AMALGAM FILLINGS
ARE HARMFUL
Roy Kupslnel, MD, suffered from severe headaches since the placing of his first fillings of mercury amalgam when he was about five years old. At age 55 he is now headache-free for one year. He had 29 fillings removed and replaced with composites, ceramic plastic resin materials.
Faye Dores had crippling arthritis, colitis, fatigue and memory loss. At age 35, she was told that she would soon be confined to a wheelchair for life. Faye had her dentist check her mouth for mercury vapor. The level was so astronomical that, If she had been a building, the Environmental Protection Agency would have had to condemn her and tear her down. She had her mercury fillings removed. In three weeks she threw away her cane, her tremors stopped and the swelling went out of her joints. She states that she is 95%
cured.
Nancy Yost of San Jose, California, was told by her doctors that she had multiple sclerosis. The diagnosis was confirmed by tests and she was declared "incurable". She had worked in the dental Industry and so knew about mercury toxicity. Her doctors had told her to "get real" and not to expect too much out of life. In other words, give up.
As a last resort, she had her five mercury fillings removed. She left the dentist's office using a cane and leaning heavily on the arm of a friend. The next day she was able to walk without a cane.
How could these disastrous situations have developed? Doesn't the Food and Drug Administration protect us from such occurrences? Unfortunately, at least In the case of dentistry, the answer is no. The ADA's dental division is stacked with people from the American Dental Association who tell the ADA what to do where dental regulation is concerned. There Is virtually no medical input or basic science, such as toxicology, represented on the ADA's dental board. So your health is in the hands of a bunch of political dentists who know nothing about mercury toxicity. Perhaps this explains why the ADA refused to be interviewed by 60 Minutes concerning the mercury amalgam Issue.
The dental silver-mercury amalgam has been in existence for 165 years. In the United States in the 1840's, the American Society of Dental Surgeons required its members to sign an agreement not to put amalgam in a patient's mouth. Members violated their agreement, the Organization dissolved, and the American Dental Association was born. Over 140 years ago some wise individuals realized the dangers of the toxicity of amalgams which contain approximately 50% mercury.
Since then, the American Dental Association has been stone walling the issue of mercury amalgam toxicity. In fact, until several years ago, the ADA said no vapor at all was released from these fillings. But when the public got wind of the fact that mercury/silver fillings can damage their health the ADA met the issue head on. It denied that there was any danger and started persecuting (and prosecuting) dentists who strayed from the party line.
Dentists have been taught that mercury stays within a filling and does not come out.
If mercury stays tightly bound in the amalgam compound as dentists are taught then five-or-ten year-old-fillings would still contain 50 percent mercury. They don't. Actual tests show that they contain 25 to 35 percent mercury. Some 20-year-old fillings have less than 5 percent mercury. In 1979 researchers established that mercury does leach from filled teeth. In fact, fillings can be the largest single source of exposure to inorganic mercury. The next step came when scientists showed that the escaped mercury winds up in body tissues; autopsies at Sweden's Karol nksa Institute found in 1987 that some people with silver fillings had three times as much mercury in their brain, and nine times as much In their kidneys, for Instance, as those without fillings.
Ask your dentist If the country of Sweden has banned mercury
amalgam fillings!!! He'll tell you they have. Ask your dentist if the
American Council on Dental Materials and Devices recommends that
dentists: 1) Avoid any contact with mercury, 2) Handle It only In
tightly sealed containers, and 3) Perform annual mercury-level tests
on their staff and themselves. He'll tell you they have.
Dr. Heber Simmons, Consumer Adviser for the American Dental Association, was asked by Morley Safer, "You concede that there is a constant release of mercury vapor (from amalgam fillings)?"
"Oh, we don't dispute that at all . (Remember, the ADA'S position till seven years ago was to total y deny any vapor release.) But the amount that Is being released when you chew is such a small amount that it Is not going to cause a problem."
When asked to explain the remarkable recoveries we described earlier, Simmons reported that the cases were anecdotal and clinically insignificant.
WHAT ARE DENTAL AMALGAM MADE OF?
Although we refer to our fillings as "silver", amalgam Is actually made up of about 52 percent mercury, with the remainder being copper, tin, silver, and zinc. There is a wealth of scientific documentation proving that all five elements affect all the major organs of the body, including the kidneys, liver, heart, central nervous system, and Immune system. The five metals contained in the amalgam can combine to produce some 16 different corrosion products, all floating around in the body with unknown effects.
RECOMMENDATION
Since dental amalgam contains approximately 50% by weight of mercury (a substance that is highly toxic to humans) and since the workshop failed to provide evidence to substantiate the safety of dental" amalgam, the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology recommends the following:
"That the governments of the United States and Canada declare an Immediate prohibition on the further use of dental silver-mercury fillings until primary scientific documentation can be provided proving that the mercury released from dental fillings Is not harmful to the public."
Without a doubt, mercury is extraordinarily toxic to humans. According to the Toxicity Center at the University of Tennessee, which rates poisons for their lethal toxicity to humans scores mercury at 1,600, compared to Plutonium, the deadliest, at 1,900. This rating places It among the most toxic substances known to man.
Mercury is more poisonous than lead, cadmium or arsenic. Yet, no dentist would dream of packing your teeth with lead or arsenic. Inhaled mercury vapor is at least a hundred times more toxic than swallowed mercury. Mercury vapor is what comes off your teeth from the fillings when you chew your food. This occurs multiple times a day every time you eat or grind your teeth together. Also, a battery-like effect, resulting from two metal fillings touching each other, can cause a continuous release of mercury vapor into your mouth.
Don't let your dentist reassure you with a blood-level test for mercury.
The test is not reliable and tells you nothing about the amount of
mercury that your body has stored over the years.
DENTAL AMALGAM KILLS FOUR
It was late August, 1989. The place was Michigan. Four people; two men and two women who had lived in a private home, lay dead.
Just over three weeks before, they were hospitalized, complaining of chest pain, diarrhea, nausea and shortness of breath. Their breathing became more labored and difficult. Four days into their hospital stay, it was learned that one of the men living in the house had been collecting mercury amalgam dental fillings. He had been heating up the fillings in the basement in order to extract the small amount of silver in them to sell . Aggressive medical procedures to remove mercury from their bodies along with substantial respiratory support were initiated, but to no avail. All four people died of mercury poisoning.
The house in which the amalgam was heated was extensively cleaned in the hopes of removing the mercury. The cleaning failed and the contaminated house was declared unfit for habitation and had to be torn down. According to environmental guidelines, the mercury laden rubble was disposed of as hazardous waste.
These unfortunate victims died from breathing mercury vapor from the identical kind of fillings that are In 200 mil ion Americans' teeth. It is estimated that 100 mil ion new amalgam-fillings containing mercury are placed In teeth each year in the U.S. I am aware of no other material except mercury amalgam that is implanted daily in our bodies by medicine or dentistry that can contaminate whole buildings and kill people simply by being heated.
Even The World Health organization concedes that the public's highest daily
exposure to mercury comes from dental amalgam fillings.
MERCURY DISTRIBUTION
From the amalgams, mercury vapors may be breathed into the lungs then absorbed by the bloodstream. The mercury particles and ions may be swallowed and absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract into the circulatory system. Now, it may travel to just about any and every tissue, organ and cell . Mercury's target organs are kidneys, cardiac muscle, lungs, liver, brain, and red blood cells. Others are thyroid, pituitary, adrenals, spleen, testes, ovaries, bone marrow, skeletal muscle, and Intestines.
There's very strong evidence that mercury in ' dental fillings can cause a broad spectrum of symptoms and diseases. Everything from depression to arthritis may be involved in a particular case; it's extremely variable. Mercury poisoning has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease, colitis, kidney disease, birth defects, brain damage, and symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
As Dr. Alfred Zamm said on 60 Minutes "Doctors very rarely make a diagnosis of mercury poisoning because of the difficulties of it. It has different faces. One (patient) has headaches, one has tiredness, one has this, one has that. It's a very difficult diagnosis to make especially when it's micro-mercurialism in very small amounts." Dr. Zamm Is an allergist and dermatologist and has reported hundreds of cases of patients who have recovered from a variety of diseases after having their fillings removed.
Dentists have double the number of brain tumors....
A study at Temple University, Philadelphia, showed that dentists....who work with mercury fillings all day long....have overwhelming evidence of mercury poisoning in the form of high concentrations in the pituitary glands. The study also showed they had double the number of brain tumors.