How Long Has The Cfl Been Around
Ok, I broke one of these a while ago. I have read every study I can find on it because my kids were in the room when it broke. We called poison control who were completely ignorant on the topic (so I found out later by reading studies). I am not trying to scare you with the following information, I am just trying to give you good information so you can lower your long term exposure and know what you should do now. You will also notice my hatred for these bulbs when I'm trying to just tell you facts, but I can't help it.
To put this into perspective for you there is between 1 and about 20 mg of mercury in a bulb (5 mg is an average), it takes about 50 ug per liter of blood to poison you, an adult has about 5 liters of blood/a child 1 liter. There are 1000 ug in a mg (so a bulb has 1000-20000 ug in it). You do not have to worry about short term skin contact during cleanup as skin has a low absorption rate (unless you have cuts or bruises), you also do not have to worry about ingestion as only 1/1000 of elemental mercury will be absorbed through your digestive system. You DO have to worry about inhalation, 80% of inhaled mercury will be absorbed into your bloodstream. Ignorant people will tell you how a thermometer has 500 to 1000 mg of mercury and they've been around forever so the mercury from a cfl is nothing, they are wrong. First of all thermometers have been phased out as they were too toxic, secondly mercury evapourates based on surface area. On average if a thermometer broke (it would be a little droplet of mercury) it would only evapourate around 50 ug of mercury PER HOUR. Because the evapouration rate of mercury is 50 ug per centimeter squared at room temperature. A cfl sprays a mist of microscopic mercury droplets and with a high surface area they evapourate quickly. For some reason the government likes to compare the two so keep what I'm saying in mind. Some of this mist evaporates quickly and during the first 10-15 minutes after the breakage the levels in the air are pretty high (near or above workplace toxic exposure limits i.e. OSHA's is 100 ug/m3 to never be surpassed). Much of the vapor condenses onto surfaces in the area, especially directly below the breakage. It will continue to vapourize mercury for months if spilled on a porous surface. The new EPA instructions for cleanup conveniently exclude this http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl-detailed-instructions. This is just a guess but they may have changed it because the old directions horrified people. The old instructions told you to double bag and throw away clothing, bedding, etc that came in direct contact with the bulb. Which is still true regardless of whether they state it now or not.
In 1835, the first constant electric light was demonstrated, and for the next 40 years, scientists around the world worked on the incandescent lamp, tinkering with the filament (the part of the bulb that produces light when heated by an electrical current) and the bulb’s atmosphere (whether air is vacuumed out of the bulb or it is filled with an inert gas to prevent the filament from oxidizing and burning out). “You definitely cannot go against what the CFL has done because they’ve been around for a long, long time,” Frerotte said. “They don’t call it American football. Obviously, the rules are different, but it is still football, there is still hitting, tackling, forward pass — all the things that American football does.”. Canadian Football League (CFL) Although football under formalized rules has been played in Canada since the 1860s, the Canadian Football League (CFL) began its formal existence in January 1958.
The place I am getting these numbers from is a study done in the state of Maine in 2008 where they actually broke the bulbs and measured the mercury levels, unbelievable that this hasn't been done before this. http://www.maine.gov/dep/homeowner/cflreport.html
This study is showing contamination on porous surfaces for months and not at low insignificant levels.
Then they announce this CFL 2.0. How about lets get people in North America and more so in Canada to buy into the product before we worry about the rest of the world. Be creative in improving the game. This league has been around for a very long time and nothing is perfect from day one. We've long identified bulbs by their wattage. Candelabra and globe CFLs have been around for years, and LED models are coming on line now, too. For instance, a 13-watt CFL is equivalent to.
Anyway, I would not be overly worried about not pregnant adults around a mercury bulb breakage unless it is in a small unventilated area for a long period of time. What I would worry about is kids in the house. Your bed is contaminated, I cannot sugar coat this, you need to either dispose of your mattress or at the very lease put it in a well ventilated area (outside) for a few weeks or months. Mercury will evapourate a lot faster in the sun outside. Wipe down all non pourous surfaces in the area and ventilate your home very well!!. Take all porous items tin the immediate area to a well ventilated area for a few weeks at least. You didn't vacuum which is good, but if you cleaned up right away (like normal people do when something breaks) you were exposed to some mercury vapour. It does not go away in the 5-10 minutes the EPA says it does (read aforementioned Maine study). When the room is closed back up the mercury levels rebound until it has all evaporated. So stay ventilated for a while. I wouldn't let kids in the room for a while. If you have the broken bulb in your house or garage right now get it outside because the vapour goes right through bags or plastic containers of any kind. The only thing that stops mercury vapour is a glass jar. Do not take the broken bulb in your car to recycle it, just put it in the trash on garbage day or tell the ones who promote these bulbs as safe to come and get it and put in in their car. As for your washing machine, you may have contaminated it, but again its not a massive amount of mercury, I'm not sure how long the contamination would last in a washing machine from a cfl. I know a mercury thermometer could warrant a new washing machine and there is anywhere from 1/100 th to 1/20th of the mercury in a cfl. There are no studies on this. Some states EPA departments have testing equipment however realize that most of the equipment only reads down to 1 ug/m3 unless its a lumex, and the limit for long term exposure from the EPA is .3 ug, but that would tell you if your washing machine was heavily contaminated or not.
It will eventually all evaporate!! This may take a bit of time but your home will eventually be down to background levels of mercury. You obviously don't have to listen to a thing I'm telling you, but at the very least read the Maine cfl study and make up your own mind.
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Oh, and some people will tell you its like eating a can of tuna, but they're wrong because one is methyl mercury which distributes itself differently in your body. Heres an article for you that the enviros like to quote. http://1000bulbs.com/pages/mercury.html . They seem to conveniently omit mention of childrens exposure to a cfl breakage and don't talk about chronic exposure from the contamination from a cfl breakage.