Are drum-top crushers (DTCs) safe to use?
Recycling of spent lamps represents one of the best ways to control the release of mercury to the environment from landfilling of fluorescent lamps, by keeping mercury out of landfills in the first place. Recycling can be done either on an individual lamp basis (i.e., sending whole, boxed lamps to a recycler), or by using a DTC at the point where lamps are removed from service. Use of DTCs has obvious appeal in that the devices reduce lamp volume, allowing several hundred crushed lamps to occupy the space that 40 or 50 whole lamps would occupy, thereby reducing storage and shipping costs. Pre-crushing the lamps also has the advantage of allowing shipping to the recycler in a well-sealed, durable container that is unlikely to release substantial amounts of mercury during shipment, while a significant fraction of whole lamps can be broken during shipment, releasing mercury. Despite these advantages, the DTCs evaluated as part of this Study all released some mercury when used and so have
