Even the spillage of a few milligrams of mercury like that found in a compact florescent light bulb is enough to create a neurological health hazard because of mercury vapor.
“If and when a CFL bulb breaks in a person’s residence or place of work— an almost inevitability at some point— the bulb will release at least 25,000 ng/m3 to 100,000 ng/m3 (nanograms per meter cubed) of invisible, microscopic, particles of mercury vapor directly into the immediate indoor environment. (The U.S. safety level for mercury vapor exposure is 200 ng/m3.)”
http://www.examiner.com/article/compact-fluorescent-light-cfl-health-hazards-pt-1-mercury-vapor
We used to play with the mercury that we recovered after a thermometer broke when I was a child. There were little balls of mercury on my mom's desk for years, and she lived to 101. My dad (a chem teacher) always had a small vial of mercury on hand that we could examine. This mercury was in the liquid silver form -- not the powdered form which I found stored on a shelf in our manufacturing plant. A couple of pounds of the powdered mercury cost me a couple of hundred dollars to surrender to the county Haz Mat folks.
Yeah, and they say ‘open the window to ventilate’ and ‘vacuum’ to remove the hazard.
Riiiiiight. /s
I’m doomed... one of those bulbs broke right in my face as I was putting it in a fixture. Being on a ladder there was nowhere to go to avoid the vapor.