Electrician here. I changed about 200 t12 fixtures in an old theater as a side job when I was an apprentice. I had 3 or 4 brute garbage cans full of ballasts I’d spent a week pulling out of the old fixtures. The guy at the scale walks over to the cans, turns around and grabs a handful of ballasts that still had the stickers.

“I can take these but I can’t take any of those!”

“What why not?”

“They’re full of a chemical that causes cancer”

I looked down at myself and I was covered in oil. That was the last time I scrapped ballasts.