Lighting professionals are presumably aware that used compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are supposed to be recycled, and not just sent to landfills, because of the small amount of toxic mercury they contain. But what should one tell people if they break a lamp? And just how dangerous is the mercury inside?

You may have heard that clean???up costs are exorbitant, and that the mercury vapor concentration from a broken lamp can exceed safe levels. However, the amount of mercury that you are exposed to after breaking a lamp is less than what you would be exposed to when eating a can of tuna. In this paper, we review the concerns, describe why we believe that the fish comparison is valid, and show that the real risk is negligible.