My dentist told me that dental amalgam is totally safe, that the mercury is chemically locked in and poses no danger, not even to pregnant women, or people with kidney disease. Perhaps he is not up on the US news, so here it goes:
“Just four weeks after we celebrated our 10th annual Mercury Awareness and Mercury-Free Dentistry Week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a long-overdue safety communication on amalgam.
In an astounding about-face to its previous stance, the FDA issued a warning that mercury fillings may adversely affect pregnant women, children and other susceptible individuals, and should be avoided by these groups.
The safety communication was posted September 24, 2020, and with this, we have suddenly achieved an incredibly important goal that we’ve had our sights on for the last decade!
Goal Achieved: FDA Releases Amalgam Safety Communication
As noted in the FDA’s statement:
“Today, the FDA is issuing updated recommendations concerning dental amalgam and potential risks to certain high-risk individuals that may be associated with these mercury-containing fillings …
The FDA has found that certain groups may be at greater risk for potential harmful health effects of mercury vapor released from the device [amalgam]. As a result, the agency is recommending certain high-risk groups avoid getting dental amalgam whenever possible and appropriate.”
FDA Admits Amalgam Dangers
After years of pressure from Consumers for Dental Choice and its allies, the FDA finally admits the unvarnished truth about amalgam, noting3 that “Dental amalgam is a mixture of mercury and a powdered alloy made up of silver, tin and copper” that “releases small amounts of mercury vapor over time.”
The FDA has found that certain groups may be at greater risk for potential harmful health effects of mercury vapor released from the device [amalgam]. As a result, the agency is recommending certain high-risk groups avoid getting dental amalgam whenever possible and appropriate.
The agency also admits there are “uncertainties” and risks associated with this mercury vapor release, especially for the high-risk groups listed. In particular, there is “the potential for mercury in dental amalgam to convert to other mercury compounds in the body,” and mercury could potentially accumulate in body fluids and tissues, resulting in “unintended health outcomes.”
“These uncertainties in the most vulnerable patients are why today we are recommending people who may be at high risk for adverse health effects of mercury exposure use non-mercury alternatives to dental amalgam, such as composite resins and glass ionomer cement fillings,” the FDA states.4
While the FDA downplays the importance of its changed recommendation by stressing that the benefits of dental amalgam likely “outweigh their risks for most patients,” this update is nothing short of monumental, and opens the door, finally, for the elimination of dental mercury for all patients in the U.S., as has been done in many other countries already.
I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have supported Consumers for Dental Choice during these past 10 years, as it is this organization’s unwavering dedication that has now borne fruit.
Consumers for Dental Choice Sued FDA — and Won
The FDA is legally required to classify — that is, issue a rule for — all medical devices, including dental amalgam. But for 30 years, FDA dodged its legal duty to classify amalgam.
Consumers for Dental Choice put an end to FDA's negligence when, in 2008, this dynamic nonprofit organization assembled plaintiffs and sued FDA, demanding that amalgam be classified. The judge agreed and told FDA to sit down with Consumers for Dental Choice to determine a deadline. FDA was compelled to commit to classifying amalgam by July 2009.
But when July 2009 came around, it was clear the FDA had not considered the science — especially the evidence of harm amalgam can cause vulnerable populations like children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers.
Its abysmal rule reflected this shortcoming, as it did not restrict the use of amalgam for these most vulnerable individuals. The rule did not even require that patients be told that amalgam is made of mercury. Nonetheless, FDA's 2009 rule did acknowledge that amalgam could be harmful, and that there was no proof of safety for the populations most susceptible to this toxin.
In response, Consumers for Dental Choice challenged FDA's rule, while simultaneously pursuing other opportunities to advance mercury-free dentistry, like defeating pro-mercury state dental boards, fighting for amalgam fact sheet laws for patients at the state level, and getting amalgam into the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
As Consumers for Dental Choice racked up win after win — regaining licenses for mercury-free dentists persecuted by state boards, gaining fact sheets to protect dental patients, achieving an amalgam reduction requirement in the Minamata Convention — the FDA’s rule was looking increasingly archaic.
Decade-Long Wait Is Over
Nearly a decade after the FDA issued its flawed amalgam rule, Consumers for Dental Choice launched a nonstop campaign focused on getting the FDA to move on amalgam.
They assembled an accomplished team of experts to approach the FDA, and in 2018, unveiled the “Chicago Declaration to End Mercury Use in the Dental Industry” at the University of Illinois School of Public Health.
This declaration, signed by more than 50 heavy-hitter environmental groups, called on the FDA "to bring its policies in line with the Federal Government as a whole and with its responsibilities under the Minamata Convention and to publicly advise a phase down of the use of mercury amalgams with the goal of phasing out entirely."
The declaration also called for the immediate ban on amalgam use in children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers. Working with key signatories to the “Chicago Declaration,” Consumers for Dental Choice were able to secure meetings with top officials at the FDA, during which they were able to submit scientific studies for the FDA to review.
The first sign of progress came with the FDA's September 2019 scientific review of amalgam, “Epidemiological Evidence on the Adverse Health Effects Reported in Relation to Mercury from Dental Amalgam,” which recognized that the elemental mercury in dental amalgam can convert inside the body into toxic methylmercury — the same type of mercury that the FDA warns about in fish.
The FDA also recognized bioaccumulative effects of mercury. Since patients are exposed to many sources of mercury — including high-mercury fish in their diets, occupational exposures and environmental mercury from waste incinerators — the mercury from amalgam could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.
FDA Reverses Stance on Amalgam
Consumers for Dental Choice also organized a strong showing of public support from you. Its online petition, which had nearly 50,000 signatures, was presented to the FDA in person at its first meeting with the agency. Many of you also submitted public comments on patient preferences to the FDA.
FDA was also made aware of the changes to amalgam rules in other parts of the world, such as amalgam phase-out dates set by the Philippines, Ireland, Slovakia, Finland, Nepal, Moldova, Czech Republic and New Caledonia, and the bans on amalgam use in children issued by the European Union, Vietnam and Tanzania.
Having finally reached the top of the FDA, Consumers for Dental Choice succeeded in persuading the agency to reopen and take another in-depth look at the amalgam policy.
A scientific advisory committee meeting — which included testimonies by 16 experts from the Children's Environmental Health Network, Tuskegee University, the International Indian Treaty Council, the Organic & Natural Health Association and the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice, as well as city and county commissioners, a physician expert in environmental justice, a pharmacist specializing in toxicology and several attorneys — took place in November 2019.
You can see Consumers for Dental Choice's team and their colleagues in action in the video below, which features highlights of the advisory panel meeting.
Ultimately, the FDA advisory committee members recommended the agency provide information to patients about the risks of dental amalgam, especially for vulnerable populations. Many even agreed that the use of amalgam needs to end, which has been the goal of Consumers for Dental Choice all along.”
So much for teeth, what about the water we drink, which at times is like dipping into a swimming pool: no wonder people spend a fortune on bottled spring water:
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promotes water fluoridation as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century when, in reality, it’s one its greatest failures. Yet, in the face of solid scientific evidence of harm, politics and public relations have kept the practice alive.
Proponents such as the American Dental Association and the Oral Health Division of the Centers for Disease Control have spent millions of dollars on promotion and public relations to sell fluoridation using half-truths and misleading talking points.
While the U.S. is still trying to hold on to the fallacy that water fluoridation is a public health service, it’s one of the most widely rejected health interventions in the world, with 95% of the global population consuming nonfluoridated water.
Now, thanks to an abundance of new research, a landmark lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the sustained education efforts of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) and its supporters, it looks like we may finally be looking at an end to this toxic practice.
In the video above, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman of Children’s Health Defense, interviews Michael Connett, an attorney for FAN who is leading the lawsuit against the EPA.
Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Act
Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) allows citizens and nongovernmental organizations to petition the EPA to remove toxic substances found to pose an “unreasonable risk” either to the general population or a subset of that population.
What’s more, it allows citizens and watchdog groups to present their case before a judge. That is what FAN did in this case, and it’s the first time a citizen’s group has ever brought a Section 21 TSCA petition all the way through to trial.
It began November 22, 2016, when a coalition including FAN, Food & Water Watch, Organic Consumers Association, American Academy of Environmental Medicine, International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, Moms Against Fluoridation and several individuals, filed a petition3,4,5 calling on the EPA to ban the deliberate addition of fluoridating chemicals to U.S. drinking water under Section 21 of the TSCA.
The petition was made on the grounds that a large body of research demonstrates fluoride is neurotoxic at doses within the range now seen in fluoridated communities, and included over 2,500 pages of scientific documentation detailing these health risks.
The EPA denied the petition6 February 27, 2017, on the grounds that it had failed to present “a scientifically defensible basis” to conclude that anyone had in fact suffered neurotoxic harm as a result of fluoride exposure. In response, FAN and its coalition partners filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, legally challenging the EPA’s denial of their petition.
Fluoride on Trial
The trial began June 8, 2020.7 During the trial, Connett argued the EPA must, based on the evidence, eliminate the unreasonable risk of neurotoxicity posed by fluoride by banning the addition of fluoride to drinking water.
Interestingly, among the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses were the EPA’s own in-house experts on fluoride who, when asked to comment on the latest evidence, agreed that the animal data support the biological plausibility that fluoride causes neurotoxic effects in human beings.
Joyce Donahue, an EPA scientist with the Office of Water, also admitted that studies showing harm to the brain warrant a thorough reevaluation of the theory that bone and teeth are the most sensitive to fluoride damage.
Depositions by CDC officials, which took place in 2018, also confirmed the agency does not have any safety data on fluoride intake and neurotoxic effects. Neither does the EPA have safety data on fluoride intake and effects on the brain.
Connett asked the EPA to identify all studies that demonstrate or support the neurological safety of prenatal fluoride exposure. They produced one: A 1995 study in which the neurotoxicity of sodium fluoride was assessed in rats.
Ironically, this study, Connett points out, shows that neonatal fluoride exposure actually is neurotoxic to rats, and EPA scientists confirmed that this was indeed the case.
Recent Studies Confirm Harms to Children
The claims made by proponents of fluoridation that there are only “one or two studies” finding harm, or that they are only from areas with naturally high fluoride levels, are no longer relevant.
In reality, the scientific evidence can now be considered overwhelming and undeniable. In fact, the level of evidence that fluoride is neurotoxic now far exceeds the evidence that was in place when lead was banned from gasoline.
"There is little doubt that developmental neurotoxicity is a serious risk associated with elevated fluoride exposure … especially when the exposure occurs during early development." ~ Dr. Philippe Grandjean
Evidence brought forth during the trial included some 300 animal and human studies, including several published in 2019 and 2020 that show water fluoridation poses a significant risk to children’s brains and lowers IQ.
These studies are among the strongest yet, and are obviously relevant to water fluoridation as they were conducted in communities that have what the ADA considers an “optimal level” of fluoride in drinking water.”
Fluorides time looks like it is coming up fast, just like dental amalgam.