A bit of a comment. Yes I am a cynic. As a society we’ve been using a dumping crap into the environment for decades. As a species we are full of these chemicals. Right now the most chemically contaminated foodstuff in N. America is breast milk. Don’t believe me? Look it up. Test have shown upwards of 200 human produced chemical compounds in breast milk, every thing from heavy metals, PCBS, dioxins and flame retardents and on and on. What we put out comes back. Maybe people have heard about polar bears or Beluga whales that have been found to have high concentrations chemicals, or fish that have levels of mercury in them. This is just a given, yet barely anyone ever considers that humans, being not only high up on the food chain but surrounded by the stuff in our daily lives would experience the same thing.

Fact is we do. Go get your blood tested and see just how much of chemical soup is in your body right now.

So here we have people suddenly freaking out about mercury in light bulbs. End of the world to some people. Now if I in any way thought that this was some sort of awakening and the issue around CFs and mercury were this sudden sort of widespread ecological recognition of a wider issue of how humans put crap in our environment and that CF concerned people would then move on to addressing even bigger issues of contamination then I’d be swinging in trees with joy.

Don’t see it though. What I see most right now is it being turned into something political. A wedge. A hammer. Something that’s just useful for the political left/right fight. That’s not suggesting that some people are concerned because they do understand the wider issue of industrial contamination and ecological and human health. There are many that do.
However cynically I also see a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon because it’s become a politcal talking point and a way to hammer the ‘enemy’ in whatever form the enemy is perceived.