Mercury in the Environment
Many of us have over the years been caught up in a debate about the virtues of dental amalgam as a filing material. Books have been written and many a fight has been had. I too was caught up in this fantasy argument for many years, before realizing that dental amalgam is NOT the issue – mercury is.
The total amount of mercury in dental amalgam sold in the U.S. during the calendar year 2001, as reported to the IMERC member states, was 61,409 pounds or 30.7 tons.
The issue is not the amalgam - The issue is the mercury in the amalgam. Mercury is the single problem. Mercury is banned everywhere except the mouth.
Dental amalgam is considered to be toxic waste
except in the mouth
of a living human being.
In the Best Management Practices for Scrap Dental Amalgam 2001, set out by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection we are told:
“There are three sources of scrap amalgam from dental operations:
- Excess amalgam which is mixed, but not used; damaged capsules.
- Amalgam from the operatory. This can be unused mixed amalgam or amalgam retrieved from operatory drain traps. Amalgam from operatory drain traps can be handled as scrap amalgam as long as the traps contain little or no tissue.
- Amalgam contained in extracted teeth. Extracted teeth that have no amalgam would be regulated as medical waste and cannot be placed in the same container as extracted teeth with amalgam.”
The environmental impact of mercury contamination is well known.
The disasters of mercury poisoning in Minamata Bay and Iraq are two examples. From 1932 to 1968, Chisso Corporation, a company located in Kumamoto Japan, dumped an estimated 27 tons of mercury compounds into Minamata Bay. Kumamoto is a small town about 570 miles southwest of Tokyo. The town consists of mostly farmers and fisherman. When Chisso Corporation dumped this massive amount of mercury into the bay, thousands of people whose normal diet included fish from the bay, unexpectedly developed symptoms of methyl mercury poisoning. The illness became known as the "Minamata Disease". The mercury poisoning resulted from years of environmental destruction and neglect from Chisso Corporation.
“In the early 1970's a major methyl mercury-poisoning catastrophe occurred in which an estimated 10,000 people died and 100,000 were severely and permanently brain damaged. Saddam's regime was largely successful in suppressing information about the event.
The problem began in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when Iraq experienced a series of abysmal harvests. Since the "green revolution" was beginning, Iraq imported "wonder wheat" from Mexico. The risk was that the seed might grow moldy during the long, humid ocean transport to Iraq if it was not dressed with some fungicide. Methyl mercury became the most cost-effective fungicide, because it had recently been banned in Scandinavia and several American states due to environmental and toxicological risks. So the world market was flooded and prices dropped.
The crisis did provide doctors with some greater understanding of how to detect methyl mercury poisoning. "Quiet baby syndrome," for example, when mothers praise their babies for never crying, is now considered a warning sign for methyl mercury-induced brain damage in children.”
Some readers may remember the days of the good old mercury thermometers, which found their way into many of our body spaces. Cases of people dying after thermometer breakages in the mouth are well documented. If one of these thermometers were to break in an average sized hospital ward, the ward would have to be evacuated and decontaminated. No wonder they were replaced with alcohol and electronic thermometers.
At one stage mercury was added to wall paint to prevent the build up of fungus and mould. They were soon taken off the market as it was found that they released levels of only 2 micrograms of mercury vapour per cubic meter. Remember that the mouth will have levels of 30 – 150 mcg/m3.
Amalgam in the teeth of dead humans is considered toxic waste as the amalgam leaks mercury into the environment and crematoria chimneys spew out mercury at a rate of about 11 kg per chimney per year. , , , Do not live downwind from a crematorium. Dead people are dangerous.
In fact in July 2007 Reuters News agency reported;
Amalgam waste is the biggest source of mercury in EU waste water and dental use also leads to the widespread dispersal of mercury into the atmosphere from cremation.
In the UK dental amalgam and mercury from laboratory and medical devices, account for about 53 percent of total mercury emissions and annually 7.41 tons of mercury from amalgam are discharged to the sewer, atmosphere or land.
From the BBC – 10 January 2005 we read
“Strict rules for crematoria to limit mercury pollution caused when tooth fillings are vaporized have been announced by ministers.
The industry has been told mercury filtering equipment must be fitted at crematoria by 2012 to halve emissions.
Exposure to the metal is linked to damage to the brain, nervous system and fertility with crematoria responsible for 16% of the UK's mercury pollution.
…the government defended the new rules, saying that unless action was taken mercury emissions would rise by two-thirds by 2020.
… Environment Minister Larry Whitty said: "By 2020, crematoria will be by far the biggest single contributor to mercury emissions in this country.”
Mercury from dental amalgam in dead people’s mouths is vaporized during cremation and currently produces 16% of all mercury pollution in the UK. This is toxic waste at its best. When in a mouth that is attached to a living person it is a filling. 16% is an astronomical figure!
To potentially be the single greatest source of mercury pollution in the English environment is beyond comprehension.
The British Dental Journal makes the following comment;
Mercury emissions clampdown announced
Measures to cut by half the amount of toxic mercury which crematoria release into the atmosphere were announced by the government recently.
According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, crematoria are estimated to be responsible for up to 16 percent of all UK emissions of mercury, from fillings in teeth. Mercury emissions are predicted to rise by two-thirds by 2020 unless action is taken.
The new government statutory guidance means that all crematoria should install equipment to cut mercury emissions by 50 percent by 2012.
New crematoria should be fitted with mercury control equipment, but those conducting fewer than 750 cremations a year have until 2012 to meet the new requirements.
Other countries including Austria, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland have taken steps to regulate mercury emissions from crematoria.
Britain has also signed up to an international treaty, the UN Heavy Metals Protocol, which aims to cut down on emissions of harmful metals, including mercury, and has already achieved one of its obligations by reducing emissions of mercury below 1990 levels, from 316 tonnes, to 8 tonnes in 2002.
Mercury, which accumulates in the air and in water, can harm the brain, kidneys, nervous system and unborn children.
It would be much cheaper just to ban the use of amalgam instead of promulgating the poisoning of the planet. 8 tonnes of mercury going into the atmosphere from Britain alone in just one year is inconceivable. 316 tonnes is simply rude. The best way to stop polluting the earth is to stop polluting the earth. If dental associations continue to ignore this issue than it must surely be time for governments to legislate. We must stop polluting the environment that we live in and also the environment inside of us.
It is interesting to browse the world wide web on a search for “crematoria mercury” - you will see the huge opposition to living close to crematoria. Local citizen groups are up in arms, refusing to allow a crematorium to be built in Contra Costa County, reports the San Francisco Chronicle in 2006;
The Richmond neighbors say they've had enough industrial development. And they especially don't want a crematorium, which emits mercury from the dental fillings of burning bodies -- in this case, about 3 pounds of mercury a year from 3,000 to 4,000 bodies.
"We don't want dead bodies spewing over our community. What goes up must come down, and we don't want to be breathing it in," … "It's unacceptable, period."
In the Mercola website we read; “Researchers in Northampton have discovered that crematorium workers have twice the level of normal mercury contamination in their bodies.”
“78% of American adults have dental fillings. If there are 200 million American adults that would mean that .78 x 200,000,000 would give us 156 million American adults with dental fillings. If the average American adult has 8 fillings with 800 mg. of amalgam that gives us 3.2 grams of mercury (amalgams are 50% mercury) in their fillings per American adult. 3.2 g x 28g/oz x 156 million = 17,828,571 ounces of mercury x 1/16 (ounces per pound) = 1,114,286 pounds of mercury or 557 tons of mercury stored in our mouths.
This appears to be a much bigger problem than the mercury from the burning of coal.”
Dental offices contribute between 12,000 and 50,000 pounds of mercury to waste water each year in the USA.
Another paper puts a tentative monetary value on Hg polluted food sources in the Arctic, where local, significant pollution sources are limited, and relates this to costs for strategies avoiding Hg pollution …
The cases we studied are relevant for point pollution sources globally and their remediation costs ranged between 2,500 and 1.1 million US dollars kg(-1) Hg isolated from the biosphere. Therefore, regulations discontinuing mercury uses combined with extensive flue gas cleaning for all power plants and waste incinerators is cost effective.
Currently the Australian Dental Association display an interesting position on their website. It is a paper which they have published in their own journal entitled “The environmental effects of dental amalgam.
The final paragraph states;
“The problem of environmental mercury contamination will not be solved by banning amalgam. As medical professionals, we should consider the various possibilities that can satisfy both the application of dental amalgam as a restorative material as well as minimizing the environmental effects. Tackling this problem by the application of simple guidelines for mercury waste handling will reduce the environmental concerns of dental waste to an insignificant level without compromising dental amalgam’s important role in dentistry.”
Clearly these comments do NOT reflect the reality. Mercury is mercury is mercury! There are NO safe levels of mercury. The rest of the world is seriously concerned by the environmental effects of mercury from amalgam. It appears that the dental associations have NO concern for the environment or our health!
Health risks from exposure to mercury from crematoria. The Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute Report, 51M 1/92.
More mercury from crematoria : Nature 1990 Aug 16;346(6285):615. Comment on: Nature 1990 Oct 18;347(6294):623 Nature. 1991 Feb 28
Nieschmidt AK Kim ND Effects of mercury release from amalgam dental restorations during cremation on soil mercury levels of three New Zealand crematoria. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol (1997 May) 58(5):744-51
Mercury in the hair of crematoria workers Susan R Maloney, Carol A Phillips, A Ilan Mills THE LANCET - Vol 352 - November 14,1998
The European Union pressed to ban mercury from mouths Saturday, July 28, 2007 - By Anna Stablum, LONDON, Reuters
BBC Monday, 23 November, 1998, - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/220366.stm
British Dental Journal (2005); 198, 191 http://www.nature.com/bdj/journal/v198/n4/full/4812154a.html
Batchu, Stone, Naleway, Meyer; Comparison of Particle Size Distributions of Dental Waste Water Under Various Clinical Procedures. J. Dent Res.74(SI):149
Environmental costs of mercury pollution. Hylander LD, Goodsite ME. Sci Total Environ. 2006 Sep 1;368(1):352-70. Epub 2006 Jan 25.
