Quote Originally Posted by ewasteofco View Post
Hi I talked to my EHS manager (Environmental health and safety) she said that they most likely contain mercury and in most cases would need to pay to get rid of them the right way.
I guess it depends how old they are and what kinds. There is only a few #'s that had mercury. I had to research it myself as all the dealings with tubes I did over the years and I had never heard of it. Also don't know of any real value in blown tubes. It's not like you can rebuild them. Here is a response I found on a guitar forum that deals with tube amps.

Some indeed do contain mercury, like type 83 and 866 rectifiers. However, you won't find 866s in a guitar map, and I think only a very few rare examples used the 83.

Mercury is a metal and is liquid at room temo, In a tube, with the heat, it would quickly evaporate into a gas and ionize the innards, causing shorts, the tube would not turn off and all sorts of mayhem. Yes, some tubes do use it and were designed for it, but I think you may be hard pressed to find any in your common 12AX7 or 6L6.



With that said, yes there are some strange things in a tube, in very small quantities. I always just tossed dead ones in the trash, but I guess the environmental thing to do would be to take them somewhere that handles recycling or e-waste.
Vacuum Tube disposal/recycling? - Telecaster Guitar Forum