Disposal crucial for mercury spills

Officials aren't divulging how a 14-year-old North Adams boy got his hands on enough liquid mercury to shut down Conte Middle School last week and condemn his own home, but chances are there are jars of mercury lying around in your home, a neighbor's barn or a nearby garage.

"Who knows where it comes from — residents mostly," said Sandy Totter, program coordinator of the Northern Berkshire Solid Waste Management District. "It comes in jars. Often it's engineers (who have it) or other people. I don't know how they end up with it, but there are jars of it out there."

"It could have been sitting there for 50 years — you just never know," said Jamie Cahillane, director of recycling services at the Center for Ecological Technology in Pittsfield.

And there is definitely mercury lingering in old thermometers, thermostats, barometers and electric appliance switches, Cahillane noted. Fluorescent light bulbs also contain mercury, and anyone wanting to dispose of these items can do so safely by contacting their local solid waste management office.

"The only issue with any of this stuff is if it breaks," Cahillane said. "If it is released into the air, that's when it's a problem."

Most local cities and towns offer locations to recycle these items.

In Pittsfield, residents can bring mercury-bearing items to the waste energy facility on Hubbard Avenue, which contracts with the city for Home Depot in Pittsfield also recycles fluorescent light bulbs.

In South County, the area's 15-town hazardous waste collaborative conducts two collections a year when residents of those towns can bring mercury-bearing items, Cahillane said.

The Northern Berkshire Solid Waste Management District has several special collection sheds, said Totter.

"In each town, at the town halls, we have mercury thermometer collection centers," she said. "Each town also has boxes to collect mercury thermostats."

For those who might come across a jar of liquid, or elemental, mercury, the district will take it, as long as it is in a sealed container.

Anyone wondering where to recycle mercury-bearing items should contact their town officials to find out where and when they can be recycled, Cahillane said.

Since May, it has been against the law to throw these items into the trash, Totter noted.

Cahillane said that if a thermometer or other mercury-bearing container breaks and spills mercury on the floor or other hard surface, remove small children from the area and open the windows to ventilate the area well. Then the mercury should be surrounded by a boundary of masking tape to keep it from spreading.

Using rigid paper material, sweep the liquid mercury off the floor onto one card and deposit it into a rigid, closed container. Anything that couldn't be picked up that way can be picked up using a sponge. The sponge should also go into the rigid container. The rigid container should then be sealed in a zip-lock plastic bag and taken to a recycling location. Leave the windows open for a while to allow any mercury that escaped into the air to ventilate out of the house.

"You don't want to vacuum it up because you don't want to spread it around — you want to contain it immediately," Cahillane said.