There are serious dangers from CFL light bulbs if they are dropped and broken. The main concern is that the mercury turns into vapor. Mercury vapor is a highly hazardous neurotoxin. If it is inhaled, it can cause damage your nervous system, your liver, and your kidneys. If a CFL bulb breaks, the area should be ventilated and evacuated immediately. After allowing it an hour or two to ventilate, you need to clean the area of any elemental mercury that may still be on any surfaces the broken light bulb contacted. Do not throw away burned out CFLs in the household trash. You can look in the phone book to contact your local government agencies to see if they have a CFL recycling program.

A dropped and broken CFL does, in fact, present a safety hazard. The miniscule amount of mercury inside a CFL can poison 6,000 gallons of water. The U.S. government's Environmental Protection agency gives the following clean-up advice for broken CFL's: Airing out room of the accident for at least 15 minutes; wearing thick plastic gloves during clean-up; double-bagging waste, duct-taping shards and dust from rugs; do not vaccum. When you do vaccum, discard the vaccum bag at once. The safest disposal method for a burned-out CFL is to recycle it. Go to www.epa.gov/bulbrecycling, and click on the underlined phrase, "Where You Live". It will lead you to a map of the U.S., and you can click on your state for local CFL recycling areas.