Bye Bye Bulb

Thank you Thomas Edison. For over 129 years your invention has kept us out of the dark and will continue to do so for about another four years. Thanks to the energy bill that congress passed the incandescent light bulb will be phased out in the United States by 2012. Please observe a moment of darkness.

Our replacement options at the moment, while much more energy efficient, are limited. Looks like we'll all be using those curly-topped Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) for a while. Of course, who knows what will be available by 2012. We may not even have electricity any more by then. We may be back in the stone age, or at least medieval times.

In any case, since I'm a safety guy, I would be remiss if I didn't use this opportunity to pass along some safety info. As you may or may not know those CFL's contain Mercury which is toxic (in spite of the fact that we all at one time or another played with it as a kid). Breaking one of those CFL's is not really a good thing and since we all know we've broken a light bulb ot two, here are some guidelines for cleaning up one of these Mercury laden babies without having to resort to calling an environmental cleanup contractor. These come to you from the State of Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The most important thing to remember is to never use a vacuum . A standard vacuum will spread mercury containing dust throughout the area as well as potentially contaminating the vacuum. What you should do is:

Keep people and pets away from the breakage area so that the mercury in the powder inside the bulb is not accidentally tracked into other areas.

Ventilate the area by opening windows.

Wear appropriate personal protective equipment, such as rubber gloves, safety glasses, old clothing or coveralls, and a dust mask (if you have one) to keep bulb dust and glass from being inhaled.

Carefully remove the larger pieces and place them in a secure closed container, preferably a glass container with a metal screw top and gasket seal like a canning jar.

Next, begin collecting the smaller pieces and dust. You can use a disposable broom and dustpan or two stiff pieces of paper to scoop up pieces.

Put all material into the glass container. Pat the area with the sticky side of duct, packing or masking tape. Wipe the area with a damp cloth or paper towels to pick up fine particles.
Put all waste and materials used to clean up the bulb in the glass container and label it “Universal Waste - broken lamp”.

Take the container for recycling as universal waste. To determine where your town has made arrangements for recycling of this type of waste, call your town office.

So there you have it. We save energy but we have to put down a drop cloth and don protective gear to change a light bulb. I guess everybody has to do their part.