[Noisebridge-discuss] mercury on the table?

[Jonathan Foote]

Also curious as to the source of the mercury.

A classic red neon tube has no mercury (it has neon gas, or a Penning
mixture). Some colored "neon" contain mercury vapor to give UV, which
excites a phosphor coating inside of the tube (like a fluorescent
light). It won't have anything approaching a puddle. A mercury vapor
streetlamp will have a visible amount of Hg, but little more that a
tiny bead.  It's far more likely that visible amounts of Hg came from
a broken tilt switch or thermometer. What's the evidence it came from
a neon tube?


On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Christie Dudley<longobord at gmail.com> wrote:
> This makes me curious.  What would be the source of the mercury from a Neon
> sign?  I always thought they were pretty safe.  (Well, other than from
> broken glass and stuff like that.)  It's my understanding that when they
> fill them with argon, they use trace amounts of mercury, that would be in
> the tubes, which would only escape if you broke one, right?
>
> Care to share this discovery with the rest of us?  Circuit hackers simply
> love neon sign transformers, so I think it'd be good to have this
> information disseminated.
>
> Christie
>
> ---
> Knowledge will bind you but ultimately set you free.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 6:45 PM, Jason Dusek <jason.dusek at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  Meredith made some discoveries that suggest the mercury came
>>  from that neon sign...our deaths are inevitable.
>>
>> --
>> Jason Dusek
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