Compact Flourescent Lightbulbs and Mercury

There is a great deal that can be done within homes and businesses to reduce energy use, and one of the easiest is to replace your old incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient compact flourescent lightbulbs (CFL). These produce equivalent light for about one fifth of the electricity.

They do however  contain a small amount of mercury, about 5mg, which is toxic if it escapes from the bulb. This has implications for how to clean up a CFL if it breaks, and that they should be properly recycled at the end of their life rather than sent to landfill. This goes for traditional straight flourescent lights as well unless they are special mercury free tubes.

The american EPA has produced a fact sheet on this issue which can be accessed here:

http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cfl.pdf

And the Energy Star site has a more detailed set of instructions for cleaning up a broken bulb:

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf