EPA Guideline on cleaning CFL Bulbs:
How’s it going everybody this is beat the bush today i’m going to talk about the dangers of compact fluorescent bulbs previously i recommend it to replace most of your incandescent lamps with cfls now this is before i broke a cfl lamp in my life i’ve only broken two of these so far one of them is from this lighting post i have right here that’s lighting this video
The second one was from a desk lamp where i have a cfl bulb in it and i accidentally tripped over and then it toppled over and crashed onto the floor now why are these a huge problem and why am i mentioning in this video this is because inside cfl bulbs there’s a small amount of mercury about 1/100 the amount in the thermometer there’s mercury vapor and powder
That’s inside this class once you break it it’s going to expel all this vapor and you really don’t want to breathe it in because it will cause you health problems now the cleanup process is so lengthy that it becomes such a hassle if you ever break one of these the process goes like this the first thing you do is do not use a vacuum if you try to vacuum all this
Glass up its gonna vacuum up the powder as well and it might expel this right into the atmosphere and then you’re gonna end up breathing it here’s a cfl bulb and if it’s in the socket like this when you’re removing a broken cfl bulb don’t grab it by the glass over here try to grab it at the base and twist it open out like this and then you take that out because if
You hold on to the glass you might break the glass itself now i assume as you’re opening it it breaks what you need to do now is grab a little bit of cardboard like this and sweep up all the debris that you can see and assume this is the little bits of powder that’s left over after you sweep everything because you can’t get everything then you take a plastic bag
Maybe something a bit bigger than this and put all of us into the plastic bag including the little piece of cardboard what you have remaining you want to sweep around and get all the mercury powder over here then you take some duct tape or packing tape like this and what i do is just wrap it around three fingers like this and then you have a little thing where you
Can stick all the stuff off including this little piece over here turn it around and stick the other side and after you’re done picking everywhere then you take this and put it inside as well because this has some mercury in it and you close this up and because this brush might have a little bit of mercury on it you take all of this and bring it outside and put it
Outside somewhere now if that’s not enough you still need to open up your windows and let it air for several hours just so that the vapors would escape all this just because of breaking one tiny little bulb and you still have this danger of breathing a little bit of mercury vapor in now if you broke your cfl bulb not on something flat but rather on carpet instead
You do exactly the same thing that i said now after you do all your sweeping and sticky taping and you put all this in the back your carpet might still have a little bit of debris on it now after you exhausted all this other stuff including sticky tape you remove most of the mercury as much as you can already then you might be able to vacuum a little bit and even
Then you need to make sure all your windows are open so that you’re not breathing in that vapor so in light of all this trouble i think the best bet would be for any lamp that you need to move around or a desk lamp you really should replace all of them with led as if you use them daily anything on a tall lamppost or a fixture is a little bit more safe than if you
Have a desk lamp because desk lamp tends to get moved a little bit more my studio lighting right here gets moved quite often so it could benefit from me replacing them with led bulbs so why the change of attitude because before i was saying oh just replace most of your incandescent lamps with cfls and if you happen to use it for more than one hour a day i’m like
Okay just use leds this is because of you guys and you guys pointed me out to the environmental protection agency’s guideline for cleaning up broken cfl bulbs if you go and read it it’s just kind of ridiculous on the stuff that you actually have to do which is basically what i described this is a shame because i think a lot of people are not aware of this cleanup
Procedure especially when you buy a bulb they go oh yeah you know this is like $0.99 and they don’t put the cleanup instructions right on the package itself so i hope this video reaches you well and if you ever break a cfl bulb you would follow the correct procedure for your health don’t forget to give me a like on this video comment down below let me know if this
Changes your views on cfl bulbs if you’re interested in supporting this channel i have an audible link down in the video description below or you can get a free audiobook and you don’t like this subscription or this service you can cancel it before expulsion you don’t have to pay a thing and you can still keep this audiobook for life and you can also help benefit
This channel i also have a patreon link over here where i give perks such as help with your credit score or help with your finances and as always don’t forget to subscribe to my channel over here and click that bell icon next to the subscribe button so that you get a new nova bella
Transcribed from video
Dangers of CFL Bulbs By BeatTheBush