is the backlight in older monitors worrysome? I'm using a flatron w1934s as my second monitor and I heard that there's some Mercury and I'm afraid of potential leakage. The image has been flickering and I'm not sure if those two things could be related.
How would I notice leakage and is it life threatening
32 Answers
First, a cold-cathode fluorescent backlight is a sealed glass tube. It cannot leak unless you break the tube.
Second, a broken tube won't light at all. If it flickers, you probably find it annoying and want to replace it, but it's not leaking.
Third, the amount of mercury in the lamp is small; the Material Safety Data Sheet for cold-cathode lamps states, "The mercury in the air as a result of breaking one or a small number of fluorescent lamps should not result in significant exposures to an individual." That said, if you change the lamp yourself, dispose of the tube responsibly. Many places offer free disposal for fluorescent lamps.
6I wouldn't worry about the miniscule amount of mercury in a CCFL that is found in a monitor.
A study on the amount of mercury from a CCFL tube study states
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection states in a report published in 2004 that between 17% and 40% of the mercury is vaporised if CCFLs are broken.
This is over a period of several hours, and a third of the mercury is released over the first eight hours. In the literature, the amount of mercury in CCFLs varies between 0.1 mg/lamp and 10 mg/lamp
The study goes on to test up to 16 CCFL tubes, basically an entire large TV, smashed in a 31 litre (enclosed) box and while smashing 16 tubes does result in a potentially (long term) dangerous 0.25mg/m3 exposure level after an hour even the vaguest amount of ventilation will almost certainly result in a level well below what is considered "safe".
A single tube being smashed, i.e. the most likely outcome of an accidental drop, would give a tiny amount of vapour that even in a normal sized room probably wouldn't result in a dangerous level. Even so it could be easily combatted by simply opening the window and/or putting the broken device outside.
A brief and temporary exposure is unlikely to result in any significant harm anyway.
If you had a mercury leak then the tube would not work at all and you would have a permanent dark patch because the tube would be cracked and the atmosphere within contaminated and unable to effectively conduct the electrons that produce light. Flickering is a sign of power supply issues rather than cracked CCFL tubes leaking mercury.
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