I heard that the energy efficient, spiral light bulbs have murcury in them?

Question

If they have mercury in them, doesn't that make them hazardous? If dropped, then you need to evacuate for a clean-up.

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.

Mercury is not the only hazard of broken CFL bulbs.  The white stuff on the inside of the glass is a phosphor coating that also poses a health hazard if the bulb is broken.  The physical hazard of the sharp bits of glass compounds the hazards of the phosphor coating by increasing the chance that the phosphor coating will enter your body if you get cut by the glass while cleaning it up.

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.

Another option is to use LED-based lighting.  While it is still quite expensive, it is very energy efficient and doesn't pose the breakage hazards of glass bulbs.

Answer 2

well they do have Mercury but it is in vapor form and there is not allot of it so you don't have to evacuate just throw it away and wash your hands just in case.

Answer 3

The link below provides guidelines on how to dispose of a broken CFL. We changed all of our regular light bulbs to CFL's over a period of about 6 months (they do cost a more).

If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

Answer 4

I got my information from Google.com, but I imagine   Yahoo.com will give you about the same info.  Type in "compact fluorescent light bulbs ". You should get about half a dozen replies.

To answer your question briefly, Yes, they do, but then so do all fluorescent bulbs