CFLs have a lot less mercury than the 4 foot tubes down in the basement or in the garage. Or kitchen. And even they don't have much. I don't hear anyone moaning about how to get rid of those 4' tubes in the garage-- why is that? Could part of it be that LED bulb manufacturers are more interested in getting you to change from CFLs and are putting the scare out?
ALL fluorescents make light by energizing mercury gas to interact with phosphors on the tube walls. The bigger the tube, the more mercury.
BUT, this amount is really small. Really, really small and even if you break one, most of it is absorbed in the phosphors when the light is off, so it's any powder that might be on the floor that has maybe a thousandth of a percent of mercury in it. Or more, but not much more so, you will get mercury poisoning from eating tuna or striped bass long before you get it from broken lights.
About the color-- fluorescents as presently made have more color variation than LED's, and are much cheaper. The trick is to find a color temperature you like and a CRI above 90 to get great light. And the set the light properly-- even a good "daylight" tube needs to be at least twice as bright to look good. The eyes and mind expect daylight to be bright, and if it isn't, it looks weird. At this point, though commercial LEDs only come in a few color temps and their accuracy is terrible unless you pay up the nose. And, for all that money they put out no more lumens per watt than cfls. Granted that you might have to look beyond the dollar store to find decent CFLs, but they do exist.
I have a few LEDs to experiment with, but almost all of my lighting is CFL-- simply because it's cheap and it works. One day LEDs will get there, but not yet.
And I take my dead CFLs to the town dump where they have a special dropoff for ALL fluorescents. Even U-lines and 8 foot tubes.
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