LED T8 tubes: any hazardous substances?

[Dave_H]

I broke the glass shell of a LED T8 (or might have been broken in the store). Sharp glass aside, are there likely to be any hazardous materials in there? I imagine no mercury as it not a gas fluorescent, but noticed a bit of fine white powder which is not likely phosphor on the outer tube as the LEDs are obviously white. I'd like to have a closer look at the ballast circuit, but the LEDs themselves are on a flexible strip which has already broken and probably not much use, except maybe as smaller sub-strips. Dave

[Ken_McE]

I broke the glass shell of a LED T8 (or might have been broken in the store). Sharp glass aside, are there likely to be any hazardous materials in there?

I can't think why. It's just a glass tube, metal pins, a circuit board, some diodes, maybe a few electronic bits. They don't need anything hazardous to make it work.

I imagine no mercury as it not a gas fluorescent, but noticed a bit of fine white powder which is not likely phosphor on the outer tube as the LEDs are obviously white.

Maybe just a diffuser?

[TechGuru]

Speaking of phosphor. I've been wondering if anyone is producing a lamp that uses UV Leds & Phosphor instead of white LED's...

[PhotonWrangler]

White LEDs are actually blue or NUV LEDs with a yellow phosphor coating. Some of the earlier household LED bulbs from Philips used a remote phosphor that was baked into the plastic lens rather than being sprayed onto the LEDs. You could actually remove the yellow lens of this "alien head" style bulb to find a blindingly bright array of blue LEDs inside.

G-E came out with a "VioLED' product that was based on NUV LEDs rather than blue ones. Their stated purpose was that it allowed for a wider range of phosphor blends for better color rendering. I've personally never seen any of their VioLEDs in stores, although I did get to tour their R&D lab several years ago.

To answer the original question though, no toxic substances that I know of in LED "fluorescent" tubes, and they probably use lead-free solder to comply with ROHS. I'm guessing that power is for diffusion.