Tree hugging gone mad

[Mary Fisher]

...which I make so I'll be in the money :-)

Mary

[The Natural Philosopher]

Don't bet on it. Far more carcinogens in those than someone else's cigarette..

Not to mention the fire risk...

[AA]

stepladder in my garage yesterday. I swept up what I could in a dust pan and tipped that in the wheelie bin. The vacuum was handy so I grabbed it as the best way to sweep up the fragments. I later vacuumed some of the house including my daughter's bedroom. I'm now in a total panic. What damage could I have done to me and my family? Why isn't there a warning on the box? (maybe there is something but not like "this product could damage your health").

[Andy Dingley]

So what? They're bulbs, bulbs should be labelled, these bulbs are inefficient and they rate as an F. It's simpler, easier and (most importantly) avoids loopholes if we blanket rate on this sort of product.

The only stupidity would be in how such a rating is interpreted. Of course your usage here makes the rating irrelevant, so you cheerfully ignore it. Everything works, everyone is happy.

[Andy Dingley]

The only problem with that is that it's not true. Where is this hypothetical barometer ban of which you speak? There's no such thing

-- the general rules on reducing mercury don't intend, and never did intend, to be so blunt in their application.

Nor, for that matter, has the EU banned church organs.

[Andy Dingley]

The good denizens of uk.d-i-y should of course sweep up mercury spills properly. Or are the OP's sugggesting that mercury is a _beneficial_ material that we ought to add to our breakfast cereals, because a good healthy dose of mercury in childhood was what made them the people they are today? (10/6 in this size).

Don't just vacuum up mercury. You won't get it, and if you do you'll contaminate the vacuum cleaner filters and disperse mercury vapour all over the house. Liquid metallic mercury isn't the problem here, it's just the vapour hazard, so this actually matters.

Instead, get some cheap yellow sulphur from the ironmongers or garden supplier and sprinkle that generously over the spill. Then clean up the mercury sulphide you've formed. It's more stable, it produces insignificant vapour and it's mechanically easier to sweep or vacuum up.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mary also has a jar of mercury sulphide, labelled cinnabar or vermillion. I know I have. When I use it as a pigment in lacquer, I'm much more concerned about the hazard of the urushiol than the mercury.

(although I'd still advise the calligraqphers not to lick their brushes!)

[zikkimalambo]

I don't know about the one he's speaking of, but the one that was recently mentioned in the quality newspapers, is referenced here....

Nor, for that matter, has the EU banned church organs.

Do these run on mercury??

[Owain]

But you'll have to pay to dispose of all the CFLs your customers bring you :-(

Owain

[Andy Dingley]

problem here. It seems that everything has reversed in the last couple of days. 8-(

No, but they're made of lead. A similar well-intentioned measure against lead solders in electrical equipment was initially worded to have unexpected effects on building new pipe organs.

[EricP]

Try this for size.

"The Consortium" supply most schools here with their equipment. A school made a routine order for supplies, including AA alkaline batteries.

The order arrived this morning but not the batteries. They arrived later in a separate order and billing. (At appropriate cost)

Opening the box produced a large WARNING sheet about the batteries. Before use, all members of staff using them were to be gathered together and the warnings formally drawn to their attention.

Amongst the usual chemical hazard warnings about appropriate disposal was the one about any leaking batteries requiring the donning of glasses and gloves and detailed procedure for containment and handling of the extreme hazard.

Future supplies of batteries are to be bought over the counter at Lidl.

[PJ]

Is mercury hydroargentum (liquid silver)? It may have been renamed but I cannot believe that your lab work preceded Mendeleev. ;-)

[Owain]

And will probably be half the price the "Consortium" charge.

Owain

[John Rumm]

Pa, I am sure Mary used to chastise him as a child.... "Stop playing with that spectrometer, and go tidy your room!!

[Andy Dingley]

I'm sure Mary doesn't hold with this new-fangled "chemistry" business and prefers the good old trade of alchemy. 8-)

[Bob Martin]

I originally read "lead solders" as "lead soldiers" - are they also endangered? ;-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

I have an old glass mercury relay, which contains probably around 25ml. It came out of the power supply of a PDP8. Generated quite amasing sparks when it was still connected up (rest of the PSU long since chucked out).

[Roger]

The message from [e-mail] (Andrew Gabriel) contains these words:

Back in the middle/late 60s I was working as a production engineer for the rectifier division of English Electric at Stafford. By then it was all semi-conductor stuff apart from a small amount of refurbishment that I had nothing to do with. Anyway post Swinestocks takeover some auditor decided to check the gallons of mercury that were supposedly in the division stores. They found I think about half a pint in just one stone jar. The storeman very nearly got the sack. Rumour had it that the missing mercury hadn't been stolen, just lost under the floor covering of the bay the mercury arc rectifiers had been built in and the deficiency was due to discrepancies in the amount booked back in. Much the same way as plutonium was said to have gone missing at Windscale/Sellafield. I understand much of Main Works has since been demolished and replaced by a supermarket. I wonder if the missing mercury was unearthed during the demolition. :-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

I still very clearly recall my first chemistry lesson when I started secondary school. The teacher was absent (I think, had just started and then found himself moving house on the first day of term). We all went into the chemistry lab and sat at the benches, with another teacher sitting in whilst we got on with some homework. We started pinging the little ball bearings on the bench up and down a bit like tiddlywinks. Then we noticed that if two ball bearings collided, they joined into a bigger ball bearing. Yes, we were playing with mercury someone had spilt in a previous lesson. I suspect school kids nowadays would never get to know the physical behaviour of mercury as we did in that lesson. ISTR the Tom Duncan physics books we used at school at that time had a picture of someone laying in a mercury bath (and barely submerged, of course).

[Andy Dingley]

I don't think so - nor are bullets or Babbitt metal bearings.

The organ problem was a bizarre crossover between getting lead out of the solder in short-lifetime electronic goods (laudable) turning into removing lead from solders in long-term vibration-prone equipment (bad) and even more oddly, from any alloys in "electrical equipment". Hand-pumped or hydraulic organs were exempt from it.

[Mary Fisher]

Yes.

He might have been my apprentice - the memory diminishes with age :-)

Mary