I have an average mercury "body burden" since I have amalgam fillings. But I still can't for the life of me figure out just how it's OK to walk around with mercury in my TEETH just because it's been mixed with other metals. It's not even an *alloy*, for chrissakes. How does that work?)

--
Comment on quaint Usenet customs, from Usenet:

   To me, the *plonk...* reminds me of the old man at the public hearing
   who stands to make his point, then removes his hearing aid as a sign
   that he is not going to hear any rebuttals.

Yep.. Lots of alarmist stuff filling the airwaves/media these days, in those nasty microwaves and dangerous poison-laced paper products used for printed materials.

I fill compelled to add a (personal view, based in reality) reminder/wakeup that many of the materials considered to be extremely hazardous or potentially deadly, began as materials that were definitely harmful to work around for *years/decades* without proper personal protection.

Dust control, fume extraction and other precautions were simply often neglect of employers to properly protect workers from years of long term exposure.

-- Cheers, WB .............

Mercury /is/ a poison, and we don't want people coming into contact with it. However...

A simple mental calculation shows that 1,000,000 mercury button cells (of the type that once powered cameras) would take up a volume of about 1 cubic meter. Spread over 10,000 landfills, that's nothing.

does

I don't know exactly what is in an amalgam. But it's well know that you have to grind your teeth vigorously to release any mercury. If you're worried, have your dentist replace the fillings with glass/plastic "concrete".

Metallic mercury is less toxic than organic mercury compounds. This article (correctly) explains that the mercury in CFLs is not much of problem -- then tells people to air out the room if they break a bulb!

This is a classic example of people worrying about things that are of relatively little importance, while ignoring significant problems.

The alarmist part is in the safe handling of broken CFL lamps and the relative levels of mercury in the environment produced by breaking CFL lamps verus electric power generation.

Run a urine Porphyrin Profile test for mercury and see if you're polluted or contaminated. It tests for organic methyl mercury poisoning. There's also a stool test and a hair test. About $100. Be sure to test for other heavy metals.

If your fillings were disappearing, you might be worried. I had some dentistry done about 4 months ago. My wallet hurt more than my mouth. The amalgum fillings were still all there, but the teeth rotted out under them. So, we removed the amalgum fillings and replaced them with UV cured cement. Cool stuff, looks good, and non-toxic, but no improvement in overall health so far.

The danger is when the mercury binds with H2S gas produced in the stomach and produces methyl mercury CH3-Hg-CH3 which is absorbed that by various organs and produces assorted medical problems. There are other mechanisms, such as eating methyl mercury in contaminated fish.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Now that you mention it, most of the lead in the environment came from the lead used in newsprint and magazine ink. It was finally banned by the EPA in 1985. In the form of printed ink, it's easily leached by acidic water and ends up in the water supplies.

Incidentally, the mercury bottle is made from extremely heavy glass. My guess is about 1/4" thick. I could probably drop the bottle and it wouldn't break. However, the thin plastic cap is a substitute. The heavy duty original broke long ago and was replaced by an inferior substitute.

I used to make PCB boards at a small electronics manufactory in the

1970's. Washing our hands with trichloroethylene was common. Of the 3 people that worked this way, two have experienced some form of liver damage. I was the lucky one. I guess we learn from experience.

Yep. We learn from our mistakes (if we survive). The problem is with the converse. If we have a history of successful and survivable exposure and use of some product or chemical, there often emerges a person or group advocating bans and regulations for dubious reasons. Profitable litigation and settlements seems to be the current fashion. Despite years of statistically significant data on exposure, one marginal incident is sufficient to cast suspicion and possibly precipitate a ban.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

"Wild_Bill" wrote in news:YkR%o.616920$ snipped-for-privacy@en-nntp-12.dc.easynews.com:

Hot implies ALL the mercury present is going to be in the form of vapor. Since, at room temperature, mercury has a significant vapor pressure, it is unlikely that any will condense, you will be receive maximum exposure rapidly.

The hazard is acute mercury poisoning.

Hold your breath, evacuate the room(s or area). With good ventilation, airing out the room would probably be all that is necessary and the proper response.

If you inhaled any of the vapor, get to an emergency room so that they can test for and treat you for acute mercury poisoning.

When I was a college student studying chemistry, one of my fellow students was exposed to a large dose of mercury vapor when an experiment left over a Bunsen burner generated mercury vapor in the lab he was working along in. (Yeah, he should not have been alone and the people heating the mercuric chloride solution should have turned off their burner when they left the lab).

He was found crawling out of the lab, taken to the hospital and treated by IV injection of chelating agents that removed the mercury from his system. He survived.

The treatment was extremely painful. He would have died without it.

'Cool' mercury presents a different hazard: accumulation of mercury in your system due to long term exposure.

A few drops spilled in the corner of the room where you work will evaporate slowly and be accumulated in your system, causing mercury poisoning.

Removal of ALL spilled mercury is NECESSARY and requires careful clean up because it likes to break up into extremely small droplets and they can splash long distances.

bz wrote: cut

Hm... According to your theory I should have been dead already 5 times over. I have to disappoint you, still alive(67) and going strong.