I've been staring at this thread for a while now, and it finally occurs to me: Barefoot and otherwise unprotected critters, including dorfs, should take damage--maybe some kind of bleeding syndrome, since glass isn't naturally rejected by the body?--for walking on broken glass.
Breaking glassware itself should have certain mechanical formulas attached to it, I would think? While not nearly as volatile as fire, the fragility of glass, as well as the potential danger of broken glass, including violently shattered glass shards flying everywhere, would have a reasonably interesting effect on the game.
Such glass shards might well be coated in toxic substances, or atleast irritating ones, causing further duress, and provide a good reason for carefully storing the fine crystal, and the alchemical beakers.
Large pieces of glass could also be methodically chipped, to provide a sharp cutting edge, forming a small, but razor-sharp, knife that could easily be sterilized, for surgical means, if not for more utilitarian or nefarious uses. Probably inferior to obsidian--atleast in terms of coolness-factor, but doable.
I suspect these are old ideas that exist somewhere on the Forum, but Search didn't immediately turn them up, and I don't know that the physical and mechanical properties of breaking glass have ever been fully addressed or discussed. I could be wrong, however.