Freya Koss Freya Koss
March’1998 April’2002 after having a tooth drilled Four years after removal of & filled with mercury amalgam amalgam & detox
www.toxicteeth.org
Consumers for Dental Choice is a non-profit organization working to abolish the use of mercury amalgam dental fillings.
Our phone number to contact for those who want referrals and help: 202-822-6307
Looking for the Silver Lining
When a Wynnewood woman tried to convince doctors and dentists that her dental fillings had poisoned her, they told her the symptoms were all in her head. Much of the world disagrees.
by Judith Trustone
When Congressional hearings on the dental use of mercury are held this month, Freya Koss, 60, of Wynnewood, will be watching with special interest. The former event planner, now director of development for Consumers for Dental Choice, claims that an amalgam "silver" filling gave her mercury poisoning, and she now wants to alert the public to this "medical genocide." When Koss visited a new dentist for the first time four years ago, she was unaware that the filling he had given her was more than half mercury, the most toxic substance known after plutonium. While attending a ballet performance a week later she became dizzy and was suddenly struck with double vision while attempting to drive home. Weeks of tests culminated in several misdiagnoses first lupus, next multiple sclerosis, then, when her eyelid began to droop, myasthenia gravis. Top area docs told her, "You'd better get used to being sick for the rest of your life."
Swallowing tears and donning an eye patch, Koss searched the Internet for answers, finally learning from an English woman that she had experienced the same symptoms a week after having amalgam dental work. "A shock ran through me as I recalled that exactly seven days before the double vision, I'd had a large, silver filling drilled out and replaced with a new one . " Koss says. "This was my first clue that I might be suffering from mercury poisoning." Koss was astonished to find more than 150 websites of doctors, dentists, scientists and consumers claiming that several auto-immune diseases and others illnesses including asthma, allergies, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, periodontal disease, eye and skin conditions, Alzheimer's Disease, ADD and mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and suicide are all medically linked to mercury poisoning from amalgam fillings.
A movement to ban amalgam appeared to be evident in several European countries, and in Canada, 8,000 claimants had sued the national dental association. Concern about mercury in this country has been limited to recalling thermometers and warning pregnant women and children not to eat fish, due to their mercury content. Last month, the United Nations' Global Mercury Assessment Working Group met in Geneva to hear testimony from nearly one hundred countries on the health and environmental hazards of mercury. Koss' research led her to organizations of mercury-free dentists, holistic doctors, toxicological scientists and educated consumers. Among them was a holistic, mercury-free dentist in Scranton, PA, who, over a period of several months , carefully removed her amalgam fillings replacing them with white composites. An integrative physician familiar with the symptoms of mercury poisoning helped her safely detoxify. "Today I feel reborn, Koss says. "My energy is incredible, my brain fog is clearing, I regained my equilibrium, and I feel better than I have for years," though she still suffers a mild but constant double vision and ocular muscle weakness. "Without the help of these doctors and support groups,” she says, "I would no doubt have capitulated to mainstream misdiagnoses, and might now be seeing life from a wheelchair."
Yet, when she presented scientific evidence linking mercury from amalgam fillings to autoimmune disease to her former neurologists, they all said, "There's no scientific evidence." One even threw the information into a wastebasket without even glancing at it. Focusing on the agencies mandated to protect public health, Koss began a long journey through the government's bureaucratic maze, discovering that no one, not even the FDA, had ever tested the safety of amalgam; it was accepted early in the 20th century as the standard of practice. Still, Koss and many others believe the American Dental Association is lying to dentists and consumers about the health risks of amalgam. The ADA has never proven its safety. "I feel sorry for dentists," Koss says. "They think they're helping people when, in fact, they're harming them, their office workers and themselves." Yet, the ADA and state dental boards can take away the license of any dentist who tells their patients that amalgam might endanger their health.
Two years after amalgam was introduced in the mid-19th century, physicians first began describing symptoms of what we now call multiple sclerosis. One study showed those afflicted with MS had 25 times the mercury in their cerebrospinal fluid as those without MS. After proper removal, there's an 85 percent remission rate in MS cases. Koss' efforts to get government agencies to examine the use of mercury in dentistry radicalized her. Her non-profit Washington, D.C. based organization, Consumers for Dental Choice, headed by former West Virginia Attorney General Charles G. Brown, has provided support for legislative and legal actions against state and national dental associations. Scientists here and abroad claim that exposure to mercury from a pregnant woman’s teeth passing through the placenta to the fetus’ developing brain and mercury preservative in infant vaccines contributes to the current epidemic of autism in American children.
Despite the government's assurances to the contrary, Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) is a believer. Chairman of the Committee for Government Reform, Burton watched "as the lights went out" in his autistic grandson's eyes after being given multiple vaccines. From 1929 until last year, vaccines contained Thimerosal, a preservative containing more than half mercury. Burton was outraged at a June hearing about the continued use of mercury in infant vaccines 20 years after the FDA first learned of the problem. In 1992 the FDA took Thimerosal out of dog vaccines and contact lens solutions because of "risk." Burton is no w calling for criminal penalties against the FDA and any government agency that knew about the danger and did nothing. Parents of autistic children have been seeking government accountability on the matter for years. Though a minority voice within the government, Burton has threatened to use his subpoena power to address the issue. "We have to keep making the case and getting the message to a broader audience so people will ask why and change will take place." Burton and Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA) have introduced a bill to abolish the use of mercury in dentistry by 2006 and to warn against use of amalgam in pregnant women and children. ADA reaction to the Watson Bill states, "Watson's attempt to ban dental amalgam would effectively deprive patients of an essential treatment that is clinically and scientifically substantiated to be safe." Charles Brown of Consumers for Dental Choice says common sense disproves this assertion: "What pregnant woman, who won't even have a glass of wine, would want a known neurotoxin in her system?" Koss, who has spoken with Burton, says the only difference between the cover-up of Thimerosal (which began in c.1930) and amalgam (which began in c.1830) is "100 years more of deception and lies by the ADA and U.S. government health agencies."
Where To Turn
* www.algonet.se/^leif/AmFAQigr.html: amalgam-related illnesses, FAQs from
Sweden, data base on mercury and related health effects.
* www.altcorp.com/TESTFoundation/amalgampage.htm: scientific peer-reviewed
research and rebuttal of ADA's statement to Committee for Government Reform
* www.amalgam.org: Dental Amalgam Mercury Syndrome site for consumer info, holistic dentists and doctors
* www.bioprobe.com: scientific studies, discussions, updates http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/PDHA/mercury/iaomt.htm International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology’s safe protocol for amalgam removal.
* www.toxicteeth.org: Consumers for Dental Choice site for legislative news and state action by state.
The Institute for Natural Dentistry (holisticdentists.com) offers a comprehensive curriculum for traditionally-trained dentists integrating traditional and holistic dental concepts of diagnosis and treatment.
Reporter Judith Trustone, also recovering from mercury poisoning from amalgam fillings, says she no longer suffers from chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, sinus infections, headaches, allergies, swollen glands, sore throats, depression or 10 years of low-grade fevers since having her amalgam removed
Are your teeth toxic?The mercury in 'silver' fillings would be hazardous waste in a river----yet it's sitting in your mouth
Published December 11, 2005
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-0512110315dec11,1,4520800.column?coll=chi-health-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
A professional musician from Arlington Heights suffers from mysterious rashes and lip blisters. A dental hygienist in Hoffman Estates battles migraines. And a social worker in Prospect Heights is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
All three tried treating their ailments using a controversial method: by having dentists remove and replace their so-called "silver" amalgam tooth fillings, which contain about 50 percent mercury. And all three swear they experienced life-changing health improvements.
Their personal testimonies are part of what makes dental amalgam, the silver lining for hundreds of millions of American mouths, one of the most divisive issues in dentistry. Though it's one of the oldest materials in oral health care--used by people of all ages for the last 150 years--anti-mercury groups are pushing the startling message that mercury residing in the mouth can leach into the body and cause illness.
"I thought my career was over," said Arlington Heights' Matt Comerford, now a trumpet player with the Lyric Opera who was suffering from painful sores along his gums. He began investigating the metals in his mouth and eventually had nine silver fillings replaced with a mercury-free alter-native material.
"Within a week [of having the amalgams replaced], everything healed," Comerford said.
Amalgam, most dentists admit, is crude and ugly, but they say it's a valuable option because it's strong, durable and relatively cheap.
And studies have shown that there is insufficient evidence to link it to health problems (with the exception of allergic reactions), according to the American Dental Association and several federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Regardless, anti-mercury groups are appalled by the notion that the toxic element, which is considered a hazardous waste by the Environmental Protection Agency, is safe when it's packed inside a tooth. They argue that although it was once thought to be inert inside the mouth, studies now show that mercury can be emitted in minute amounts of vapor and absorbed by the patient through inhalation and ingestion.
At Doctor's Data, a Chicago lab that specializes in trace-metals analysis, clinicians have found that the amount of mercury in a person's stool is highly correlated to the number of amalgams in the mouth.
"What stool testing drives home is that parts of the amalgams don't stay in the teeth and we're swallowing mercury," said Dean Bass, a chemist at Doctor's Data and a scientist at Argonne National Laboratories. "But it doesn't necessarily tell you how much mercury the body absorbs."
A long-running controversy
The debate over silver amalgam dates at least to 1845, when the now-defunct American Academy of Dental Surgeons asked its members to sign a pledge never to use it. Though amalgam use has been declining since the 1970s because more eye-pleasing options are available and cavities are smaller, federal lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill to ban silver/mercury fillings for children and pregnant and nursing women and to phase them out completely in three years.
In California, dentists are required by state law to post a warning that dental amalgams "cause exposure to mercury, a chemical known to the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm."
"The ADA is wrong that the issue is `safety.' The issue is `risk,'" said Charlie Brown, national counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice and Coalition for Mercury-Free Dentistry. He has filed a petition asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the ADA and the Connecticut State Dental Association for what the groups claims is making false, deceptive and unsubstantiated claims in promoting silver/mercury amalgam.
"On this point scientists agree: Mercury is a virulent neurotoxin that can permanently harm the developing brain of a child or fetus. Yet a recent Zogby poll shows three in five people don't know that `silver' fillings have mercury," said Brown, who pointed out that silver fillings are in fact mainly mercury.
The ADA staunchly defends the safety of amalgam, still used in about 30 percent of restorations. Amalgam, made by mixing elemental liquid mercury with an alloy powder composed of silver, tin, copper and sometimes smaller amounts of other metals, hardens quickly and tolerates saliva. This makes it useful for treating squirmy young children or special-needs patients who have a hard time sitting still.
Money and ethics
Some dental insurance companies don't cover the more expensive alternatives to amalgam. And because science doesn't definitively link the silver fillings to health problems, the ADA considers it unethical for dentists to tell patients that removing amalgams can improve health.
"Amalgam has the longest history, the most data and the largest number of studies supporting it. Yet time after time, we have to come back and address it," said Dr. Fred Eichmiller, director of the ADA Foundation's Paffenbarger Resource Center, where alternatives to amalgams have been invented.
Critics argue that the issue also is environmental. Mercury is emitted into the air when bodies with mercury fillings are cremated. It gets into the water when fillings are removed and leftover material is not disposed of properly.
"Amalgams don't need to be used in the 21st Century," said Downers Grove dentist Janet Stopka, who uses composite, porcelain and gold.
For consumers, the decision whether to replace amalgams can be a difficult one. Urine, hair and feces can all be tested for mercury levels and chelating agents can pull mercury out of the organs. But the results don't necessarily tell whether there is enough mercury present to pose a health risk and an official diagnosis of "mercury poisoning" can be tentative.
Swapping out old fillings can be expensive; each replacement can cost $75 to $200. And there are no guaranteed benefits.
Nevertheless, Dawn Quast, a dental hygienist for Dr. John Rothchild in Hoffman Estates, decided to have four small fillings replaced after she witnessed both small and profound improvements in Rothchild's patients who had amalgams replaced.
"I had a migraine the night I had the last silver one removed and haven't had one since [in 12 years]," Quast said.
Rothchild, a mercury-free dentist, said he doesn't push people into having silver fillings removed.
No guarantees
"I never promise any medical cures because you can't," he said. Instead, he presents both sides of the issue on his Web site and provides patient referrals. "If people come in asking about amalgams, I'll tell them," he said. "If they're there for basic dentistry, I don't say anything."
Linda Brocato of Prospect Heights went to several dentists before she made the difficult decision to have her 16 silver fillings removed. Her problems began in 1980, when she looked in the mirror one morning and noticed her right eye was drooping. Seven years and dozens of health issues later, the former social worker was crippled, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
It wasn't until Brocato heard about the Minneapolis-based group Dental Amalgam Mercury Syndrome (DAMS), however, that she began to believe she had mercury poisoning.
Two weeks after she had her last amalgams replaced, Brocato said her slurred speech began to disappear and her strength and balance improved. She knows the symptoms of MS come and go, which could explain her improved health, but she is convinced that removing the silver fillings made a big difference.
"I have five pages of improvements," said Brocato, 56, who is still in a wheelchair but no longer takes medication for MS. She is now one of the Illinois coordinators for DAMS. "I don't know how people can say there isn't evidence."
Help on the Web
For more information:
The American Dental Association: ada.org.
The International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology: iaomt.org.
Consumers for Dental Choice, www.toxicteeth.org.
jdeardorff@tribune.com
March’1998 April’2002 after having a tooth drilled Four years after removal of & filled with mercury amalgam amalgam & detox
www.toxicteeth.org
Consumers for Dental Choice is a non-profit organization working to abolish the use of mercury amalgam dental fillings.
Our phone number to contact for those who want referrals and help: 202-822-6307
Looking for the Silver Lining
When a Wynnewood woman tried to convince doctors and dentists that her dental fillings had poisoned her, they told her the symptoms were all in her head. Much of the world disagrees.
by Judith Trustone
When Congressional hearings on the dental use of mercury are held this month, Freya Koss, 60, of Wynnewood, will be watching with special interest. The former event planner, now director of development for Consumers for Dental Choice, claims that an amalgam "silver" filling gave her mercury poisoning, and she now wants to alert the public to this "medical genocide." When Koss visited a new dentist for the first time four years ago, she was unaware that the filling he had given her was more than half mercury, the most toxic substance known after plutonium. While attending a ballet performance a week later she became dizzy and was suddenly struck with double vision while attempting to drive home. Weeks of tests culminated in several misdiagnoses first lupus, next multiple sclerosis, then, when her eyelid began to droop, myasthenia gravis. Top area docs told her, "You'd better get used to being sick for the rest of your life."
Swallowing tears and donning an eye patch, Koss searched the Internet for answers, finally learning from an English woman that she had experienced the same symptoms a week after having amalgam dental work. "A shock ran through me as I recalled that exactly seven days before the double vision, I'd had a large, silver filling drilled out and replaced with a new one . " Koss says. "This was my first clue that I might be suffering from mercury poisoning." Koss was astonished to find more than 150 websites of doctors, dentists, scientists and consumers claiming that several auto-immune diseases and others illnesses including asthma, allergies, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, periodontal disease, eye and skin conditions, Alzheimer's Disease, ADD and mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and suicide are all medically linked to mercury poisoning from amalgam fillings.
A movement to ban amalgam appeared to be evident in several European countries, and in Canada, 8,000 claimants had sued the national dental association. Concern about mercury in this country has been limited to recalling thermometers and warning pregnant women and children not to eat fish, due to their mercury content. Last month, the United Nations' Global Mercury Assessment Working Group met in Geneva to hear testimony from nearly one hundred countries on the health and environmental hazards of mercury. Koss' research led her to organizations of mercury-free dentists, holistic doctors, toxicological scientists and educated consumers. Among them was a holistic, mercury-free dentist in Scranton, PA, who, over a period of several months , carefully removed her amalgam fillings replacing them with white composites. An integrative physician familiar with the symptoms of mercury poisoning helped her safely detoxify. "Today I feel reborn, Koss says. "My energy is incredible, my brain fog is clearing, I regained my equilibrium, and I feel better than I have for years," though she still suffers a mild but constant double vision and ocular muscle weakness. "Without the help of these doctors and support groups,” she says, "I would no doubt have capitulated to mainstream misdiagnoses, and might now be seeing life from a wheelchair."
Yet, when she presented scientific evidence linking mercury from amalgam fillings to autoimmune disease to her former neurologists, they all said, "There's no scientific evidence." One even threw the information into a wastebasket without even glancing at it. Focusing on the agencies mandated to protect public health, Koss began a long journey through the government's bureaucratic maze, discovering that no one, not even the FDA, had ever tested the safety of amalgam; it was accepted early in the 20th century as the standard of practice. Still, Koss and many others believe the American Dental Association is lying to dentists and consumers about the health risks of amalgam. The ADA has never proven its safety. "I feel sorry for dentists," Koss says. "They think they're helping people when, in fact, they're harming them, their office workers and themselves." Yet, the ADA and state dental boards can take away the license of any dentist who tells their patients that amalgam might endanger their health.
Two years after amalgam was introduced in the mid-19th century, physicians first began describing symptoms of what we now call multiple sclerosis. One study showed those afflicted with MS had 25 times the mercury in their cerebrospinal fluid as those without MS. After proper removal, there's an 85 percent remission rate in MS cases. Koss' efforts to get government agencies to examine the use of mercury in dentistry radicalized her. Her non-profit Washington, D.C. based organization, Consumers for Dental Choice, headed by former West Virginia Attorney General Charles G. Brown, has provided support for legislative and legal actions against state and national dental associations. Scientists here and abroad claim that exposure to mercury from a pregnant woman’s teeth passing through the placenta to the fetus’ developing brain and mercury preservative in infant vaccines contributes to the current epidemic of autism in American children.
Despite the government's assurances to the contrary, Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) is a believer. Chairman of the Committee for Government Reform, Burton watched "as the lights went out" in his autistic grandson's eyes after being given multiple vaccines. From 1929 until last year, vaccines contained Thimerosal, a preservative containing more than half mercury. Burton was outraged at a June hearing about the continued use of mercury in infant vaccines 20 years after the FDA first learned of the problem. In 1992 the FDA took Thimerosal out of dog vaccines and contact lens solutions because of "risk." Burton is no w calling for criminal penalties against the FDA and any government agency that knew about the danger and did nothing. Parents of autistic children have been seeking government accountability on the matter for years. Though a minority voice within the government, Burton has threatened to use his subpoena power to address the issue. "We have to keep making the case and getting the message to a broader audience so people will ask why and change will take place." Burton and Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA) have introduced a bill to abolish the use of mercury in dentistry by 2006 and to warn against use of amalgam in pregnant women and children. ADA reaction to the Watson Bill states, "Watson's attempt to ban dental amalgam would effectively deprive patients of an essential treatment that is clinically and scientifically substantiated to be safe." Charles Brown of Consumers for Dental Choice says common sense disproves this assertion: "What pregnant woman, who won't even have a glass of wine, would want a known neurotoxin in her system?" Koss, who has spoken with Burton, says the only difference between the cover-up of Thimerosal (which began in c.1930) and amalgam (which began in c.1830) is "100 years more of deception and lies by the ADA and U.S. government health agencies."
Where To Turn
* www.algonet.se/^leif/AmFAQigr.html: amalgam-related illnesses, FAQs from
Sweden, data base on mercury and related health effects.
* www.altcorp.com/TESTFoundation/amalgampage.htm: scientific peer-reviewed
research and rebuttal of ADA's statement to Committee for Government Reform
* www.amalgam.org: Dental Amalgam Mercury Syndrome site for consumer info, holistic dentists and doctors
* www.bioprobe.com: scientific studies, discussions, updates http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/PDHA/mercury/iaomt.htm International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology’s safe protocol for amalgam removal.
* www.toxicteeth.org: Consumers for Dental Choice site for legislative news and state action by state.
The Institute for Natural Dentistry (holisticdentists.com) offers a comprehensive curriculum for traditionally-trained dentists integrating traditional and holistic dental concepts of diagnosis and treatment.
Reporter Judith Trustone, also recovering from mercury poisoning from amalgam fillings, says she no longer suffers from chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, sinus infections, headaches, allergies, swollen glands, sore throats, depression or 10 years of low-grade fevers since having her amalgam removed
Are your teeth toxic?The mercury in 'silver' fillings would be hazardous waste in a river----yet it's sitting in your mouth
Published December 11, 2005
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-0512110315dec11,1,4520800.column?coll=chi-health-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
A professional musician from Arlington Heights suffers from mysterious rashes and lip blisters. A dental hygienist in Hoffman Estates battles migraines. And a social worker in Prospect Heights is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
All three tried treating their ailments using a controversial method: by having dentists remove and replace their so-called "silver" amalgam tooth fillings, which contain about 50 percent mercury. And all three swear they experienced life-changing health improvements.
Their personal testimonies are part of what makes dental amalgam, the silver lining for hundreds of millions of American mouths, one of the most divisive issues in dentistry. Though it's one of the oldest materials in oral health care--used by people of all ages for the last 150 years--anti-mercury groups are pushing the startling message that mercury residing in the mouth can leach into the body and cause illness.
"I thought my career was over," said Arlington Heights' Matt Comerford, now a trumpet player with the Lyric Opera who was suffering from painful sores along his gums. He began investigating the metals in his mouth and eventually had nine silver fillings replaced with a mercury-free alter-native material.
"Within a week [of having the amalgams replaced], everything healed," Comerford said.
Amalgam, most dentists admit, is crude and ugly, but they say it's a valuable option because it's strong, durable and relatively cheap.
And studies have shown that there is insufficient evidence to link it to health problems (with the exception of allergic reactions), according to the American Dental Association and several federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Regardless, anti-mercury groups are appalled by the notion that the toxic element, which is considered a hazardous waste by the Environmental Protection Agency, is safe when it's packed inside a tooth. They argue that although it was once thought to be inert inside the mouth, studies now show that mercury can be emitted in minute amounts of vapor and absorbed by the patient through inhalation and ingestion.
At Doctor's Data, a Chicago lab that specializes in trace-metals analysis, clinicians have found that the amount of mercury in a person's stool is highly correlated to the number of amalgams in the mouth.
"What stool testing drives home is that parts of the amalgams don't stay in the teeth and we're swallowing mercury," said Dean Bass, a chemist at Doctor's Data and a scientist at Argonne National Laboratories. "But it doesn't necessarily tell you how much mercury the body absorbs."
A long-running controversy
The debate over silver amalgam dates at least to 1845, when the now-defunct American Academy of Dental Surgeons asked its members to sign a pledge never to use it. Though amalgam use has been declining since the 1970s because more eye-pleasing options are available and cavities are smaller, federal lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill to ban silver/mercury fillings for children and pregnant and nursing women and to phase them out completely in three years.
In California, dentists are required by state law to post a warning that dental amalgams "cause exposure to mercury, a chemical known to the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm."
"The ADA is wrong that the issue is `safety.' The issue is `risk,'" said Charlie Brown, national counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice and Coalition for Mercury-Free Dentistry. He has filed a petition asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the ADA and the Connecticut State Dental Association for what the groups claims is making false, deceptive and unsubstantiated claims in promoting silver/mercury amalgam.
"On this point scientists agree: Mercury is a virulent neurotoxin that can permanently harm the developing brain of a child or fetus. Yet a recent Zogby poll shows three in five people don't know that `silver' fillings have mercury," said Brown, who pointed out that silver fillings are in fact mainly mercury.
The ADA staunchly defends the safety of amalgam, still used in about 30 percent of restorations. Amalgam, made by mixing elemental liquid mercury with an alloy powder composed of silver, tin, copper and sometimes smaller amounts of other metals, hardens quickly and tolerates saliva. This makes it useful for treating squirmy young children or special-needs patients who have a hard time sitting still.
Money and ethics
Some dental insurance companies don't cover the more expensive alternatives to amalgam. And because science doesn't definitively link the silver fillings to health problems, the ADA considers it unethical for dentists to tell patients that removing amalgams can improve health.
"Amalgam has the longest history, the most data and the largest number of studies supporting it. Yet time after time, we have to come back and address it," said Dr. Fred Eichmiller, director of the ADA Foundation's Paffenbarger Resource Center, where alternatives to amalgams have been invented.
Critics argue that the issue also is environmental. Mercury is emitted into the air when bodies with mercury fillings are cremated. It gets into the water when fillings are removed and leftover material is not disposed of properly.
"Amalgams don't need to be used in the 21st Century," said Downers Grove dentist Janet Stopka, who uses composite, porcelain and gold.
For consumers, the decision whether to replace amalgams can be a difficult one. Urine, hair and feces can all be tested for mercury levels and chelating agents can pull mercury out of the organs. But the results don't necessarily tell whether there is enough mercury present to pose a health risk and an official diagnosis of "mercury poisoning" can be tentative.
Swapping out old fillings can be expensive; each replacement can cost $75 to $200. And there are no guaranteed benefits.
Nevertheless, Dawn Quast, a dental hygienist for Dr. John Rothchild in Hoffman Estates, decided to have four small fillings replaced after she witnessed both small and profound improvements in Rothchild's patients who had amalgams replaced.
"I had a migraine the night I had the last silver one removed and haven't had one since [in 12 years]," Quast said.
Rothchild, a mercury-free dentist, said he doesn't push people into having silver fillings removed.
No guarantees
"I never promise any medical cures because you can't," he said. Instead, he presents both sides of the issue on his Web site and provides patient referrals. "If people come in asking about amalgams, I'll tell them," he said. "If they're there for basic dentistry, I don't say anything."
Linda Brocato of Prospect Heights went to several dentists before she made the difficult decision to have her 16 silver fillings removed. Her problems began in 1980, when she looked in the mirror one morning and noticed her right eye was drooping. Seven years and dozens of health issues later, the former social worker was crippled, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
It wasn't until Brocato heard about the Minneapolis-based group Dental Amalgam Mercury Syndrome (DAMS), however, that she began to believe she had mercury poisoning.
Two weeks after she had her last amalgams replaced, Brocato said her slurred speech began to disappear and her strength and balance improved. She knows the symptoms of MS come and go, which could explain her improved health, but she is convinced that removing the silver fillings made a big difference.
"I have five pages of improvements," said Brocato, 56, who is still in a wheelchair but no longer takes medication for MS. She is now one of the Illinois coordinators for DAMS. "I don't know how people can say there isn't evidence."
Help on the Web
For more information:
The American Dental Association: ada.org.
The International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology: iaomt.org.
Consumers for Dental Choice, www.toxicteeth.org.
jdeardorff@tribune.com
