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.
