Educate-Yourself.org-Are Your fillings Making You Sick?

Are Your Fillings Making You Sick?

By Bill Sturgeon <sturgeon@asis.com>
Sep 30, 2000

For 150 years we had been covering our homes, offices and classrooms with lead-based paint. Then we learned that this lead had been migrating into our bodies and making us sick so we stopped using it. For 150 years we had been covering our living spaces with fire-resistant asbestos. Then we learned that the asbestos had been migrating into our bodies and making us sick so we stopped using it. For 150 years we have been filling our tooth cavities with mercury-based material and are now
learning that this inorganic heavy metal, itself nearly as toxic as arsenic, has been migrating systemically into our bodies and is making us sick and we must now stop using it.

Research results released during the past five years present massive evidence that mercury in dental fillings has been doing much harm. Mercury amalgam with a radioactive tracer added has been placed in the teeth of sheep and monkeys. These experiments revealed that this labeled mercury, in just one month, found its way into the animals' internal organs and brains. Other studies, using dead bodies of accident victims, revealed that those with mercury fillings had three times as much mercury in their brains as those without. The brains of Alzheimer's victims show elevated mercury levels. Multiple Scleroses victims have eight times more mercury in their cerebrospinal fluid than others, and MS was unknown until ten years following the use of mercury fillings. These examples of mercury's toxicity and its ability to migrate are only the tip of the iceberg.

Research results aside, what does government say?
In 1993 the California State Board of Dental Examiners published that mercury is a known toxin that has been shown to escape into the body. The US Environmental Protection Agency classifies the mercury filling material, once removed from one's mouth, as a toxic waste that must then be specially handled in special containers. The World Health Organization announced that mercury in fillings leaks into the patient's system at the alarming rate of 3-17 micrograms a day by chewing. The US Food and Drug Administration, incredibly, has never tested the safety of mercury fillings. Instead, they grandfathered it through because it had been already in use for so long. Mercury fillings are totally banned, by government, in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Sweden.

Elementary Physics
Thirdly, I have a word for the elementary physics involved here. Elemental, metallic, liquid-at-room-temperature mercury evaporates readily into its surrounding air. It has a high vapor pressure. If allowed to do so, as when you break a thermometer and don't clean up, deadly mercury vapor will saturate the surrounding air. A cube, about five feet on a side, can hold a whole gram of vapor mercury! You don't want to breath that. If you have mercury in your teeth, it is metallic in form. While strongly bonded to the silver matrix it lives with, the vapor pressure of the surface mercury molecules is not overcome and it slowly evaporates into your mouth, mostly when you chew. While chewing gum the release increases by 40 to 200 times. Then you inhale it and it
begins to do nasty things like interfering with enzymatic reactions at the cellular level.

In spite of all this compelling evidence, the American Dental Association (ADA), that was originally founded for the purpose of supporting the use of mercury fillings, continues to hold that mercury
fillings don't leak mercury and are therefore harmless. In fact, the ADA holds any dentist who removes mercury fillings for health reasons is guilty of an ethics violation and subject to license suspension. Mercury removal for cosmetic reasons is, however, OK.

Why the denial?
Consider what might happen should the ADA announce that mercury fillings were making people sick. The logical path of action would be, don't you think, to first call for an immediate halt to its ongoing use, and then to remove and replace existing mercury implants with something less harmful, as we so painstakingly did with asbestos in our schools? Well, there are an estimated two billion mercury fillings walking around out there. At, say, $100 for each replacement, we are talking about $200 billion dollars for a total product recall. Who would pay for it?

Tom Warren, author of Beating Alzheimer's writes, "The ADA has covered up its culpability in the same way breast implant and cigarette manufacturers deny disease connection to those products. . . From a legal standpoint, the most logical way for the ADA to avoid the largest class action lawsuit ever brought before the courts and its consequences, is to stop using amalgam, tomorrow."

How does the ADA feel about you? In a legal action the ADA proclaimed, "The ADA (as a trade association) owes no legal duty of care to protect the public. . ."

If you are a dentist still using mercury amalgam, be careful. If you tell your patient that it is harmful, you already know that the ADA will come after you. But in light of these new findings if you don't tell your patient you might now be sued for not providing informed consent.

Want to learn more? Read The Key to Ultimate Health, by Brown and Hansen, 1998, available from Advanced Health Research Publishing at 1-888-792-1102

Bill Sturgeon is an FDA-certified Medical Device Manufacturer and medical science writer

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All information posted on this web site is the opinion of the author and is provided for educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as medical advice. Only a licensed medical doctor can legally offer medical advice in the United States. Consult the healer of your choice for medical care and advice.