And you don't have to vent your house, that's an urban legend. The mercury is elemental mercury which isn't very toxic, and extremely poorly absorbed on top of that.
(The toxic mercury is organic mercury. Some elemental mercury will be converted, which is why people worry about it - but it won't be converted in your house.)
Both elemental mercury and "organic" mercury are toxic (I assume you mean "organic mercury compounds", since mercury is never "organic"). The relative toxicity of mercury does depend on the compound. Dimethylmercury is exceptionally poisonous: it will go right through latex gloves, skin, and the blood-brain barrier; minute concentrations will kill you. Metallic mercury is much less toxic, but when you inhale mercury vapors it gets absorbed rather well into your circulatory system.
The amount of mercury in a CFL is very low. If I broke a CFL, I would make sure to ventilate the room for a few hours, but I would not be worried. However, it is downright irresponsible to tell people that elemental mercury is not toxic.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_mer...
The OSHA limit is 0.1 mg/m^3. A CFL has 5mg of mercury - so even if every bit of the CFL mercury stayed in a room 13x13x10 feet (which it won't since most gets absorbed by the wall of the CFL) you would still be legal. And that's for continuous exposure! Not a single event.
I can't seem to find good data on the LD50 of elemental mercury, everything is for compounds of it, but compared to everyday compounds, it's toxic - but not very.
> Chronic exposure by inhalation, even at low concentrations in the range 0.7–42 μg/m3, has been shown in case control studies to cause effects such as tremors, impaired cognitive skills, and sleep disturbance in workers.
CFLs are not the only source of mercury. Some barometers and thermometers have significant quantities of the stuff. So if you tell people, "not very toxic", I am worried that these people will think that it is okay not to clean it up.
From: http://www.ehs.gatech.edu/chemical/mercury_and_compounds.pdf
> All forms of mercury are toxic.
> All forms of mercury penetrate the placental barrier and should be considered terratogenic and reproductive effectors.
It lists an exposure limit of 0.025 mg/m3.
I don't see why this has capitals?
The point was valid it's urban legend / vaccinations cause autism style rubbish about breaking light bulbs being bad.
When do we get exposed to mercury in real life that we need to highlight mercury is bad in capitals? To stop people breaking light bulbs and licking them? We all know not to drink from a thermometer. I though the point of HN is we didn't have to talk at grade school/reddit level.
[Edit] And you don't need to ventilate a room after breaking a CFL. http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/environment...
That's a bad example.
From: http://www.ehs.gatech.edu/chemical/mercury_and_compounds.pdf
> Elemental mercury
> Poses a health hazard because it is volatile and can be absorbed through the skin. As a vapor, penetrates the central nervous system, where it is ionized and trapped, attributing to its extremely toxic effects. Is not well absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract; therefore, when ingested, it is only mildly toxic. Mercury metal and mercury compounds are highly hazardous if inhaled or if they remain on the skin for more than a short period of time.
Saying that CFLs are safe is different from saying that mercury isn't very toxic. There are plenty of compounds which are toxic and found in minute quantities in everyday objects. I'd rather educate people of the dangers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)#Toxicity_and...
That's fortunate. When I was a kid, we used to amuse ourselves by coating pennies with elemental mercury. Very shiny!
Of course, some organic compounds of mercury are a different story, e.g., dimethylmercury.