Just today, my dad's coworker was severely injured by a broken light bulb. Legend has it that he was trying to replace a 26 watt 4 pin CFL, the bulb broke and got microscopic bits of glass in his eye. He had to go to The Eye Foundation and that's all I know. I thankfully haven't had any major accidents of my own yet.

Ouch I hope he's ok. I've had an incandescent that arced and went Pop. I also had a fluorescent tube that llost vacuum slowly. I picked it up to examine the end and it suddenly cracked and a shard o f glass barely missed my eye by about a centimeter.

I was installing a Sylvania 25W G16 lamp with the power on, and as soon as the lamp made contact in the socket, the glass broke. Fortunately, I didn't get cut.

I dropped a 70W SON-E/I HPS (Philips China with thinnish outer glass) into a box of CPU cooling heatsinks/fans. The thing covered them all with shards of glass and powder (coated lamp)

I found a 110W F96T12 on ther earth in a construction site. That looked intact. Picked it up (one hand in the center of the tube) and walked exatcly one meter. The tube broke in half (very clear ring crack) exactly next to my hand, with the implosion of a vacuum loss, and half of it fell to the earth and smashed to pieces. The other half was still in my hand. I got some minor scratch from the ends of the glass of it

Recently : I inserted a 18W T8 into a lantern that was laying around, but did not turn it in the sockets. Few days later i picked up the lantern, as soon as i flipped it over the lamp fell out and smashed

One time I was screwing in a GE 3-way bulb into my bedroom lamp.  I gripped the neck of the bulb and wanted to tighten it enough so the 3-way function would work.  The bulb shattered into hundreds of small pieces!  I got a pin (...) sized cut on my thumb that had one drop of blood and healed after only one day.  That could have been a lot worse.  It was a pain to clean up as the glass got all over the floor, the table, and on my bed.  I vacuumed it all up and was careful with bare feet just in case I missed a piece of glass.  The bulb was a 50, 100, 150 watt variety, made in Hungary, so not a cheapo off-brand bulb.  I guess the skinny part of the bulb at the neck is weaker than the wider part on top.

It might have touched the socket neck

i have a very large list of bulb related accidents... in no particular order


I've accidentally dropped several HID lamps resultion in a loud bang
ive dropped many CFL's
many incandescents
i've prettymuch broken a lamp of each type...

luckily none of them special

ive also been shocked by mains voltage manytimes while changing bulbs.... unpleasant feeling but not as bad as many might think..

It may well depend on how much current oyu got. If you touch a Phase wire while standing up on a Wood ladder or another isolating surface, the current is limited mainly by the capacitance between you vs Earth, so will be low. If you happen to touch both Phase and Neutral it'll be a whole different story

It may well depend on how much current oyu got. If you touch a Phase wire while standing up on a Wood ladder or another isolating surface, the current is limited mainly by the capacitance between you vs Earth, so will be low. If you happen to touch both Phase and Neutral it'll be a whole different story

20kV even insulated wasn't very nice to say the least from a neon transformer outputting about 250 watts, I couldn't move my arm for like an hour afterwards...

My new Bayco halogen work lamp included a 500 watt T3 halogen bulb.  It was a generic brand made in China bulb, so I attempted to install it until my good GE and Philips T3's arrived in the mail.  The end caps on this bulb were not cemented and broke off the moment I tried to snap it into the fixture.  Luckily the glass didn't break.