The Smoking tooth Video

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The Smoking Tooth video (debunked)

One of the most compelling anti-amalgamist tidbits found on the web today is the smoking teeth video found on the website of IAOMT (The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology). This organization is perhaps the most prominent of the "official" anti amalgamist and anti fluoride groups in the world. In fact, it is not affiliated with any recognized academic or governmental organization. Their affiliations are limited to other organizations which, like themselves, promote anti amalgam and anti fluoride dogmas.
The smoking tooth video shows an extracted tooth, warmed to body temperature and held in front of a phosphorescent screen. The screen lights up when it is excited with ultraviolet radiation and creates a background against which objects appear in silhouette. The experimenter holds up the tooth and the viewer sees "smoke" rising from the top, presumably where there is an amalgam filling. The experimenter tells you that the smoke is mercury vapor, and you are witnessing a phenomenon that happens in your mouth. The conclusion is that mercury is rising from your fillings and is going to poison you. In fact, the video is a fraud! The people who believe in the anti amalgam and anti fluoride crusades are sincere in their beliefs that they are fighting for a just cause, but if no real world evidence is available, they are not above creating their own.
The vapor rising from the tooth is not mercury vapor!

Mercury vapor is MUCH heavier than air

Therefore, it would not rise at room temperature like the vapor seen on the video.

It would sink, even if it were much warmer than the surrounding air.

Mercury vapor is an INVISIBLE gas. It never becomes visible in room air.

Mercury evaporates so slowly that there would not be enough to see, even if it were a visible gas.

On the other hand, water has all the right properties to account for the fumes you see on the video!

Water vapor is lighter than air. Whenever water evaporates, the vapor rises.

Water vapor becomes visible as steam in saturated air.

Water vapor evaporates quickly at room temperature.

1. Mercury vapor is much heavier than air.

Whether a gas will rise or sink in air depends on the density difference between that gas and the surrounding air. Water vapor is a third lighter than the air surrounding it, while mercury vapor is is seven times heavier than the air surrounding it.
Here's the math proving that mercury vapor is much heavier than the surrounding air, and would sink rather than rise:
(Many thanks to Jim Laidler, MD of Portland Oregon for working this out.)
When ANY substance vaporizes, the volume of space that the gas will fill depends on three parameters:

the temperature of the gas and the surrounding air

The barometric pressure

The number of gas molecules available to fill the space

A mole of any substance is its molecular weight in grams. This is important because a mole of any gas has exactly the same number of molecules as a mole of any other gas. For example, a mole of hydrogen weighs two grams because the molecular weight of hydrogen (H2) is 2. A mole of helium weighs 4 grams because the molecular weight of helium is 4. A mole of mercury vapor weighs about 200 grams since the molecular weight of mercury is about 200. Regardless of their respective weights, however, a mole of each of these three elements has exactly the same number of molecules.

Another interesting property of gases is that a mole of any gas will always fill the same exact volume of space as a mole of any other gas. At 21°C, (room temperature 70°F), and standard atmospheric pressure, that volume will always be 24.055 liters per mole. This is true for all gases, regardless of their origin, even vaporized solids. At body temperature (37°C) the volume of a mole of any gas is slightly higher, (25.452 liters) since higher temperatures make gases expand. At 100°C a mole of any gas occupies 30.62 liters.

Density of gases

A mole of hydrogen gas (weighing two grams) has a volume of 24.055 liters at room temperature and standard atmospheric pressure while a mole of mercury vapor (weighing 200 grams) at room temperature and standard atmospheric pressure will fill exactly the same volume. Since the same volume of mercury vapor weighs 100 times more than the same volume of hydrogen gas, the hydrogen will obviously "float" on top of the mercury vapor. We say that the mercury vapor has a much higher density than the hydrogen. The higher the molecular weight of a gas, the higher the density of that gas.

Note: The actual molecular weight of any element is not a whole number since a small percentage of every element is composed of isotopes with varying numbers of neutrons. For simplicity sake, I have rounded down the the atomic weights of all elements to a whole number.

The consequences of high vs. low density is more easily visualized when comparing the relative densities of air and carbon dioxide
Whether a gas will rise or sink depends on the density difference between that gas and the surrounding gas. The density of helium is much lower than the density of air. Therefore, a helium balloon needs to be tied to a string (which in turn needs to be tied to a child's hand) or it just floats away. On the other hand, if the balloon were filled with carbon dioxide, the balloon would sink to the ground:

Air is composed of approximately 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen plus 1% of other rare gases. Air has an averaged molecular weight of 28.8 grams

One liter of air weighs [28.8 gm per mole /24.055 liters] = approximately 1.2 grams.

The density of air at room temperature is about 1.2gm/liter.

Carbon dioxide has a molecular weight of approximately 44.

One liter of carbon dioxide weighs [44 gm per mole /24.055 liters] = approximately 1.83 grams.

The density of CO2 at room temperature is about 1.83 gm/liter.

Carbon dioxide is about 50% heavier than air at room temperature and standard atmospheric pressure.

The image of the beaker of CO2 below shows that the carbon dioxide released when dry ice is immersed in water is heavier than the surrounding air. Of course the CO2 itself is not visible. The cloud is composed of tiny water droplets suspended in the descending gas. The fact that the CO2 is colder than the surrounding air is not the reason it is descending from the beaker.

Even carbon dioxide at the same temperature as the surrounding air tends to sink to the ground. As proof of this, the reader might want to explore the disaster that happened at Lake Nyos in Cameroon on the night of August 21, 1986 when a rock slide caused the lake to release tons of CO2 that had been locked up on the lake bottom. The formerly blue lake turned red due to the iron oxide that came up with the gas, and the invisible "cloud" of CO2 hugged the ground overnight and suffocated 1700 sleeping people and 3500 livestock.

Now back to the smoking tooth video

Water vapor naturally rises in room temperature air at standard atmospheric pressure

Air has a density of 1.2 grams per liter (as calculated above)

Water has a molecular weight of 18. Water vapor has a density of
[18 gm per mole / 24.055 liters] = .75 grams/liter.

Since water vapor is lighter than air, water vapor naturally rises in room temperature air at standard atmospheric pressure.

Therefore, the image of the vapor rising from the tooth on the video is consistent with water vapor.

Mercury vapor naturally sinks in room temperature air at standard atmospheric pressure

Air has a density of 1.2 grams per liter (as calculated above)

Mercury has a molecular weight of about 200. Mercury vapor has a density of [200 gm per mole / 24.055 liters] = about 8.31 gm/liter.

Since mercury vapor is seven times heavier than air, it would sink like a rock in room temperature air at standard atmospheric pressure.

Therefore, the video image of vapor rising from the tooth is not consistent with mercury vapor

Note: Mercury vapor cannot be made to rise in room temperature air even if the temperature of the tooth were raised much higher than the stated 37°C body temperature. If the temperature of the tooth were raised to 100°C (the boiling point of water), the volume of a mole of mercury vapor at that temperature would occupy 30.62 liters. At that temperature the density of the mercury vapor would be [200 gm per mole / 30.62 liters] = 6.53 grams per liter. That puts the density of mercury vapor at 100°C at about 5 1/2 times the density of the surrounding room temperature air confirming that even hot mercury vapor would sink like a stone in room temperature air.

A more realistic fraud might have looked something like this:

2. Mercury vapor is an invisible gas

Water vapor becomes visible as it condenses into tiny water droplets (steam) when it comes into contact with cooler, saturated air. (Saturated air is air that contains as much water vapor as it can hold under the prevailing conditions of temperature and pressure.) The water droplets are kept aloft by air currents. When you see steam rising from a boiling pot, you are not actually seeing water vapor. You are seeing tiny "raindrops", (fog).

Water vapor is actually invisible if the air surrounding it is not saturated. Anyone who has driven past a power plant cooling tower on a clear day knows that the steam column rises for a distance, and then disappears into thin air. It disappears because the water droplets evaporate in the relatively dry air. Driving past the same cooling tower on a rainy day, you can see the steam column rising much higher into the sky because the air already contains as much water vapor as it can hold and the water droplets do not evaporate.

Mercury, once volatilized, does not re-condense into visible mercury droplets! This is because the air surrounding the vapor is not saturated with mercury, and the individual mercury atoms which are now dispersed in the air, become more and more dilute over time. They never become concentrated enough to condense into droplets which would, if they actually formed, be visible against the phosphorescent screen. Mercury vapor is an INVISIBLE GAS.

3. Mercury evaporates so slowly at normal temperatures that there would not be enough of it to see even if it were a visible gas.

It would take 8928.6 hours for .5 grams of pure mercury to evaporate completely at 20°C, assuming an evaporative surface area of 1 square centimeter. (Link) It would probably take a week or two less time to evaporate at body temperature (37°C). One cubic cm of mercury weighs 13.593 grams, so a half gram of mercury takes up the space of a ball-type pinhead, about the size of the one pictured to the left (4 mm diameter). That's about a year to evaporate a drop of mercury about the size of a pinhead, provided it is spread it out to about the thickness of a piece of paper so it would present a surface area of a a square centimeter. Compare that with how long it takes the water in the cat dish to evaporate! Note that mercury locked up in amalgam would vaporize MUCH more slowly than pure mercury spread out as thin as paper.

Water, on the other hand, vaporizes very quickly from the wet surface of the tooth at 37°C, and begins to rise immediately. It condenses in the relatively cool air above the tooth and becomes visible. The friction from the pencil eraser would further warm the surface and cause more water to evaporate. (I suspect that the experimenter had to re-warm the surface and renew the moisture on the top of the tooth frequently to keep the illusion going. Note the number of cuts in the video. As the tooth cools, the water evaporates away, and breaks in filming would be needed to reheat the tooth and supply more water.)

4. Finally, the fumes from the tooth might be neither water vapor nor mercury vapor. They look suspiciously like smoke!

One other possibility is outright fraud. It is possible to heat an amalgam filling in the tooth to a very high temperature using a pinpoint pizo-butane torch without heating the rest of the tooth intolerably. Every dentist owns at least one of these torches. They are also available at Walmart. A hot metal filling can burn nearly anything placed on it, including a pencil eraser.

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