Talk:American Dental Association

Placing unsourced text from the ADA article contributed by an anonymous SourceWatch user (IP 203.87.77.175) here:

The ADA has ignored or denied the work of Professor Vimy, University of Calgary, which proved that the mercury (Hg)in standard amalgam (49.5% Hg)'gasses-off' Hg vapor that enters the bloodstream and is sequestered by the body in cells of target organs. Vimy drilled the teeth of monkeys and a pregnant ewe and filled the holes with radio-isotoped amalgam. By scan, he found that the foetus of the pregant ewe absorbed four times more Hg than the maternal blood, and sequestered this in its develpong tissue. The monkey's were scanned and the target organs, which included the brain, showed a 'peppering' of Hg in tissues of the organs & brain. Since 0.02 ucg of Hg has been shown to be toxic, especially to neurons - it is no wonder that he also found Hg to be a potent cause of Alzheimers disease. He did that by 30 brain autopsies of subjects known to have an amalgam history, and compared them to a group who did not have this history. The result was conclusive. It is therefore no surprise to hear parents reports of regressive autism onset in a time period following Hg containing vaccines, the accumulation of which exceeded the EPA limit for HG by up to 120 times, and in small bodies that have only a tiny mass to sequester the Hg. The following is provided by a dentist who knows the evidence: There is a large body of medical research over the last 20 years that has totally invalidated their (ADA) claims of minimal exposure. The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology dealt with these issues in 1990 in our Scientific Response to the ADA claims of safety. You can download the PDF file from our web page www.IAOMT.org and I've attached a copy here.

I think the one study that really ended this discussion was the research by David Eggleston in 1987. (1) In that study he took samples of brain from over 100 people who had died in Los Angeles. For his unexposed controls he used 30 adults with all 32 teeth and no restorations of any kind. He showed that the amount of mercury in a persons brain is proportional to the number and size of amalgam fillings in their mouth. His research agrees perfectly with two smaller studies done by Friberg 1986 (2) and Nylander 1987 (3).

Another way to look at mercury exposure from amalgam is by measuring the intra oral breath. Dr. Vimy did this study in 1985 (4). He found on average a person with 12 amalgams has 5 micrograms/meter cubed before chewing an 32 micrograms/meter cubed (mg/m3) intra oral air after chewing. This in contrast to the controls who had minimal mercury both before and after chewing. They calculated a daily dose of elemental mercury vapor of approximately 15 mcg from filling (5) (6).

Skare and Endquist looked at another source of exposure which was ingested mercury from the abrasion and corrosion of amalgams(7). They theorized that since as Dr. Walsh mentioned, some forms of mercury are poorly absorbed from the gut they should measure the stool to estimate the daily intake. The found that on average amalgam bearers have 150 mcg/day of mercury in their stool. Since the EPA has set a maximum intake of 10 micrograms minimum risk level (MRL) from sources other than air it seems probable that amalgams make the patient experience exposure at 15 or more times that MRL threshold.

The World Health Organization considered this research and the ADA claims in 1991 when they met in Genoa to write the current Criteria document for mercury (8).