“It takes one gram of mercury
to poison a 20-acre lake,” Warwick explained, but only if it was
atmospheric. “The amount dentists bring in would pollute almost half the
lakes in Canada and make the fish inedible in one year, and we do this
every year.”
About half the dentists in North America
still use mercury fillings, according to Dr. David Warwick, a dentist
at the Hanna Dental Clinic.
“They look like silver, but they are actually made of half mercury and half silver, tin and other metals,” Warwick explained. “The new fillings can be made of quartz, they’re white, and there is an acrylic resin that binds them.”
Warwick is the team leader for the
audio/visual and the environmental committees in International Academy
of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT). In 1992, the Hanna Dental
Clinic become mercury-free. Warwick said he started thinking about
mercury and its effects when he attended school in the late ’70s and
early ’80s.
“We were taught all these precautions on
how to store mercury, but we’re still placing it in to people’s
mouths,” Warwick said. “I didn’t get that. I thought if it’s so safe,
why would we have to worry about the precautions? Why couldn’t we just
throw it in the garbage?”
When Warwick started his own practice,
he was exposed to the effects mercury could have.
“I started getting some symptoms quite
possibly from not being as careful as I should have been,” Warwick said.
“You want to be as safe as you can, and mercury isn’t just bad for the
patients it’s bad for the dentists and staff, too.”
The dental industry in Canada alone
brings in 5,000 kilograms of mercury each year.
“It takes one gram of mercury to poison a
20-acre lake,” Warwick explained, but only if it was atmospheric. “The
amount dentists bring in would pollute almost half the lakes in Canada
and make the fish inedible in one year, and we do this every year.”
Environment Canada is trying to have all
countries sign a document that globally binds against the use of
mercury.
“In general, they want to eliminate or
reduce dramatically the globalization of mercury in all products,”
Warwick explained. “It has a negative impact on the environment so why
are we using it in the mouth when we have perfectly good alternative?”
Mercury has been linked to Alzheimer’s
disease and autism, but is still being used as fillings.
“A study took a bunch of kids with
autism, and they counted the number of mercury fillings the mothers had
in their mouths. It was something like a four-times increase in the
chance of them having a severely autistic child, if the mother had six
or more fillings in her mouth,” Warwick acknowledged.
Another study showed there was enough
evidence to connect autism to mercury, then there is to connect smoking
and lung cancer.
“The World Health Organization came out,
several years ago, and said if you have any mercury fillings in your
mouth, then the amount of mercury that leaches off your mercury filling,
is more than all the other sources of mercury combined. This study
still stands true today,” Warwick explained.
When a mercury filling is put in, it
increases the mercury exposure of the individual.
“This is the problem. Various government
agencies still maintain that mercury fillings are safe and do not cause
problems,” Warwick said. “They choose not to consider studies that show
there is damage.”
Patients are asking for the new fillings
constantly. They match the colour of the teeth, but dentists are still
using mercury fillings. A recommendation from Health Canada in 1996
stated that if you can, you should not use a mercury filling in a child.
The dentist curriculum, however, still allows them to teach mercury
fillings.
“As a result, all the dentists who
complete school, come through thinking it’s fine to use mercury
fillings,” Warwick said. “Health Canada recommendations are not being
upheld.”
Mercury fillings are easier to put in,
Warwick said.
“They are a lot less technic sensitive,
and as a result the white fillings cost around 20 per cent more to put
in than the mercury ones.”
Health Canada and Environment Canada
don’t see eye-to-eye on the subject. “Environment Canada seems to be
more interested in is the mercury coming out of the coal-fired plants
from India and China coming across the Arctic and polluting the land,”
Warwick said. “That is sad because we’re still putting mercury inside
people’s mouths.”
With all the research being done on
mercury the best research in coming out of the University of Calgary.
“They showed that mercury was the only
element they could find which changed nerve cells and made them look
like a cell from someone with Alzheimer’s,” Warwick said.
When a person is exposed to mercury,
they either have the defense to fight it off or they don’t. “Some people
have a very poor protective mechanism to keep mercury out of the brain.
That’s where we get into trouble,” Warwick said. “The same kind of
damage could be said about autism as well.”
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