Question about mercury poisoning

February 5, 2009 10:21 AM

The other day I accidentally stepped on a package of CFL lightbulbs, buried under a pile of clothing. When I looked at the package I saw that one of the light bulbs was broken, and noticed a small amount of powder escape while I was trying to dispose of it. Later I scoured the room but I couldn't see the powder anymore or find it on any of my clothing. I read online that if you get mercury on your clothing you're supposed to throw it out...but there was so much clothing on the floor that it would be a huge loss for me to throw all of it out, and I'm not sure where, or what amount, of mercury might have gotten on it.

Do I have to throw out all the clothing it may have fallen on?

(I aired out the room, and put the package in a double garbage bag outside)

posted by unicazurn to health & fitness (18 comments total)

The British Health Protection Agency and the US Environment Protection Agency together say that to treat the room you just need to air it out and safely dispose of any fragments of glass or powder.

The EPA says that fabrics that have come in direct contact with the powder should be discarded (so.. whatever was right at the bottom of the heap?). However, the British site just suggests using sticky tape to remove any traces of powder then washing the fabric as normal. Clothes that have just been exposed to the vapour can be washed and will be fine.

I'd consider getting rid of the clothes at the very bottom of the heap, that definitely came in contact with powder from inside the bulb. In a well ventilated space, check the others over for signs of contamination before washing them.

I'm not a doctor and I don't have any specialist knowledge about handling mercury spills.
posted by metaBugs at 10:54 AM on February 5 [1 favorite]

I know mercury is not healthy for you, but I have personally held it in my hands on multiple occasions and I don't have a third arm or anything. Sure you don't want to ingest it or have it against your skin for a prolonged period of time I guess, but I would think that just washing the clothes would make them wearable again.
IANAD.
posted by AltReality at 10:56 AM on February 5

I broke a CFL bulb a year or so ago when I was taking it out of a lamp and managed to get shards of glass stuck in my hand, I haven't yet started to mutate so you should be in the clear for at least a year.
posted by foodgeek at 11:03 AM on February 5

Actually, you can eat mercury. You can touch it. You just don't want to *breathe* it. Or eat critters that have it in their tissue - at that point, the mercury has been bound up in organic compounds that can fuck you up.

So yeah, air that shit out for a couple days. Outside, if you can.
posted by notsnot at 11:05 AM on February 5

seriously, some bad info here. despite what people here are saying, mercury is readily absorbed into your body when you touch it. it won't instantly kill you, but you shouldn't be playing with it.
posted by gnutron at 11:11 AM on February 5 [1 favorite]

Actually, you can eat mercury. You can touch it.

Do not eat, drink, or touch mercury. Seriously. WTF?
posted by The World Famous at 11:15 AM on February 5 [3 favorites]

I know mercury is not healthy for you, but I have personally held it in my hands on multiple occasions and I don't have a third arm or anything.

This is the absolute worst (best?) example of why anecdotal evidence is anything but.
posted by odinsdream at 11:24 AM on February 5

I read online that if you get mercury on your clothing you're supposed to throw it out

There's 4-5 milligrams of mercury in a CFL. That's nothing to be worried about. Just wash your stuff.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:27 AM on February 5

Sorry, I meant to flesh that out more - in terms of relative harmfulness, touching and eating are wayyy below breathing.
posted by notsnot at 11:38 AM on February 5

You shouldn't touch or inhale mercury, but my friend's dad had a jar of it and she used to pour it into her hands as a kid, poke it, play with it, and dropped half the jar into the shag rug over her childhood then lay on the rug every night to watch TV. She's totally healthy 20+ years later. I used to be deathly afraid of breaking a CFL, but each bulb apparently contains a pinpoint-sized dot of mercury, and my friend says she knows she played with a good half-litre of the stuff as a kid. Just a data point; I am not a scientist. I think I'd probably be inclined to toss anything that touched the powder directly, and then hang to air outdoors, then laundromat (not in my house), the rest.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 11:41 AM on February 5

Yeah, I remember breaking thermometers and playing with the mercury as a kid, and lo these many decades later, I seem to be ok.

I would wash everything, and I would vacuum with a HEPA filter vac, and throw the filter away afters.
posted by dejah420 at 12:12 PM on February 5

So, someone might have covered this, but the white powder isn't the mercury, it's the phosphor. The mercury is a vapor, which you can't see.

Just wash your stuff.

I would wash everything,

vacuum with a HEPA filter vac

Don't do these things. I know it's not much mercury, but the conventional mercury cleanup wisdom is that you don't wash clothes contaminated with mercury and you don't vacuum. You don't want to spread it around in the washer that you use to wash all of your other clothes, do you? Similarly, you don't want to contaminate your vacuum, and recall that the mercury is a gas; how do you think vacuuming a gas--even through a HEPA filter--is going to go?
Just close the room off and let the vapor dissipate, to the outdoors if possible, and do the same with the clothes, if you don't chuck them.
posted by pullayup at 12:27 PM on February 5

So, I'm going to retract my response, after a little more reading:

1) I'm wrong about the washing. Wash all of the stuff that didn't come into direct contact with the bulb materials.

2) I'm also wrong about the vacuuming: just throw the bag away.

3) Finally, I'm wrong about the powder; it is the phosphor (that is, the white powder is not itself mercury), but the mercury in the bulb is primarily associated with the glass and the phosphor, not in the vapor phase. So, throw out stuff that came in direct contact with bulb materials, and wash the rest, after airing.

Source (contains lots of other interesting stuff too!).
posted by pullayup at 12:41 PM on February 5

There should be a universal unit for measuring danger. Something more useful for non-lethal doses than "LD50".

In my opinion, the broken glass is a greater threat to your health than the dot of mercury. I would shake out the glass and hang them outside for a day.
posted by cockeyed at 3:09 PM on February 5 [2 favorites]

and recall that the mercury is a gas

Arrrgh! Mercury is a metal! That is liquid at room temperature/pressure!

The instant the vacuum inside the bulb broke, it turned into back into liquid.
posted by gjc at 4:05 PM on February 5 [1 favorite]

I know mercury is not healthy for you, but I have personally held it in my hands on multiple occasions and I don't have a third arm or anything.

This is the absolute worst (best?) example of why anecdotal evidence is anything but.

If you read here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_mercury

Elemental mercury (the silver liquid stuff) is actually not that toxic. As a poster above claimed (correctly), you could drink a lot of the stuff and still live.

It's the organic stuff, like Dimethylmercury (which killed Karen Wetterhahn), which is the deadly stuff.
posted by derbs at 4:57 PM on February 5

Why the hysteria about heavy metals? I mean, yeah, they're bad for you but so is a lot of other stuff people are absolutely cavalier about.

Yes, mercury is a liquid at room temp. So is water. And today the humidity was 53%. (Hint: Google "Vapor Pressure")

I wouldn't put any faith in that energystar sheet. For example, just wiping a disposable wet wipe over a mercury spill is pointless since it's not going to dissolve in eau d'wet wipe or soak into a dry wipe, or anything else. Except maybe gold.

My advice:
Remove any jewelry you might be wearing.

Take anything made of cloth outside and give it a good hard shake. Then wash it as per normal.

Sweep the floor with a broom and a dust pan. Be gentle. Don't stir things up. Then wipe the area with a moist paper towel. During this phase you're not really trying to pick anything up, you're trying to just gather anything that's there into a small pile. Wipe that small pile into the dust pan. Dump the dust pan into a plastic bag, seal it, and take it out to the trash can right now.

Airing out the room might help, but depending on how cold it is there and how you heat your house that might put more mercury into the environment from the coal your power plant uses.

OK, now you can put your jewelry back on.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:21 PM on February 5

you could drink a lot of the stuff and still live.

There are, of course, bad things that happen to people short of dying. Don't drink mercury.
posted by The World Famous at 7:33 PM on February 5 [2 favorites]