One of the first rules of making a documentary on dental mercury is don’t ever mention the doc is about dental mercury. Why ? Because no one will agree to interview with you. So when approaching our government agencies for interviews I learned very quickly to say that the documentary was about mercury vapor. Our government is very concerned about the populations exposure to mercury vapor, as the Public Service Announcement (PSA) video above details. Unfortunately our government does not acknowledge the risk of mercury vapor exposure that people are exposed to from their dental mercury fillings.
After had sucured an interview with Dan Thompson who is in charge of cleaning up small hazardous materials spills for Kansas. During the interview he mentioned that he could only clean the small spills and that he had to hand off the bigger spills to the local EPA Haz Mat crew. When I asked how much a big spill of elemental mercury was he said, “Oh about the size of my thumb”.
Dan suggested we interview Eric Nold of EPA region 5 in Kansas City, which was perfect as it was not a far drive from where we live.