89 North, an employee owned company located in Burlington, Vermont has introduced a program aimed at reducing the amount of mercury waste generated by labs performing fluorescence imaging. Mercury arc lamps are the most common type of illumination systems used on fluorescence microscopes. Unfortunately, a typical arc lamp can contain as much as 150 mg of mercury (depending on its power) and will have a useful lifetime of only 100-200 hours. This means that a typical lab can go through 3-4 lamps per year (and often many more), creating a significant amount of mercury waste that enters the environment.

The PhotoFluor II from 89 North uses a high power metal halide lamp with a useful life nearly 10 times longer than that of a mercury arc lamp. In addition, the metal halide lamp uses 25% less mercury than an mercury arc lamp of comparable power. As a result, the amount of mercury waste generated by a lab can be reduced up to 40x by replacing their current mercury arc lamp with a metal halide lamp, like the PhotoFluor II.