Health officials have become uneasy about the growing demand for paddlefish caviar. A variety of toxins have been found in the fish eggs, including mercury, chlordane and cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee have issued advisories warning consumers to limit their consumption of paddlefish caviar from certain sources. But since the FDA does not require companies to list river of origin on labels, it can be difficult to know the source of caviar.

Linda Greer, health director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York, said consumers should avoid any foods containing PCBs. “There’s no safe level of exposure to a carcinogen,” she argues. “My advice would be to err on the side of caution and not eat the paddlefish caviar.”

Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee company, has announced that it is closing 600 of its 6,800 U.S. stores and laying off more than 12,000 employees. During the past year, the stock has dropped nearly 50 percent.

What went wrong at Starbucks? Their core business was, frankly, overcharging consumers for coffee, which was very lucrative. But then they expanded into selling CDs, producing movies such as “Akilah and the Bee,” which bombed at the box office, and other ventures.

Starbucks is trying to recover by introducing a new, brewed coffee called Pike Place, and by offering “healthy” protein-boosted smoothies and a new frozen drink.

Corporate America has discovered that going green is the way to sell products these days. Sales of organic products have gone from $10 billion in 2003 to more than $16 billion in 2006. Products advertised as being sustainable or healthy accounted for more than $200 billion in U.S. sales in 2005.

But as legions of marketers make “green” pitches ranging from earnest to ridiculous, customers are growing warier.

Environmentalists welcome genuine corporate efforts to make products more benign, but there’s a fine line between real environmental efforts and “greenwashing.” Last year, a Philadelphia marketing firm called TerraChoice investigated more than 1,000 products claiming to have some environmental benefit. All but one of them committed one of what the company dubbed the “Six Sins of Greenwashing”, such as hidden problems or vague claims.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are an increasingly popular way to save energy. But improper disposal of the bulbs creates a hazard, because they contain small amounts of mercury.

Home Depot, the nation’s second-largest retailer, has announced that it will take back old compact fluorescents in all of its U.S. stores, creating the nation’s most widespread recycling program for the bulbs.

Until now, most consumers had to seek out local hazardous waste programs or smaller retail chains willing to collect the bulbs for recycling, like Ikea and True Value. Others bought kits to mail the bulbs to a recycling facility.