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Are your fillings killing you??
This is a seven page essay that covers the history, science and controversies
surrounding dental amalgam, the first modern material used to repair decayed
teeth, and still the most commonly placed dental restoration in the world.
The history of the
Amalgam controversy
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| Silver Amalgam is the most commonly used material for the
restoration of decayed teeth in the world! It was invented in France in
1826 by Auguste Taveau
of Paris and consisted of shavings from silver coins mixed with mercury.
Prior to that time, attempts to fill teeth had been made using numerous
materials, but the most reliable was found to be lead foil compressed into
a cavity preparation. Amalgam in those early days had serious
drawbacks since its physical characteristics depended on the exact
proportions of silver and mercury, and the mixture often expanded on setting
causing the tooth to crack. |
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Silver Amalgam was introduced into the US in 1833 by two French entrepreneurs, the Crawcour
brothers. Due to its mercury content (as well as its other physical
drawbacks), it was denounced by a majority of
dentists. Their main argument against it was that mercury was known to be poisonous.
The
belief in the severity of the toxicity of mercury was based upon the toxicity of
mercury salts and organic mercury compounds which
had been used industrially, especially in the manufacture of hats. The term "mad
as a hatter" was coined at that time. One of the primary symptoms of
poisoning by soluble mercury compounds is erethism which consists of varying
degrees of dementia and bizarre behaviors such as excessive shyness or, alternately, aggression.
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 The mad
hatter in Alice in Wonderland probably was a victim of occupational
mercury intoxication leading to erethism. When challenged on a point of
fact, a person in those days might joke "If it ain't true, I'll eat my hat".
The widespread knowledge of the association between erethism (madness) and
people who worked in the hat industry was probably the origin of this threat.
Hats were made from felt which was obtained from animal fur. A
solution of mercury nitrate (very soluble in water) was used to
separate the fur from the pelts. It also aided in making the
felt mat together smoothly. Because virtually everyone in
those days wore hats, huge amounts of mercury nitrate were used in
their production.
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Sea of hats: Danbury
Museum & Historical Society |
Pollution from these old factories still persists even today in
the sediments around their foundations. Note that once
processed, the mercury in the hats presented little potential for
causing mercury poisoning because very few people actually "ate
their hats".
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In spite of the recognized toxicity of mercury, why is silver amalgam, which
is made with mercury, still in use throughout the world for the repair of teeth?
Why does the US government, as well as the governments of all other western
countries still permit, the use of silver amalgam for the repair of teeth?
And why would the professional dental associations of the US and all other
nations still promote the use of amalgam? In order to fully understand,
you will have to know a little history.
| NOTE: Google advertisements are placed on web
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This page attracts some ads which link to sites selling
"detoxification" medications and services, most of which
make many of the claims which I have debunked here. I
allow this type of advertisement so readers can see some of
the nonsense they sell. |
Even though the dental profession
denounced the use of amalgam for the repair of the teeth when it was first
introduced, the Crawcour brothers went on
to repair a huge number of mouths with it. Of course, they weren't
dentists, and never learned the principles of dentistry. But in spite of appalling dentistry, the
teeth they repaired often remained successfully repaired for many years!
Furthermore, predictions of widespread mercury poisoning were proving to be false.
Prior to the introduction of amalgam into America in 1833, the only materials that had commonly
been used to repair
decayed teeth were: tin foil, which was very soft and had a nasty habit of
dislodging from the cavity; non cohesive "beaten" gold leaf which was first used
in the US in 1812 and was very, very expensive due to its excruciatingly
demanding technique; and lead plugs (L. Pierre Fauchard, circa 1728).
By the
early 1800's, the dangers of lead poisoning were widely known and appreciated.
Therefore, prior to the invention of cohesive gold foil in 1855, dentistry
for the majority of people consisted of extracting decayed teeth and building removable false teeth of
one sort or another. Often, the dentures were built directly over the
rotted sumps of the old teeth.
In 1855 Robert Arthur invented the cohesive gold foil technique.
Gold foil differs from gold leaf in its purity and the method by
which its surface is protected from airborne contamination.
The technique consists of removing the decay, laboriously refining the shape of the
cavity and then literally hammering tiny pieces of cohesive gold foil into the cavity preparation
until it is filled. Because of its purity, the pieces of gold
foil adhere to each other as the restoration is built up.
While the gold foil technique was much faster than using gold leaf,
getting a gold foil restoration was still a tedious, expensive and
painful procedure. Even so, gold foil became the "gold
standard" in mainstream dentistry among reputable dentists.
Gold foil fillings were very durable and non toxic. But they
were not cheap, and the average Joe still couldn't afford to see a
dentist to have his teeth filled. (Cast gold was not routinely
used to repair decayed teeth until after 1907 when the centrifugal
casting machine was invented.)
On the other hand, remember that itinerant amateur "dentists" had been
repairing decayed teeth with amalgam since 1833. Since only the very wealthy could afford to have
their teeth repaired by professional dentists, the less affluent public was used
to turning to self taught amalgamists if they wanted to save their
natural teeth. They certainly couldn't depend on professionally trained
dentists who mostly ended up yanking their natural teeth and building dentures.
By 1855 when the cohesive gold foil technique was invented, the public had
already had 23 years of experience with dental amalgam, even though it was only
available through people who resembled traveling salesmen more than professional
dentists. Though the
use of cohesive gold foil brought the cost of professional tooth repair into the realm of
affordability for upper middle class persons, there were precious few people
who fit into this income bracket. When the average person went to a real
dentist, he expected an extraction, not a filling. When he wanted to
repair a tooth instead of having it extracted, he went to an amalgamist!
Dental amalgam is not especially
technique sensitive, as evidenced by the techniques used by the Crawcour
brothers. Unlike professional dentists who worked in gold foil, the
amalgamists would often just scrape out as much decay as they could in a short
time and stuff amalgam into the hole. Even though they left lots of decay
in the tooth, the fillings seemed to work reasonably well. (The reason for this
involves the biochemical characteristics of the amalgam itself.) After
1855, a visit to a dentist for a gold foil filling involved a long, painful and
expensive experience, while a visit to an amalgamist was short, relatively
painless (since they would stop drilling when the pain got too intense) and
inexpensive.
After the introduction of
Coca Cola in 1886 , the demand for affordable
dentistry skyrocketed. (See my page on the
history of tooth decay for more on
why Coca Cola was an important event in dentistry.) The success of the amalgam technique being used by
the quacks caused a huge surge in "underground" dentistry, and
even the more wealthy dental patients were having amalgam
restorations done by quack amalgamists. The increasing competition, therefore, forced
professionally trained dentists to reevaluate the use of amalgam.
In the process, they
discovered to their surprise that NO ONE who had their teeth filled with amalgam suffered from any
of the symptoms associated with mercury poisoning.
Many dentists still refused to use amalgam, and they formed the core of the
burgeoning anti-amalgamist movement. The arguments between dentists
opposed to the use of amalgam to fill teeth and those in favor spilled over into the public
domain and became known as the
Amalgam Wars. The anti-amalgamists were dentists who were angry, in no small part, because a bunch
of amateur shysters were taking away their core business. They
wanted to scare the public with horror stories about the dangers of the mercury
in the amalgam, but since
no one sporting the new amalgam fillings was exhibiting the known symptoms of
mercury poisoning, the anti-amalgamists had to rely on horror stories about diseases like diabetes, arthritis, gout, etc. for which the
medical profession had no explanation. Unfortunately for the anti-amalgamists, the list of diseases
that dental amalgam supposedly caused kept shrinking over the years as the real
causes of these diseases were discovered by researchers.
Today the
list has narrowed so drastically that the anti-amalgamists must resort to the
use of vague symptoms such as frequent headaches, fatigue,
anxiety, insomnia, depression, and loss of appetite. These symptoms are
extremely common in the population, and can be caused by any number of physical
or psychological problems, most notably, simple depression.
 While
the anti-amalgamists continued to bank on the diminishing returns of their war
against dental amalgam, the rest of the dental profession had moved on and accepted dental
amalgam as one of the major armaments in the fight against tooth decay. A
dentist named G.V. Black (1836-1915- pictured to the right) finally laid the
foundation for the correct formulation and use of the new material and essentially
revolutionized the profession of dentistry by standardizing the repair of teeth
and making dentistry affordable to the average citizen. He standardized the formula
for Amalgam in 1896, mixing components to create suitable expansion
properties and setting exact limits on the amount of mercury necessary for its
formulation. Prior to Black, dental amalgam had been formulated by hand
out of shaved coin silver mixed with however much mercury the dentist felt like
using. This mixture often underwent expansion on setting and would crack
the teeth. Black had a knowledge of materials science and got the formula
right.
Today, silver amalgam is still the most popular tooth filling material in the
world. It has been used extensively worldwide for over 200 years, and
almost everyone in the industrialized world has at least one or two amalgam
fillings in his/her teeth. It is estimated that up to 100 million amalgam
restorations are placed in decayed teeth every year.
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It is important to remember that There is no known statistical difference in
the health status of persons with amalgam fillings compared to those with no
fillings in their teeth! This has been shown to be the case in
NUMEROUS controlled studies, some of which are presented in this
essay. If you are worried about the health effects of your
amalgam fillings, read the rest of this essay, and follow a few of
the the links. |
Next page (The
science behind the amalgam controversy)==>>
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