Mercury Exposure of Dentists & Assistants

Mercury Poisoning Symptoms In the fall of 2002 a group of Virginian DAMS activists met in Charlottsville, VA at the Vegifest festival in a downtown park. We set up tables and displayed materials concerning dangers of dental mercury. As usual most people did not know that their "silver" fillings were actually 50% mercury. One young lady approached our tables and read the chart "Symptoms of Chronic Mercury Toxicity." She told us that her father had experienced many of those symptoms before he had died the previous year. She said he had been in good health but suddenly became paralyzed on one side. Doctors tested him but the only thing they could find was "lesions on the brain from unknown causes." When we explained to her how some of us had become poisoned by breathing mercury vapor, she finally recognized the reason for her father's death. He had been a dentist for many years and had placed and unsafely removed mercury fillings. He was only 60 years old. Dentists who believe the teaching they received in ADA run dental schools have a huge risk for health problems from mercury exposure for themselves and their dental assistants. If dentists would continue their education through an organization like IAOMT, the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, they could learn safe ways of removing dental mercury so they could protect themselves, dental assistants and their patients. Dentists can order a safe mask, the Comfo Classic® Respirator and the high volume "Clean Up" Aspirating System from the IAOMT Store. http://www.iaomt.org/cart/products.asp?cat=11 Biological dentist Dr. Wayne King from Marietta, Georgia was furious when he spoke before the FDA Advisory Panel about the dangers of mercury dental fillings September 2006. He explained he was not taught in dental school how to adequately protect himself, his staff and his patients from mercury vapor. Dr. King said, "My aortic aneurysm blew out in my doctor's face." While the surgeon was operating on him Dr. King had his aorta to explode! King said there was a paper published in '76 that showed a connection between mercury exposure and dissecting aneurysm. Other dentists and dental assistants testified how they became poisoned from working around the mercury vapor. I recently talked with a lady in a local dental office who said her friend, who was a dentist, had just been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. The lung specialist remarked that many of his patients who had pulmonary fibrosis were dentists. Wonder what all those dentists were breathing throught their inefficient little white paper masks? One cause for pulmonary fibrosis listed on the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation web site is "inhaled environmental and occupational pollutants," but I don't see them mentioning mercury in dentists' offices.