jmc

Since none of the palindromes between 100 and 500 begin with a 5, the only place a 5 can appear is in the tens digit. Therefore, there are 4 palindromes between 100 and 500 with a 5: 151, 252, 353, and 454. To count the total number of palindromes, we observe that there are 4 choices to make for the first/last digit and 10 choices to make for the middle digit. Therefore, the percentage of palindromes that contain 5 as a digit is $\frac{4}{4\cdot 10}=\boxed{10\%}$.