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How to read a web page published
by
anti-amalgamists
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If you do a Google search for "dental
amalgam mercury" you will be presented with literally
hundreds of thousands of results, almost all of them
pointing to pages warning of the toxicity of dental amalgam.
The people who write them are mostly good, honest folks.
They are simply misguided in their beliefs concerning the
dangers of dental amalgam. |
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Most
believe that anyone who does not hold their beliefs is involved in a
huge conspiracy to poison people for financial gain. Since
there is SO MUCH misinformation concerning this subject, I provide some
common sense guidelines to help you, the reader, to evaluate their
claims:
The misinterpretation of the EPA
regulations pertaining to Amalgam
Most of the claims against dental amalgam rely on the 1989
classification of scrap dental amalgam as an environmental
waste contaminant. Amalgam is actually only one among many
much more important sources of environmental mercury contamination
such as fluorescent light tubes, batteries, numerous electronic
components.....etc., the disposal
of which fall under EPA guidelines. In fact, the EPA
guidelines concerning the disposal of scrap dental amalgam is based
on the theoretical ability of the otherwise insoluble mercury it
contains to be converted to soluble salts and organic mercury by
organisms in the soil. On the other hand, amalgam in your
mouth remains insoluble and harmless. Yes, there are
microorganisms in your mouth too, but they "eat" only organic
material and do not convert mercury to organic or soluble forms.
All anti-amalgamist arguments against dental amalgam rely
exclusively on the EPA classification of waste dental amalgam as an
environmental
contaminant.
The EPA is NOT tasked with determining the actual medical
risks to people from any product that contains substances it
controls. Note that there are no EPA restrictions on the
use of fluorescent light tubes, or, for that matter, on the
use of dental amalgam--only on their disposal. The
governmental body that IS tasked with the evaluation of the safety
of medical devices and materials is the US Food and Drug
Administration (the FDA).
Anti-Amalgamist sites NEVER reference the FDA which is the
regulatory agency that is tasked with evaluating the actual
medical risk to individuals and public health in general! If
the Food and Drug Administration finds that dental amalgam poses a
danger to the public, it has the power to ban its use. Since
there is no scientific evidence that dental amalgam causes disease,
the FDA has NOT discovered any reason to withdraw amalgam from the
market or to warn the public about its use as it has with tobacco
products. Click
here to read the FDA's official
policy with respect to dental amalgam. (Note the (dot).gov extension
in the url at the top of your browser when you go to this page.
The dot (.) gov extension is your assurance that this site is, in fact,
published by the government since that domain is unavailable to
private entities.)
Even the EPA states on their
website that dental
amalgam does not pose health risks for people with
fillings.
"According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), there is little scientific evidence
that the health of the vast majority of people with
dental amalgam is compromised, nor that removing amalgam
fillings has a beneficial effect on health. A
2004 review of the scientific literature conducted for
the U.S. Public Health Service found
“insufficient evidence of a link between dental mercury
and health problems, except in rare instances of
allergic reaction.” In September 2006, an advisory panel to the FDA
reviewed FDA’s research and heard presentations from the
public about the benefits and risks of mercury and
amalgam. The panel generally agreed that there is
no evidence that dental amalgams cause health problems
in the majority of the population. However, the panel
did raise concerns about the lack of knowledge
concerning the effects of dental amalgam on specific
groups, including pregnant women and small children.
This finding may have political impact on the issue,
but it has NO scientific relevance since no proactive
studies are ever carried out on pregnant women or
small children. This is due to the legal liability
involved studying these groups. No drug company or
scientific body would dare to carry out such studies for
fear of devastating law suits. While reading
through the physician's desk reference on drugs, one is
struck by the sheer volume of drugs that are not
recommended for children or pregnant women due to the
lack of scientific documentation regarding their safety
in these demographics. |
Is dental amalgam banned in any US
state or in any other country?
Anti-Amalgamist sites also cite pending legislation in
various states and foreign countries to ban the use of amalgam.
Note that these pieces of legislation constantly remain pending
(some for many, many years) and never are enacted into law.
This legislation does not generally survive judicial review (although
politicians are often ignorant of the science, and may be taken in
by anti-amalgamist arguments). The courts require scientific
proof, and there really is no scientific proof that dental amalgam
causes any medical problem.
As of 2009, Sweden has introduced a blanket ban on the use of
mercury containing products in order to protect the environment.
Note that the Swedish ban does not single out dental amalgam, but
applies to all medical and industrial uses of mercury. Amalgam
is an unfortunate casualty of the ban, not the cause of it. As
stated above, mercury in amalgam represents a hazard once it is
released into the environment, since it is transformed by vegetation
into potentially toxic substances. It does NOT, however,
represent a health hazard in the oral cavity.
It has become increasingly obvious that the list of diseases
supposedly caused by mercury poisoning due to amalgam 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 disturbances.
Mainstream scientists have no difficulty demonstrating these facts
in a court of law, thus the anti-amalgamists' arguments are unable
to prevail there. Furthermore, since the average amount of
mercury consumed daily in ordinary food and water exceeds
the amount released by a mouthful of dental amalgams by a factor of
at least four, there is no reason to believe that the mercury in
amalgam would significantly increase the frequency or severity of
these vague symptoms, even if it could be shown that mercury, in
general, was responsible for them.
| Note: I Have not prohibited Google ads from
antiamalgamist sites. Feel free to click on the
ads so that you can see the type of disinformation I
talk about here. |
What about the statistics and references
cited on anti-amalgamist sites?
Some anti-amalgamist sites present some pretty
impressive looking statistics and references, however, if you
actually check out these references, you will discover the following:
- Most references cite other anti-amalgamists
who, in turn, cite each other in a kind of fictitious round-robin
tag team. Never trust any reference to an "eminent" doctor who
works for an institution with an impressive sounding name.
These people are lone actors and have personal agendas, while the
institutions are often just anti-amalgamist constructions. If
you actually try to find information on these "respected
institutions" (try finding their official websites using a Google
search), you will discover that they are NOT associated with any
accredited university or the US government. You can research
these constructions yourself on the internet.
- The statistics they cite are fictitious, or
gleaned from the sites of other anti-amalgamists who gleaned them
from other anti-amalgamists...etc...etc..
- They provide url's to some statistical sources, but the url's
rarely work if you copy them into your browser's address bar.
The few that actually do work send your browser off to sites which
pretend to be authoritative, but are not. Or else they do not cite
the statistics implied by the reference. Some even cite
fictitious government agencies. Federal agencies have websites
ending with a .gov domain. Always check the url in the address
bar at the top of the browser. If it is not in the .gov
domain, then it is not a true federal agency.
- They cite Environmental Protection Agency studies which are not
relevant to medical concerns. (EPA studies concern themselves
only with protection of the environment. The EPA regulates
only the disposal of scrap and waste dental amalgam.
It does not regulate the use of dental amalgam.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not assess the
actual medical risk of a particular product or material to
individuals. Their responsibility lies in assessing the risks
posed by a product or material when released into the environment as
a whole. Once released into the environment, elemental mercury
(such as that found in dental amalgam) may be converted by soil and
water bacteria and plants into soluble organic (toxic) forms which
could end up in the food or water supply as they did in
Minamata
Japan. Thus the regulation of the disposal of
waste dental amalgam becomes their responsibility.
Environmental toxicity of waste amalgam does NOT imply any medical
risk to individuals when amalgam is properly used in the repair of
peoples' teeth since there are no organisms in the human mouth able
to convert elemental mercury to more toxic forms.
The proper US governmental agency which is tasked with
this responsibility is the US Food and Drug Administration--the FDA.
The FDA
has NOT discovered any reason to withdraw amalgam from
the market or to warn the public about its use as it has with
tobacco products.)
| In order to help prove the point that mercury release from
amalgam fillings is quite harmless, and to allay any fear that a
concerned reader may have about this subject, I have abstracted an
entire published scientific paper on the correlation between serum
mercury levels on the one hand, and the frequency of symptoms and
diseases on the other.
Click here to
read this paper (page 7 of this report) which has been translated so as to be easily
understood by the lay public. |
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