A time-dependent risk assessment for broken compact fluorescent lamps.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ambient air quality guidelines are meant to limit long-term exposures of toxins to safe levels. Unfortunately, there is little guidance for what constitutes a safe level from a one-time (or very infrequent) short exposure(s). In the case of mercury, a review of the derivation of the EPA ambient air quality standard shows that it implicitly assumes a tissue burden model.