Fluorescent Tube Runs Out Of Mercury

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Mercury is lost from the gas fill throughout the lamp life, as it is slowly absorbed into glass, phosphor, and tube electrodes, where it can no longer function.

Historically this hasn't been a problem because tubes have had an excess of mercury.

However, environmental concerns are now resulting in low mercury content tubes which are much more accurately dosed with just enough mercury to last the expected life of the lamp.

This means that loss of mercury will take over from failure of the phosphor in some lamps.

The failure symptom is similar, except loss of mercury initially causes an extended run-up time (time to reach full light output), and finally causes the lamp to glow a dim pink when the mercury runs out and the argon base gas takes over as the primary discharge.