2 New OSHA Courses for Mercury Safety

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), U.S. worksite-safety watchdog, has released two new educational resources to help educate and protect workers from the dangers of mercury exposure while crushing and recycling traditional fluorescent tubes and the more modern and smaller compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs).

Although OSHA training—OSHA 10 training and OSHA 30, for example—is now a pre-employment requirement by many employers, many workers continue to be exposed to avoidable worksite hazards because of employer ignorance, negligence, or plain disregard of basic health and safety standards. 

Fluorescent lights are more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, but they contain dangerous amounts of mercury, the gas that makes these lighting fixtures fluoresce. The proliferation of fluorescents in residences and in industry calls for more vigilance and better education among workers who dispose of or recycle used fluorescent lights.

Fluorescent lights, when they are broken or crushed, can expose workers doing disposal or recycling to mercury. And depending on the length and level of exposure, mercury can damage the nervous system, causing kidney problems, tremors, even damage to unborn children in the case of pregnant workers.

The OSHA fact sheet describes how workers can be exposed to mercury, recommends the kinds of engineering controls and personal protective equipment they need to avoid inadvertent poisoning, and how to use these controls and equipment correctly. A new OSHA Quick Card* alerts employers and workers to the hazards of mercury, and informs them on how to properly clean up broken fluorescent bulbs to minimize exposure to mercury.

OSHACampus.com provides OSHA training online coursework to teach workers how to identify and avoid worksite hazards, as well as inform them of the employer’s duty to keep them safe at all times.