Where is the mercury in a CFL Light bulb?

Question

Where is the mercury in a CFL Light bulb?

Answer 1

The mercury is in powder form inside the glass tube.  When heated, the mercury turns into a vapor.

While one bulb contains a small amount of this toxic heavy metal, one home will have enough to contaminate hundreds of acres of land, and millions of homes in the US and the world will dump more mercury into our waterways than coal ever did.

It’s possible that no one again will ever be able to eat a fish caught in the wild

Answer 2

The mercury is in vapor form inside of the bulb.  As the bulb ages, the mercury vapor becomes bound to the inside of the glass in the light bulb.  The mercury contained within the average CFL bulb is 4mg, but some manufacturers are as low as 1.5 - 2.5mg.

The United States is responsible for 104 metric tons of mercury emissions per year.   Most of which come from coal power plants.  The EPA estimates that only 11 percent of mercury contained in CFLs escapes when they are shattered.  If you were to shatter all of the CFL light bulbs created in a year (290 million of them) it would release .13 metric tons of mercury into the air.

Coal is clearly the bigger problem.

This is of course assuming you don't recycle the CFL, which is really easy to do.  Just take it down to the local home depot and hand it to a cashier.

Answer 3

CFLs only contain about 4 milligrams of mercury. That is hardly percivable by the human eye. The mercury is in a vapor form.