20 May
2017
20 May
'17
4:05 a.m.
On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 02:01:12AM +0000, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
[...]
And if you break one you have to call HAZMAT. You did
realize that, didn't
you? They contain mercury and any breakage requires professional remediation
by law!!
That's an "alternative fact". The EPA gives some clean-up guidelines for
CFLs:
https://www.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl
The TL;DR is that you allow the (trivial amount of) mercury vapour to escape to
the atmosphere, clean up the broken glass, and recycle the electronics as
necessary. So just the same as any other domestic breakage, then.
It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic that the USA worries about less than
5mg of mercury in a CFL bulb, yet burns vast quantities of mercury-laced coal
to power them.
Also, none of this applies to LED lighting, which doesn't contain glass and can
be dropped into the e-waste stream as-is when it fails.