I read the first news story about the guy who dropped a CFL. He panicked and called someone in ‘gummint’, who naturally sent a HazMat team over, and they swept it up – for about $1000.
If there are any professional chemists or metallurgists here, can you accept or refute this: liquid mercury is no more dangerous than any other heavy metal. I’ve had a small jar of it for many decades. At school, the chem lab had a large jar of it. It was an eerie feeling to stick your hand in it and feel the pressure. (I’ve heard that you can do the same thing with molten lead. I’ll let the teacher go first.)
It boils at 674 degF, and has an incredibly high vapor pressure, so unless you’re determined – or work with it daily, you’re not going to breathe any of it. It is not a carcinogen.
If it really were such a toxic thing, most of the country should be showing the effects – nearly everyone who had a cavity filled up until recently has mercury in their teeth (as I do).
You may remember Minimata. That was the result of a nearby chemical company dumping 27 tons of mercury compounds into the bay, over a period of 36 years (3/4 ton/year). As a result, about 3000 people from the village came down with a severe neurological disease.
But it was not Hg. Some compunds are toxic. In fluorescent bulbs, the fluorescence is a result of mercury vapor and argon gas – but when the lamp is off, it’s almost certainly cooler than 674 degF, so it’s a liquid. The amount is typically about 5 mg – about the size of a ballpoint pen tip.
I’ll use CFLs because they can lower my electric bill (if I can work out the lifetime over daily on/off cycles). But mercury is not part of the equation.
Liquid mercury is just another element. Don’t drink it. Don’t eat sodium or chlorine either – unless they’re part of a molecule of NaCl.
We should let our leaders learn a little science before they go off on wild tangents and start running around like decapitated chickens.
