No place for mercury in Maine

    You have probably heard a lot about mercury lately and you're likely to hear a lot more in the future. This silver colored liquid metal is a persistent bioaccumulative toxic (PBT) pollutant.
    That scary sounding term means that mercury acts as a poison ("toxin"). Once in the environment, it gets into animal tissue, such as fish, and doesn't go away. Exposure to it can cause brain damage, especially in young children, and it can damage a growing fetus.
    It’s a serious enough concern that we all need to become more knowledgeable about products we use every day. Mercury is used in some thermostats, silent light switches, fluorescent lamps and certain vehicle switches. Even more up close and personal, mercury lurks in some cosmetics and soaps!
    A lot of this mercury eventually ends up in the trash and goes up the smokestack of a municipal waste incinerator where expensive capture technology is not 100 percent effective. The best way to eliminate this path of contamination is to keep mercury out of the waste stream in the first place. Eliminating it from products, promoting recycling efforts and collecting items like thermometers and manometers are some of the ways we can do this.
    Meanwhile, if you do happen to break that mercury fever thermometer, here is some guidance on clean-up:
    Turn off heaters to minimize vaporization.
    Open windows to ventilate the room.
    Never use a household vacuum or a broom. (This will just spread it around the floor and in the air.)
    Before clean-up take off jewelry. (Mercury will bond to metal.)
    Wear rubber gloves if you have them.
    For hard surfaces use stiff paper or eyedroppers to move mercury into a wide mouth glass container with a metal screw lid.
    Use duct tape to pick up the remainder.
    For spills on carpet cut out the section and place in a plastic bag.
    For spills in the sink drain remove the trap and pour into the wide mouth glass container. Then seal and label.
    Put all clean-up equipment in the glass jar with metal screw lid or — if too large — in a plastic bag and label it mercury waste. Remove any waste stored in a plastic bag from the home and place in a garage or other non living area.
    Store all waste and clean-up equipment in a secure place until proper disposal as a hazardous waste.
    Most towns in Maine will accept intact mercury devices (such as thermostats and thermometers) for recycling at their transfer station, so call your town office to see the services they have available or go to MaineDEP.com and click on "Fluorescent Light Bulb Information". This Web site lists both the transfer stations and retail stores that accept mercury products for recycling.
    This article was submitted by David McCaskill, a senior environmental engineer with the Maine DEP Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management. In Our Back Yard is a weekly column of the DEP. E-mail your environmental questions to infodep@maine.gov or send them to In Our Back Yard, Maine DEP, 17 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333.