Mercury and Dental Fillings Part 2

Back to dental amalgam. Silver amalgam has been used for 150 years with great success. Although today the resin based fillings are an excellent alternative, I see many silver based amalgams placed over 20 years ago and still going strong. Some countries have banned the use of amalgamated fillings, not because the silver amalgam is unhealthy, but because of the potential for unused/left over waste mercury to get into the waste water and into the food chain as organic mercury. We have installed in our office a mercury waste collector that prevents over 99% of waste mercury from being released into the waste water. To put this in perspective, the waste mercury from dental offices is a grain of sand compared with the thousands of tons of mercury annually released into our environment from burning coal.