Andrew Raven
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Sep 30/05) - Fluorescent light bulbs are everywhere: the office, the school, the supermarket and even your home.

Hazardous waste expert Don Helfrick slides another fluorescent tube into the crusher. Helfrick was in Fort Simpson last week where he helped dispose of 495 of the potentially hazardous light bulbs from office buildings around town. - photo courtesy of Ken Lambert

Each one of those flickering tubes contains traces of mercury - hazardous heavy metal the territorial government is poised to ban from landfills.

In small amounts, mercury is not life-threatening. In fact, it occurs naturally in many lakes across the Deh Cho.

But the metal becomes a problem when it builds up in landfills and leeches into the water table, said Ken Lambert, a Fort Simpson based environmental protection officer with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. "Over time, it accumulates in birds and ducks and fish," Lambert said Monday. "In 25 years, you might begin to see the effects."

Mercury poisoning in humans can cause everything from mood swings, to kidney failure to central nervous system disorders.

The territorial government recently spent about $8,000 on a special machine that crushes the fluorescent light-bulbs and stores the mercury. The metal is eventually shipped to an industrial waste processing plant in Swan Hills, Alberta.

The contraption, which looks like a wood-chipper, stopped in Fort Simpson last week where Lambert and hazardous waste expert Don Helfrick processed 495 tubes that had been removed from government buildings.

Starting later this year, Lambert said the fluorescent bulbs will be barred from dumps across the territories. Residents will have junk them through the crusher machine which is scheduled to stop annually in most communities.

"We hope to raise awareness that people are responsible for their bulbs," said Lambert, who noted the move is part of a Canada-wide effort to keep fluorescent bulbs out of landfills.

"Long term, it could be important."

Fluorescent bulbs are just one of the many hazardous materials found in the Deh Cho offices. Lambert recently removed electrical current converters from some government buildings that contained Polychlorinated Biphenyls, commonly know as PCBs. Essentially outlawed in light fixtures in 1979, the PCB-rich containers can release dioxins, a potentially lethal poisons, when burned.

Lambert urged anyone dealing with older light fixtures to use caution.