Apparently a woman in Maine dropped and broke a fluorescent bulb in her daughter’s bedroom and was (legitimately) concerned about exposure to the mercury in the bulb. She called various state offices to find out what to do, and ended up with an estimate of over $2K to have experts come and clean up, which is clearly absurd. Not surprisingly, members of the loony contingent raced to use this as an argument for why fluorescent bulbs are a Bad Idea, and presumably chalking up yet another piece of evidence for why this whole global climate thing is a conspiracy of treehugging wackos like myself.
Fortunately, as PeeZed and others have pointed out, the EPA has a nice factsheet (pdf) on fluorescent bulbs, that includes straightforward (and affordable) advice on how to handle broken bulbs. Basically, you sweep the stuff up carefully, put it in a plastic bag, and take it to a local disposal site if there is one in your area, or put it in your regular trash if not. Much like I might do with any caustic household chemical. Or, in fact, a bunch of broken glass from a pop bottle.
So clearly she got bad advice from her state offices, and there was definitely some whacked reporting of the incident, both of which were unfortunate. Neither, however, is a reason not to use fluorescent bulbs, just a reason to think carefully about what you read.
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