Jan 11 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - David Brooks The Telegraph, Nashua, N.H.

Switching to those new energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs is a great idea.

Unless you break one, that is: As of last week, it's illegal to throw it away.

The problem is that fluorescent bulbs use mercury, a highly toxic element, to activate the glowing gases that are such efficient sources of light. And a new state law, effective Jan. 1, forbids mercury-containing products from entering what disposal folks call the "waste stream" -- in other words, the trash.

"There are a lot of common household products still in use that have mercury: fluorescent lamps, button-cell batteries... old, circular, wall-type thermostats," said Stephanie D'Agostino, supervisor of the pollution prevention section for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. "They only contain a very small amount of mercury, but cumulatively they can create a problem."

"We've had a disposal ban in effect for businesses and institutions.

This just extended it to homeowners," said D'Agostino.

As the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, mercury has long proved useful.

For example, it was once common in switches that turn on a light when a car trunk lid is raised. A small blob of mercury flows down as the lid goes up, filling in a gap between two wires and making the electrical connection. When the lid is closed, the mercury flows away and the connection is broken.

"Over the past four years we've been pulling all the mercury switches out of all our vehicles, and the (state Department of Environmental Services) has collected them from us," said Jeff Kantor, president of Car World in Candia and head of the Auto and Truck Recyclers of New Hampshire.

Handling toxins, such as lead, batteries and fuel, as they prepare vehicles for demolition has long been part of the work for such "dismantlers," said Kantor.

"We're like Henry Ford in reverse," he joked. "We've got an assembly line that takes them apart, instead of putting them together."

A national program called ELVS, for End of Life Vehicle Solution, pays car recyclers $1 per mercury-containing switch, to keep them out of junkyards. It claims to have collected more than 800,000 switches with more than 2,000 pounds of mercury throughout the country.

"It cost more than a dollar to take them out, but it's better than not being paid at all," said Kantor.

Mercury, which can enter the body through the skin, or by being inhaled, causes a variety of medical problems, including neurological problems, kidney failure and reproductive issues.

Mercury enters the environment by a variety of ways, including as a byproduct of coal burning. It is such a health issue that it has led to limits being placed on how much fish should be eaten, even when caught in the most pristine of New Hampshire lakes.

The new law is accompanied by another law, which over the course of the year forbids the sale of mercury in products ranging from blood pressure cuffs to electrical relays. These are the latest steps in a long effort to keep mercury from entering the environment, stretching back to a 1998 report that urged at least a 90 percent reduction in mercury releases within the state.

New Hampshire banned mercury-filled fever thermometers in 2000, making it one of the first places to do so and since then, has done everything from requiring dentists to separate mercury from waste fillings before disposal, to placing expensive controls on municipal incinerators, which release mercury as they burn the huge variety of stuff we toss out.

Keeping mercury-containing products out of that trash is the new laws' goal.

"This is kind of the natural next step," said D'Agostino.

And what about that broken compact fluorescent bulb? Bag it up and take it to your dump; they'll dispose of it properly.

And don't worry about using them. Despite their mercury, CFLs are still good for the environment because they use so much less electricity, much of which in New Hampshire comes from coal-burning (and therefore mercury-releasing) power plants.