So, I have a medical question I cannot get a good answer to by means of furious googling. And since we all know game programmers represent the top of the line in medical advice, ive got something for you to chew on:


I broke a CFL bulb, and im wondering what its effect on me might be. Yes, I know, if you see a CFL bulb break, ventilate, stay away for a bit, and nothing much to worry about.

However, consider the following scenario: I bought two CFL's; one had a cracked layer of glass, but as far as I could tell only in the outer cosmetic layer. The coiled up glass containing the mercury seemed fine. The light seemed fine on turning it on, so I figured the inner glass must be intact.

A few days down the road, I notice the light color of the cracked bulb is noticably off (shifted towards higher color temps - the mercury is there to modulate it to visible light..), and the overall light production about half of the other bulb. Upon closer inspection the outer glass seems not only cracked, but noticably dislodged from the base (seems like a production error).

What triggered me to be reminded of the dubious CFL situation was a strange rash on my arm (I am normally not a rashy person). Further I have a variety of symtoms (dry cough with some bloody pleghm, diahrea without the usual cramps that accompany it, and a general sense of weakness and lack of focus); though nothing crazy and I had attributed it to viral infection earlier.

Considering I have been spending about 36 hours out of the 72 since installing the lamp on a mattress directly at ground level (where mercury vapour accumulates), with closed windows and a tight fitting door, and no other means of circulation, my question to you is:

Am I backwards rationalizing my rather a-specific symptoms, or should I go see a real doctor and get me some [font=sans-serif][size=2]DMSA ASAP[/font]? Its a tricky question since most information out there seems heavily biased; either crackpot the one way, or the typical more subtle propaganda the other way that only tells you about the best case scenario (break lamp, clean according to guidelines, no biggie). The total amount of mercury ingested varies by many orders of magnitude (from the one decent study ive seen), depending on air circulation and how close to the ground you are, and the important factors all seem to be working against me. Even if only a few percent of the few mg of mercury escaped, I wouldnt be surprised if I took a substantial hit of that. That would be bad, mkay.

Any obvious steps I could take? Simple household tests for mercury in carpet or hairs (or complex ones, I have access to pretty much any chemical or instrument I can imagine)? I certainly saved the lamp to sue the shit out of the assholes that made this thing if all my hair falls out over the next week.

Or goes the fact that my lamp is still burniing at all prove that there can not have been significant gas exchange between the inner tube and environment? Perhaps over pressure during heating while on allowed gasses to escape, but the under pressure while off was not big enough to let non-noble gasses in and burn the phosporus inside?

On a related rant, I feel like the eco-terrorists really won from me this time, in a roundabout way. All else being equal, I tend to assume all health scares are at least three orders of magnitude overblown, because of the whole health-hazard-industrial-complex, but I hadnt realized they are spinning the other way with regard to this issue. I had never stopped to think that if you break a CFL near your face while breathing in, you are a dead man; the only thing that makes these things safe, in a statistical sense, is that 'under reasonable assumptions', you are only going to breath in a tiny fraction of the total contained vapor. Im not buying any more of these things, thats for sure, and why people are allowed to keep them in close proximity to children but are not allowed to just rape them outright is a mystery to me. Oh yeah and to any eco-terrorists out there: thanks for banning incandescent bulbs; at least ill have some sort of last laugh while I run the electricity my overpriced and broken CFL saves through my electric heater to achieve the same purpose, minus the light.

As a certified non-doctor, I say you should seek actual medical treatment from an actual doctor. People and Mercury don't mix. No need to take unnecessary chances. Plus, you're not in the US so your health care is near free anyway

I'll just leave this here:

Ignoring some of the ranty-er portions of the post, according to wikipedia, a CFL bulb has 3-5 mg of mercury. The OSHA limit for elemental mercury is 0.1 mg/m^3 in a room. So unless your room is super tiny, you're probably better than OSHA standards even if all the mercury exited the bulb in your room.

As a certified non-doctor, I say you should seek actual medical treatment from an actual doctor. People and Mercury don't mix. No need to take unnecessary chances. Plus, you're not in the US so your health care is near free anyway

Ignoring some of the ranty-er portions of the post, according to wikipedia, a CFL bulb has 3-5 mg of mercury. The OSHA limit for elemental mercury is 0.1 mg/m^3 in a room. So unless your room is super tiny, you're probably better than OSHA standards even if all the mercury exited the bulb in your room.

Thank you for your wiki-fu, but I had gotten that far.

[font="Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif"]

The current Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) permissible exposure limit (PEL) for mercury vapor is 0.1 milligram per cubic meter (mg/m(3)) of air as a ceiling limit. A worker's exposure to mercury vapor shall at no time exceed this ceiling level. [/quote] A ceiling limit.. at no time.
[/font]
Exposure limits for longer time periods are manifold, but typically a few orders of magnitude lower.

Plus, the concentration near ground level is about an order of magnitude higher than the room average.

EDIT: my room is about 30m2, and my lamp contains only 1.5mg; most of which probably wasnt released.

EDIT2:

[font=Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) has assigned mercury vapor a threshold limit value (TLV) of 0.025 mg/m(3) as a TWA for a normal 8-hour workday and a 40-hour workweek and considers mercury vapor an A4 substance (not classifiable as a human carcinogen). The ACGIH also assigns a "Skin" notation to mercury vapor [ACGIH 1994, p. 25].[/quote]
[/font]To be fair, that continuous exposure limit is not a lot lower.

Boolean is back. He always provides the best medical advice . If you are worried, check out a doctor. Medical copayments aren't that much when compared to the cost of problems they help prevent, even in a false positive situation.

As a certified non-doctor, I say you should seek actual medical treatment from an actual doctor. People and Mercury don't mix. No need to take unnecessary chances. Plus, you're not in the US so your health care is near free anyway

No, its not free. Other people pay for it.

Plus, I have other things to do than spend a whole day standing in lines, if someone can convince me im just being a pussy.

Ah snap, seriously? This topic has 4 posts in it and I happened to respond to the duplicate thread that has no posts?

Totally uninformed, unscientific advice: unless you're pregnant or a lot younger than your join date would suggest, I wouldn't worry about it. Unless it kills you outright, mercury is primarily a developmental hazard. On the other hand, if you are pregnant or live with someone pregnant, then you should probably get more educated response.