California Dental Board meeting May 10, 2001

Dentists should advise patients on mercury risk, board acknowledges
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASSOCIATED PRESS 
04-Dec-1999 Saturday 

SACRAMENTO -- Under fire from a consumer group, a board governing
California dentists said yesterday that it will start advising dentists to
tell their patients about risks posed by mercury used in fillings. 

The California Board of Dental Examiners adopted suggestions from Consumers
for Dental Choice, which accused the board of breaking state hazardous
materials laws by not warning people in dentist offices that silver amalgam
fillings are 50 percent mercury. 

The board said it will suggest that dentists inform patients about mercury,
but contended it has no legal authority to require them to do so. 

Though not the mandate the group wanted, lawyers for Consumers for Dental
Choice said the new policy will bring the "m-word" into dentistry. 

"It's time to stop calling it silver amalgam and start calling it what it
is -- mercury," said Charles Brown, counsel for the organization. "There is
nothing more toxic in a dentist's office than mercury, unless you have some
plutonium laying around." 

The consumer group, a coalition of holistic dentists, health activists and
people who say they have mercury poisoning, wants dentists to warn
patients, hygienists and other employees about the risks associated with
mercury. 

Exposure to mercury can cause cancer, birth defects and nerve damage. 
Proposition 65, an initiative approved by California voters in 1986,
requires employers with 10 or more employees to let workers know if they
are working with it. 

The state law also required the board to create a fact sheet that compared
mercury to alternative methods of filling cavities, but Brown said that
never happened. 

The fact sheet was also criticized by the board's parent agency, the
Department of Consumer Affairs, after it was produced for failing to
mention that mercury was known to the state to cause cancer and birth
defects, Brown said. 

The board maintains the fact sheet was reviewed by their lawyers and was
within the law, said board president Robert Christoffersen. 

However, the board agreed to revise the fact sheet to list the dangers of
mercury and note that it is among the substances included in Proposition
65. 

Judith Babcock, a spokeswoman for the California Dental Association, said
silver amalgam fillings have been used for 150 years. 

"There's no concrete research that shows there should be a ban on amalgam
or that it is toxic," she said. 

The American Dental Association, and its California counterpart, maintain
the amount of mercury in a filling is too small to have an effect. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.