light only glows at the ends?

yep that bulbs toast.i see that at work all the time.
gl
mark

Yup, broken. Make sure not to break the bulb when you throw it away. It contains mercury and is poisonous.

I wouldn't worry about the mercury that much or the lead in the lamp. Mercury and lead are cumulative poisons, experimental teratogens, and carcinogens. But in the small amounts of one tube it is not going to hurt you. Now if you worked at a recycling facility your exposure would be hugher and I would worry.

Since you said that they have been around for awhile the cadmium dust (pre-1987 lamps) can be poisonous if inhaled.

I would worry about the fact that it takes up to 50 years to start to expel lead from your body. And any exposure that can be avoided should be.

Don't know where you got 50 years at ???

Physiology of Lead in Body

By Inhalation:
Particles 0.5 microns reach alveoli and 30-50% is absorbed from lungs. If lead at .15 mg/meter3 in air is inhaled, those at or below .05 microns in diameter will plateau in body fluids about 8 months later if inhaled daily with 25-30 mg of lead retained. Ash from a cigarette contains 14 mcgm of lead; cigarette smoke itself = 0.5 mcgm. 8 mg of lead is absorbed per year from the lungs.

By Ingestion:
Average individual swallows 300 micrograms of lead per day. Only 10% of this is absorbed into the body. Lead is in water, in ribs, coca, ground corn or corn starch, etc. A child may absorb 50% of ingested lead. Increasing lead intake is followed by increased lead burden in the body - a cumulative effect with increasing toxicity. Low iron, calcium, and zinc intake increases lead absorption.

Fate in Body
Once absorbed, 90% is stored in bond as lead phosphate. The other 10% is taken up by the red blood cells, the brain, the kidneys, and the liver, where toxic effects develop. Average lead burden in body = 100-400 mg. Accumulation is slow, so that 1.3 mg daily will result in 65 mcmg% in 7-1/2 years, and 3.2 mcmg% daily will give 80 mcmg% in blood in one-half year.

Excretion
90% put out in stool; 9% in urine; It takes twice as long to excrete lead as to absorb it. The one-half life of lead in body is 2 months. Lead excretion in the urine is usually below 80 mcmg/liter, but if over 180 mcmg per liter, removal from work site desirable.

"Normal" Blood Lead Values
Normal values are 2 - 8 mcmg%

Blood Lead = 15 = abnormal enzymes with _FEP
30 = anemia, fatigue, dizziness
40 = ZPP up, wrist drip, conduction time slows, muscle weakness
50 = reproductive effects, anemia, brain injury, libido reduced
80 = abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, anorexia, coma, and convulsions.


by my calculations it waould take about 750-8 foot tubes to provide enough lead to get above the 8mcmg%. A heavy smoker would sustain a higher lead in the blood stream than this.

Usual Human Lead Exposure: Lead has no beneficial effect in animal tissues. Average daily intake of lead by general population of 0.4 mg./person/day. Ingested lead varies from 0.1 to 3 mg/day, while inhaled lead average .01 to .09 mg/day. If you don’t take in over 0.6 mg of lead per day by mouth, it will not be dangerous, as lead excretion will balance lead intake. Lead is excreted in urine and sweat.

Being an electrician your lamps are U/S (bulbs grow in the ground) but I would strongly recommend u dont shatter the lamps because they explode with quite a force. Infact dont put them in the bin either if were u I would take them somewhere that destroy the lamps through the proper root. You dont want kids getting hold of these things. There is not much in there to cause serious harm unless u are in a confined space.

Robbie

Another misconception they will not explode. They are a vacuum. They implode and will not send glass flying. Unless you hit them with a large force or they are above you very little chance of being hit by glass either.

It is still a good idea though to keep where others will not be cut if it breaks. Not trying to be a pain on this thread just doesn’t like spreading myths.

My bad not vacuum low pressure gas. Getting exact pressure value now but it well less that one atmoshpere wich would cause implosion still.

My fault but after implosion small peices of glass are known to bounce back and can cause nasty eye injuries.

Better to be safe than sorry

Robbie.

You are right depending on what causes the break glass can travel in any direction for instance hitting them with a base bll bat would make a big mess. The best way to see the implosion though is with a bb gun. A glancing shot will cause an area to shatter but usually not the entire bulb. If you then go over the the bulb and carefully pick it up you will find all the glass inside the tube.

The basis of the tube though is that two electrodes are sealed inside along with a drop of mercury and some inert gases (usually argon or metal halides), at very low pressure (close to a vacuum).

As the gases inside the tube ionize, the resistance of the ionized plasma created inside the tube decreases. This will cause the resistance to approach zero while the current draw approaches infinity (theoretically - obviously, your wall outlet can't really provide infinite current).

No known metal electrode can survive the extreme amount of current that ionized gas can draw, so without a ballast to limit the current supplied, the electrodes at the end of the fluorescent tube would burn up even though the ionized plasma would survive.