Julian Center

by Gene Eberts, Ph.D., Health Psychologist

Here is the question.

Are you slowly killing yourself and your children with one of the most toxic substances on Earth, or merely benefiting from a substance that the American Dental Association (ADA), the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims is a safe and effective way to reduce cavities?

If you are like most people, you would probably vote for “safe and effective.” After all it has been added to our public water supply for almost 50 years; how bad could it be?

Well… have you read the back of a tube of toothpaste lately? On the back of every tube you will find a warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to, “keep out of the reach of children and contact poison control if accidentally swallowed.” So how safe is this fluoride that is protecting us from cavities?

Investigating the Health Effects of Fluoride

In may of 2001, the U.S. Congress expanded its probe into the health effects of the fluoridation (adding fluoride) of public water systems. This controversial issue is far from dead.

Opponents of fluoride have concluded that fluoride does not prevent cavities and that it is dangerous to public health. Supporters of fluoride including the ADA, the NAS and the EPA would have you believe that all opponents of fluoride are half-crazed, muddle-brained, right-wing idiots who don’t know the first thing about real science. While neither side may be completely right, the scientific evidence is beginning to stack up against fluoride.

The Evidence Against Fluoride

In the United States the rate of cavities in children has been declining for at least the past 70 years. However, the addition of fluoride to public drinking water and toothpaste has had no discernable effect on this rate of decline.

Several recent scientific reports, including a comprehensive study of 39,000 school children have failed to show any difference in cavity rates in fluoridated vs. non-fluoridated communities.

Studies in the Journal of Dental Research recently concluded that rates of tooth decay have declined as much in Western Europe as they have in the United States in recent decades. The problem is that Western Europe is 98% non-fluoridated.

Both the Pasteur Institute and the Nobel Institute oppose fluoridation and as a result most Western European nations, including Germany, France, Sweden and Holland prohibit fluoride.

Even if all of these studies were flawed, and I have mentioned only a few of hundreds of studies that are out there, and even if we conclude that fluoride does protect against cavities, there is still one glaring problem with ingesting fluoride – fluoride overdoese.

Fluoride overdose

We have been dumping fluoride into our public water systems for almosts 50 years. This has created what is now called the “multiplier effect.” Fluoride from our drinking water is transferred during manufacturing into processed food and beverages. For example, a 12 ounce can of Coke contains 1/3rd of the recommended Total Daily Amount of fluoride.

In 1991, the U.s. Health and Human Services agency reported that even non-fluoridated communities get 1 to 2 times the

recommended amount of fluoride and fluoridated communities were overdosing on as much as 7 times the recommended amount of total daily fluoride intake.

This overdosing is the most likely cause of the only significant difference in dental health found between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities: Fluoridated communities show almost double the incidence of dental Fluoridosis.

Dental Fluoridosis, caused by ingesting an overdose of fluoride, is a condition in which the cells that lay down tooth enamel are poisoned. In less severe cases the damage shows up as chalky white areas on the teeth. In more severe cases the teeth exhibit yellow, brown and black stains and pitting of the enamel. Eventually this structural weakness leads to breakage of the tips of the teeth.

There are studies that support the cavity fighting effects of fluoride. After all, fluoride is a poison and it will kill the cavity creating bacteria that infect the teeth. However, most leading dental researchers also agree that the benefits of fluoride come from the tropical application of fluoride, not the ingestion (eating or drinking) of it.

The Side Effects of Fluoride and its’ Contaminants

Another lesser known aspect of the controversy over fluoride has to do with the source of the fluoride itself.

To maintain scientific control over the dosage, practically every clinical experiment on the effects of fluoride has used pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride. But more than 90% of the fluoride added to public water supplied in this country is extracted from the waste water collected in the smokestack scrubbers used by the phosphate fertilizer industry. This toxic waste contains lead, cadmium, arsenic, radium and other poisonous substances. By law this toxic waste could not be dumped into rivers, lakes or the sea, but it is added to our public water supply.

The picture is even bleaker when we turn to the safety of fluoride itself. Scientific evidence from around the world continues to link fluoride to severe health risks. If these studies were reporting high doses of fluoride this would not be surprising. After all, fluoride is second to arsenic in toxicity and more toxic than lead. Among its other uses, fluoride has been quite effective in killing bugs and rats.

What is shocking is that these studies report on fluoride use that is equal to or less than the amounts commonly placed in our public drinking water. Chronic fluoride use has been linked to bone cancer, kidney cancer, Alzheimer’s, hip fractures in the elderly and other health problems.

The Union of scientists at the EPA wrote a white paper (a short authoritative report or treatise prepared to educate readers about a specific topic) outlining why scientist members working at the EPA oppose drinking water fluoridation. The following is a quote from that paper.

“…our opposition to drinking water fluoridation has grown, based on the scientific literature documenting the increasingly out-of-control exposures to fluoride, the lack of benefit to dental health from ingestion of fluoride and the hazards to human health from such ingestion. These hazards include acute toxic hazard, such as to people with impairred kidney function, as well as chronic toxic hazards of gene mutations, cancer, neurotoxicity, bone pathology and dental fluorosis.”

Click to read this white paper

Conclusion

The final chapter in this controversy about the health effects fluoride hasn’t been written yet, but my advice is: why take the chance? At least 12 Nobel Prize winners in the fields of chemistry and medicine (you know, those “idiots who don’t know the first thing about real science”) have expressed reservation about using fluoride in public water systems. Why expose yourself to this toxic substanvce anymore than you have to?

Article by Gene Eberts, Ph.D., Health Psychologist

You probably have not even considered that fluoride has any effects other than beneficial. Anyone born after World War Ii has been educated about the beneficial effects of fluoride to reduce dental cavities. After all, fluoride is placed in our water and in our toothpastes as well as applied to our teeth when we visit the dentist.

But – Have you read the back of the tube of toothpaste lately? There’s a warning from the Food and Drug Administration – “keep out of the reach of children and contact poison control if accidentally swallowed.” How safe is this fluoride that is protecting us from cavities? Would you be surprised to find out fluoride is second to arsenic in toxicity and more toxic than lead?

There are scientific studies to correlate a link between fluoride and an increase in hip fractures as well as bone cancer. The most noted study, done in New York, compared two communities over an extended number of years — one with fluoride, one without.

The conclusion: no evidence that fluoride reduced the number of cavities.

A survey in British Columbia reported the highest cavity rates occurred in the provinces that were totally on unfluoridated.

Also it has been clearly demonstrated that over ingestion of fluoridated water causes dental fluorosis or mottling. This is evidenced by chalky white areas on teeth and in advanced cases the teeth exhibit yellow, brown and black stains, pitting of the enamel, and breaking of the tips of teeth.

So, if there are no clinical studies to prove fluoride prevents cavities, and there are potential damaging health effects from fluoride, and may cause mottling of the teeth, why are we exposing ourselves and our children to this?

We have not been given the choice in our drinking water but we can drink filtered or ionized water. We also have a choice not to use fluoride toothpastes or to avoid fluoride treatment from our dentist.

How concerned is the Institute about the possible negative health effects of fluoride? We could earn at least an extra $100,000 each year by giving fluoride treatments. That’s almost two million dollars in extra income the Institute has given up over the past twenty years. If that’s not commitment, what is?

If you want to believe this is just my opinion, research for yourself – you owe it to yourself and your children.

If you have decided to have your toxic mercury fillings removed and you want to protect yourself against the dangers of toxic mercury…

BEFORE YOU DO

You must read this Special Report:

The Hidden Dangers of Amalgam Removal

to download Click Here

In this report you will learn…

• Why some people should NOT have their mercury amalgams removed
• The importance of detoxing after amalgam removal – AND how best to do it
• The safest, most effective protocol that ALL dentists should follow – but don’t
• What you can do to protect yourself and enhance your healing
• How best to deal with the emotional release that may occur during or after removal
• How allied health professionals can help rid your body of toxins

Heavy Metal Poisoning

By Gary P. Owen

MS and mercury poisoning is something that rears its head from time to time and needs to be taken seriously. The substances in the blood harmful to nerves are kept separate by a special filtering layer in the walls of blood vessels called the endothelium. This is particularly important in the brain where the filter mechanism is known as the blood brain barrier.

Any number of life events can cause this barrier to be breached, including stress, tiredness, fever, emotional upset, heat, injury and eating too much fat. This allows chemicals from the blood which are poisonous to the nervous system into the brain where they can cause serious damage. Heavy metals such as mercury, cadmium, and aluminum are well-known examples of such potent neurotoxins.

Some researchers now believe that MS is a direct result of neurotoxins from the blood entering the central nervous system through the brain and some researchers claim they have found mercury levels more than seven times higher than normal in the spinal fluid of people with MS. This research lays the blame on the high amounts of mercury used in routine dental fillings and indeed some countries have now already banned the use of mercury fillings.

Shortly after I was diagnosed with MS I made a decision to have all of my mercury fillings removed because of articles I had read which linked MS and mercury. I had quite a lot of them and it took several visits to the dentist to have them all removed and replaced with white fillings. The dentist could only remove two at a time because to remove any more would have introduced too much mercury to my system at the one time. This surprised me because I had this dangerous substance in my mouth for a number of years, and was never made aware when I was getting them of the potential dangers. I now insist and pay extra to ensure that my children do not get mercury fillings and it might be something that you want to consider as well.

A few months after having the fillings removed I did begin to feel slightly better but at the same time I also embarked on a brand new diet. I took control of my MS and decided that I was going to control it rather than it control me.

I have greatly benefits from a book which has examined the link between what we eat and multiple sclerosis. If you would like to know what foods are attacking your body, what supplements you must take and how to create the energy that you need, then this book is a must read. Reverse Multiple Sclerosis

I am not a doctor nor am I qualified in medicine in any way. These are things that have worked for me in controlling my MS. Before undertaking any diet or fitness regime you should always consult your physician first.

Thanks for reading,

Gary P. Owen

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary P Owen

Chronic fatigue is one of the main reasons people go to a health practitioner and it is one of the hardest illnesses to tolerate. Lacking energy and mental alertness means you don’t feel like doing anything, which in turn makes you feel worse and consequently you don’t sleep well. Fatigue is the most common complaint stated by patients in my dental practice. Which is why I began looking for a connection between mercury amalgam and chronic fatigue.

You may not be aware that the silver amalgam fillings in your teeth are actually fifty percent mercury or that this mercury is highly toxic. There is a mass of scientific evidence that clearly demonstrates that mercury can leak from the amalgam fillings in your mouth and harm the body.

The World Health Organization recognizes that dental amalgam contaminates the human body and has made recommendations regarding safe levels of mercury in food. Yet this highly dangerous material is placed in your mouth because traditional dentists believe it to be a safe and stable substance once mixed.

Double Jeopardy

Interestingly enough, “silver” amalgams not only present a danger from mercury. The other fifty percent of metals in the composite are silver, tin, copper and zinc. When you put these metals into the mouth surrounded by saliva it has a battery effect. The battery effect creates an electrical current that can disrupt the nervous system and normal flow of energy to the body. This is one of the reasons why a person may experience fatigue.

Many countries worldwide have looked closely at the science behind this practice and many places in Europe and Canada have banned the use of mercury. It’s beginning to happen here in the USA, but it’s taking a little longer. However, in the UK, mercury fillings are the norm for national health patients.

From my experience as a dental practitioner, I believe that many of today’s so called “mystery syndromes” like chronic fatigue may not actually be so mysterious, but related to mercury amalgams. Physicians often bunch chronic fatigue together with recurrent depression, fibromyalgia and anorexia as supposedly incurable conditions. Basically they do not know how to treat them and many people suffer unnecessarily.

For more than twenty years I have treated patients with “silver” fillings without realizing the potential dangers of filling teeth with mercury. However, chronic fatigue seems to be such a common physical complaint that I started to wonder if there is a connection. It’s clear to me that there is no environmental cause and effect, as these people didn’t all live in the same house, work at the same job or eat the same food.

Obviously, diet, exercise or lack of it can be contributing factors, but what became really clear to me was that most of these patients have had dental amalgams at one point in their life, if not currently.

I’ve had clients come to me with a history of being very active. They took part in athletic activities, even marathon runners, yet over a period of time they became more and more fatigued, whereas others experience fatigue shortly after having dental work done.

You are probably wondering why the dental profession is not open to the idea that mercury is a toxic metal that should not be put in the mouth, so before going further I will give you a little background.

History of Mercury and the Dental Associations

Mercury has historically been used as an antiseptic (mercurial/mercurochrome), to kill bacteria in the treatment of some diseases. Its use in dentistry dates back to the eighteen hundreds when the governing body of dentists was the International Society of Dental Surgeons. In those days you could either have your teeth filled with gold, extracted or endure toothache and its consequences. The problem was that gold was far too expensive for most people.

It was as this point of time that two brothers introduced the concept of mercury, other wise known as quacksilber (German for quicksilver). This amalgam of silver and mercury could be shapes by hand, was easily installed in the tooth and was a great deal cheaper than gold.

The governing body of International Society of Dental Surgeons actually made a bylaw stating that dentists using this material could no longer belong to the organization. However, dentists of the time decided this was a viable option for treating and filling teeth, despite there being overwhelming evidence of its toxicity.

It was also no secret that hat makers were developing neurological problems. In fact “mad hatter syndrome” was well known, yet these dentists decided to go off on their own and formed the American Dental Association and became first to patent mercury fillings.

This is not to say that the American Dental Association’s intentions are malevolent. But when they started the first dental school, this became part of the education, as they were not willing to look at the science. From a psychological perspective it’s easy to see why they would want to protect their profession, as it’s very hard for anyone to admit they have been poisoning their clients for more than fifty years.

When You Remove The Mercury

Previously, I stated that the most common condition my patients report to me is chronic fatigue and that it’s clear to me that this is multi-factorial. Mercury fillings are yet another facet and I started to investigate what was the big deal about this. It soon became evident that mercury affects every system and every cell in the body. Of course this is dependent on what else is going on in people’s lives, how stressed they are and the diet they eat.

The average patient comes to my practice presenting chronic fatigue, not necessarily chronic fatigue syndrome, but some tiredness and not feeling up to doing all that they want to do in life. After removing mercury amalgams from patient’s mouths and filling with a non-toxic substance, the most common improvement in health was that they had more energy.

Over and over again I have seen so many symptoms improve after removing the amalgam fillings – skin rashes heal, muscles are less stressed, headaches go away and I can see the changes in their face. Most people really notice the difference and say how much more alive they feel.

I’ve had numerous patients who, all of a sudden, get their life back after having only one amalgam removed, even if they have four quadrants (all upper, lower, right and left) with fillings.

I always caution them to take it easy and allow the body to heal itself properly, but all of a sudden they are able to do things they haven’t been able to do for so long. So they are out there riding their bikes, playing with their children or mowing the lawn because they suddenly just felt better.

Science points to a connection between mercury poisoning and chronic fatigue.

This is not so hard to understand from a more scientific viewpoint, as it is known that mercury affects all the major organs. It can attack the thyroid gland, which makes people lethargic, sluggish, often tired and lacking energy. Mercury will displace the active thyroid hormone and may even attach to the thyroid gland and make it inactive.

This means when you are tested you may have plenty of thyroid hormone, but the mercury may be preventing it from being active. As it can embed itself in tissue, it may attach and destroy the organ itself leaving you with not thyroid function. The same thing can happen to the pituitary gland, which releases the thyroid-stimulating hormone, again affecting the thyroid.

This in turn could affect the adrenal glands so that less cortisol and adrenaline are released for energy. Circulation is affected because there is a displacement in the iron group, the heme in the hemoglobin, so that it is unable to carry oxygen efficiently, which affects the heart and will create fatigue.

The Immune System

As well as having an effect on the red blood cells and their ability to carry oxygen, mercury can attack the white blood cells (lymphocytes) and affect the immune system.

When these cells that are needed to defend your body are not functioning, an autoimmune disease will occur and the body will attack itself.

This means your body will be less able to fight other infections, which places even more stress on the body.

The Future of Dentistry

I believe it is important that as many people as possible learn about the dangers of mercury amalgam and chronic fatigue. It is not possible to definitely state that removing your fillings will improve chronic fatigue, but this is the result in most cases.

Just one word of caution here, if you are thinking of having your amalgam fillings removed, choose your dentist carefully. A biological dentist will take great care to ensure safe removal of your mercury fillings, whereas a cosmetic or traditional dentist may not have the correct instruments or safety protocol to prevent contamination.

With there being such a split between mainstream and alternative dentistry, you are not always presented with the truth, so I advise keeping an open mind and seeking out as much information as you can possibly find, as your health, perhaps even your life, depends on it.

Teen Charged With Cardozo Mercury Spill

By: Tarran Lively – The Washington Times – February 27, 2005

A 16-year old boy was arrested yesterday afternoon in connection with the mercury contamination of Cardozo High School in Northwest. The teen was taken into custody at about 5 p.m. and charged with illegal dumping of a hazardous material, said D.C. police spokesman Sgt. Joe Gentile. It wasn’t known whether the boy is a student at Cardozo, but he was arrested after police identified possible suspects from a school surveillance video. The investigation is ongoing, Sgt. Gentile Said.

Authorities tested two homes in which investigators believe the mercury may have been kept before it was spilled at the school on Wednesday. Mercury vapors were found in one home, in the 3600 block of Warder Street NW, in the Petworth neighborhood. Authorities evacuated the home of 13 persons, who ranged in age from 18 months to about 60 years. None of the residents tested positive for mercury contamination, but clothing in one of the closets tested positive for mercury, said Dr. Greg Payne, the city’s health director. The crews also tested a home in the 600 block of Irving Street NW. It was not clear where the student suspected of spreading the mercury lived. Cardozo, at 13th and Clifton streets, has been closed since hazardous-materials crews found about 2 ounces of mercury in three places inside the school, including the back of a stairwell on the first floor. Cardozo Principal Reginald Ballard Jr. said last week no mercury was stored in the school. He also said the mercury was likely smuggled in by a “prankster.” D.C. schools Superintendent Clifford B. Janey called the contamination a “dangerous situation.” About 600 students and 150 staff and faculty members were screened, and at least 15 persons had traces of the metallic element on their clothing.

Some students who left the building before they could be tested were examined yesterday, and all were cleared of any contamination, health officials said. The school is being cleaned and an announcement is expected today on when it will reopen. In fall 2003, students at Ballou High School in Southeast found mercury in an unlocked cabinet and threw it at walls and at each other. The contamination forced city officials to close the school for more than a month. The cleanup cost more than $1 million. The Environmental Protection Agency screened about 1,200 people and 86 homes after the students brought the toxic metal onto a Metro bus and into many of their homes. A 16-year-old Ballou High School student was arrested in the theft of the vial of mercury.

This article is based in part on wire service reports.

• TUNA TYPES- One particularly common source of low-level mercury exposure is tuna. Because they are large, long-lived predators, tuna accumulate more mercury in their tissue than smaller, short-lived fish. When tested for mercury – in parts per million, flesh from albacore tuna, which take five years to mature, was shown to contain about four times as much mercury as chunk light tuna, which is harvested from younger fish.
• HISTORY– Mercury was known to the ancient Chinese and Hindus; the element has been found in Egyptian tombs from 1500 B.C.
• SOURCE– Mercury rarely occurs free in nature but can be found in ores, principally cinnabar. The element, which exists in its natural form as a mix of seven stable isotopes, is most often found near volcanoes or geothermal springs. The metal is obtained by heating cinnabar in an air current and condensing the vapor.
• USES– Mercury easily forms alloys, called amalgams, with other metals like gold, silver, and tin. The element has many uses in the chemical industry, such as in the manufacture of sodium hydroxide and chlorine by the electrolysis of brine, as well as in making advertising signs, mercury switches, and other electrical apparatuses. It is also used to make sensitive measuring devices for laboratories. Other uses are in dental work, batteries, and catalysts. Because of mercury’s toxicity, many of these uses are under review.
• FAVORED FISH- An inspector at a California cannery in 1953 spot-checks canned tuna. In the United States, canned tuna is the third most commonly purchased food item, after sugar and coffee, based on dollar sales per amount of shelf space devoted to the product. An EPA study reported the median amount of mercury, measured in parts per million, in the following varieties of canned tuna: chunk light: .08 parts per million; canned albacore tuna: .34ppm; fresh or frozen tuna: .30ppm. A 2004 EPA advisory mentions five types of fish and shellfish that are low in mercury: shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollack, and catfish. The advisory also warns consumers not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish because they all contain high levels of mercury.
• MERCURY FILLINGS- Dental amalgams, known as silver fillings, are composed of roughly 50 percent mercury. Studies of people with mercury-containing dental fillings show a correlation between the number and size of the fillings and the amount of mercury excreted in their urine. The relationship suggests that the mercury is derived from mercury vapor released from the fillings. Some evidence shows that the level of mercury in the brain tissue of fetuses, newborns, and young children is also directly proportional to the number of surfaces of amalgam fillings the mother has.
• TESTING TROUBLE- Chronic low-level exposure to mercury is difficult to quantify because analyses of blood, urine, and hair will reflect only recent acute exposure, not past exposure. If acute mercury poisoning is diagnosed, administering compounds that bind to mercury and draw it out of the tissue — a process called chelation therapy — can remove elemental or inorganic mercury. However, chelation cannot remove methylmercury. Mercury has a strong affinity for the brain, especially the fetal brain. Methylmercury has been shown to alter the construction of structural components of the brain called microtubules and influence the development of neurons.
• SOURCES OF MERCURY RELEASE- During the last 150 years, human activities may have doubled or tripled natural amounts of mercury in the atmosphere. Although there are many natural sources of mercury emissions — such as volcanoes, geothermal springs, geologic deposits, and the ocean — there are also numerous industrial sources such as coal combustion, waste incineration, and mining. The greatest contributors are coal-fired utilities and industrial boilers, which account for about 50 percent of the transmission of inorganic mercury to the atmosphere.

Our Preferred Poison

A  little mercury  is  all that  humans  need to do away  with themselves quietly, slowly, and surely.

By Karen Wright  –  DISCOVER  Vol. 26  No. 03  –  March 2005                    Biology & Medicine

 

Let’s start with a straightforward fact:

Mercury is unimaginably toxic and dangerous.

A single drop on a human hand can be irreversibly fatal.

A single drop in a large lake can make all the fish in it unsafe to eat.

Often referred to as quicksilver, mercury is the only common metal that is liquid at room temperature. Alchemists, including the young Sir Isaac newton, believed it was the source of gold. In the modern era, it became a common ingredient of paints, diuretics, pesticides, batteries, fluorescent light bulbs, skin creams, antifungal agents, vaccines for children, and of course, thermometers. There is probably some in your mouth right now: So-called silver dental fillings are half mercury.

Mercury is also a by-product of many industrial processes. In the United States coal-fired power plants alone pump about 50 tons of it into the air each year. That mercury rains out of the sky into oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams, where it becomes concentrated in the flesh of fish, shellfish, seals, and whales. Last year the Food and Drug Administration determined there is so much mercury in the sea that women of childbearing age should severely limit their consumption of larger ocean fish. The warning comes too late for many mothers. A nationwide survey by the Centers for Disease Control shows that one in 12 women of childbearing age already have unsafe blood levels of mercury and that as many as 600,000 babies in the United States could be at risk. But that begs a critical question: At risk for what?

Infants born to mothers contaminated by mercury in Japan’s Minamata Bay in 1956 had profound neurological disabilities including deafness, blindness, mental retardation, and cerebral palsy. In adults mercury can cause numbness, stumbling, dementia, and death. “It’s no secret that mercury exposure is highly toxic,” says toxicologist Alan Stern, a contributor to a 2000 National Research Council report on mercury toxicity. But high-level exposures like those at Minamata cannot help scientists determine whether six silver fillings and a weekly tuna-salad sandwich will poison you or an unborn child. “The question is, what are the effects at low levels of exposure?” he says.

Data now suggest effects might occur at levels lower than anyone suspected. Some studies show that children who were exposed to tiny amounts of mercury in utero have slower reflexes, language deficits, and shortened attention spans. In adults, recent studies show a possible link between heart disease and mercury ingested from eating fish. Other groups claim mercury exposure is responsible for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and the escalating rate of autism.

How–and in what form–mercury inflicts damage is still unclear. Yet scientists and policymakers agree that more regulation is imperative. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to finalize its controversial first rule on reducing mercury emissions from power plants this month, and delegates from the United Nations Environment Programme met in late February to discuss an international convention limiting mercury use and emissions.

A decade ago researchers and lawmakers agreed that lead, another heavy metal, was harmful to children at levels one-sixth as high as previously recognized. But it took scientists decades to establish the scope and subtlety of lead poisoning. Mercury is now a ubiquitous contaminant. The average American may have several micrograms of it in each liter of blood, and the atmospheric burden of mercury has perhaps tripled since the industrial age. Whatever needs to be done to protect humanity from its love affair with quicksilver, it had better happen soon.

In August 1996 Karen Wetterhahn, a chemistry professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, spilled a few drops of a laboratory compound called dimethyl mercury onto one of her hands. She was wearing latex lab gloves, so she didn’t think much of it. A colleague saw her at a conference the following November. “She said she thought she was coming down with the flu,” says toxicologist Vas Aposhian of the University of Arizona. By the time Wetterhahn was diagnosed with mercury poisoning, in January, it was too late. Despite subsequent treatment that helped clear the metal from her body, she lapsed into a vegetative state in February and died the following June.

Scientists are at a loss to explain why mercury often takes months to exert its effects. “If we knew that, we’d know a lot more about how mercury poisons the brain,” says Tom Clarkson, a toxicologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The degree of mercury’s toxicity depends on the form and route of exposure. You can swallow the liquid form of elemental mercury without much fear because it doesn’t easily penetrate the lining of the stomach and intestines. On the other hand, liquid mercury vaporizes at room temperature, and when you inhale the vapor it moves right from the lungs to the bloodstream to the brain. A broken thermometer can release enough mercury vapor to poison the air in a room–one reason why some cities and several states discourage the sale of mercury fever thermometers.

Mercury also binds with other elements in salts and organic compounds of varying toxicity. Dimethyl mercury, the substance that poisoned the Dartmouth chemist, is a synthetic form of organic mercury rarely found outside a lab. A simpler organic compound called methylmercury is of greater concern because methyl-mercury is the form found in the flesh of fish.

Seafood is one of the two most common sources of mercury exposure in adults. Although concentrations of mercury in air and water are increasing, they are still too small for alarm. But bacteria process the mercury in lakes and oceans into a form that accumulates in living tissue. Plankton take in the bacteria and are in turn eaten by small fish. With each meal, the mercury concentration rises. Then larger fish eat the small fish, increasing tissue concentrations still more. Fish at the top of the food chain accumulate the most mercury. The species singled out by the recent FDA advisory–big predators such as albacore tuna, shark, and swordfish–can have 100 times more mercury in their tissues than smaller fish do.

The methylmercury in fish passes readily from the human gut to the bloodstream and on into all organs and tissues. It seems to act most powerfully on the brain because the compound is strongly attracted to fatty molecules called lipids, and the brain has the highest lipid content of any organ. Methylmercury crosses the protective blood-brain barrier by binding with an essential amino acid that has dedicated carrier proteins for shunting it into brain cells. Once inside brain cells, some of it gets converted to an inorganic form that sticks to and disable many structural proteins and enzymes essential to cell function. “It can destroy the biological function of any protein it binds to,” says Boyd Haley, a biochemist at the University of Kentucky.

Researchers learned how much  mercury the body can tolerate from studies of victims of catastrophic poisoning, such as the Japanese sickened by eating fish from Minamata Bay and the Iraqis who ate grain treated with a methylmercury-based preservative in the early 1970s. But those studies do not reveal how little mercury it takes to cause harm. At the time of her diagnosis, the Dartmouth chemist had 4,000 micrograms of mercury per liter in her blood. A diet consistently high in fish can create a blood-mercury level of about 25 micrograms per liter. That’s far below a lethal dose, but it still may not be safe.

Concerns about low-level toxicity haunt discussions of another ubiquitous source of mercury exposure: silver dental fillings. Elemental mercury, which makes up half of silver fillings, release mercury vapor, just as liquid mercury does. The vapor from dental amalgams is the primary source of the one to eight micrograms of mercury per liter of blood, that is, according to some sources, in the average American adult. That amount uncomfortably overlaps the Environmental Protection Agency’s current safe level of 5.8 micrograms per liter. But the EPA’s safety level is based on methylmercury exposure, about which more is known. No human studies have assessed prolonged exposure to low levels of mercury vapor. One study hints at subtle neural and behavioral anomalies in dentists, who collectively use 300 metric tons of mercury in amalgams each year and who often have two to five times the typical concentration of mercury in their urine.

“I think the methylmercury in fish is probably our least toxic exposure,” says Haley, who broadcasts the hazards of dental fillings.

Silver-mercury fillings have never been tested for safety. “The amalgam question will never be solved until we do a clinical trial like those we do with other medical devices,” says Aposhian.

“It’s really unclear what’s going on with dental amalgams,” says Stern, who notes that the issue is complicated by the potential for panic and lawsuits. “It’s a snake pit.”

One of the lessons of Minamata is that mercury, like lead, is harder on fetuses than on the women carrying them, or adults in general. In the Japanese event, women with no overt symptoms of poisoning gave birth to severely disabled children. “It was evident there was a major difference in susceptibility between the developing brain and the mature brain,” says Philippe Grandjean, an epidemiologist at the Harvard University School of Public Health. “When we saw serious poisonings in Minamata, that made us wonder whether mercury could be like lead.”

Studies of lead have shown that IQ decreases approximately two or three points for every doubling of prenatal and early postnatal exposure. To see if mercury has comparable effects, Grandjean, along with Pal Weihe at the University of Southern Denmark, is conducting the largest study to date of children’s cognition and behavior in a population routinely exposed to low levels of mercury. His work in the Faeroe Islands of Denmark includes 1,000 mother-child pairs and spans almost 20 years. In a typical year, Faeroe islanders consume 1,000 pilot whales, or one whale for every 50 islanders. “They belong to one of the most fish-eating populations in the world,” says Grandjean.

Whale meat is one of the most highly contaminated seafoods because whales are at the top of the food chain. Even so, the mercury content of whale meat is considerably lower than that of the hypertoxic Minamata fish. An earlier study of shark eaters in New Zealand suggested that relatively high levels of mercury in a mother’s hair during pregnancy correlated with a loss of three IQ points in her child. High levels, in that study, were identified as six parts per million and above in the hair shaft.

Grandjean gave a battery of sophisticated cognitive and developmental tests to the Faeroese children when they were 7 and 14. His results indicate that IQ drops 1.5 points for every doubling in prenatal exposure to mercury. The 2000 National Research Council report concluded that the risk documented by Grandjean “is likely to be sufficient to result in an increase in the number of children who have to struggle to keep up in school.”

“We learned there is a response at low levels,” says Grandjean. “It’s not a huge loss, but it’s certainly not negligible.”

Yet in another large, long-term epidemiological study conducted on the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, Clarkson has so far found no effect on neurological development from prenatal exposure to low levels of mercury in seafood. “We can’t exclude effects from 20 parts per million or even 12 parts per million,” he notes. But he concludes there is no graded risk that extends to the lowest exposure levels.

The 2000 research council report evaluated the Faeroe, Seychelles, and New Zealand studies and recommended that the EPA set safety standards based on Grandjean’s more sobering findings. The agency did. Then, for good measure, it added a 10-fold uncertainty factor–a safety margin to protect against scientific unknowns and individual differences in response to a toxin. The uncertainty factor lowers the threshold to a figure of 5.8 micrograms per liter of blood and 1.2 parts per million in hair.

The problem with safety factors is that they create a toxicological limbo between demonstrably harmful doses and levels that have been declared safe. Thus, when Centers for Disease Control surveys find that one in twelve American women of childbearing age–8 percent–have blood mercury levels above the safety threshold, the implications aren’t clear, either for them or for the children they bear. Epidemiologist Tom Sinks says, “It doesn’t tell us there’s a hazard.”

“The whole idea of a safety factor is to protect people,” Clarkson says. “You can’t turn it around to use an indication of who’s at risk. If you’re just above it, you aren’t necessarily in trouble.”

That kind of hedging, along with disagreement among population studies, leaves regulators with plenty of wiggle room. The FDA, for example, uses a more relaxed safety standard for mercury based on studies from the 1970s and 1980s. Where the EPA safety level for daily exposure is 0.1 microgram per kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of body weight, the FDA’s standard is about 0.4 microgram per kilogram per day. The difference is four times as much mercury.

Concern about early exposure to mercury doesn’t end at birth. Until recently, many infants received regular injections of mercury on a state-mandated, medically sanctioned schedule. The mercury came from a compound called thimerosal that has been used as a preservative in vaccines and other medicines since the 1930s. In 1999 the FDA recommended that thimerosal no longer be used in pediatric vaccines, and manufacturers have removed if from all but the influenza vaccine. But some scientists and many more aggrieved parents are convinced that thimerosal in childhood vaccines has already caused, or at least catalyzed, the U.S. epidemic of autism.

An estimated 400,000 Americans today have autism, a once rare neurological disorder characterized by social withdrawal, difficulty communicating, and involuntary, repetitive movements. Although the exact numbers are in dispute, the rate of diagnosis seems to have climbed sharply in the last decade. In California the incidence of autism was six times higher in 2002 than 1987.

During that period, federal health officials added four new kinds of vaccines to the childhood immunization schedule, and the amount of mercury routinely administered to infants in the first six months of life more than doubled. Throughout the 1990s, a 3-month-old baby might receive as much as 63 micrograms of mercury in a single visit to a doctor–roughly 100 times the daily EPA safety level. By the age of 6 months, properly immunized children were exposed to at least 188 micrograms of mercury in a series of at least nine injections. Although the 1999 FDA action minimized such exposure, some infant flu vaccines still contain 12.5 micrograms of mercury per dose–more than 10 times the daily EPA safety level for a 20-pound baby.

Circumstantial evidence also implicates mercury in autism. Some of the symptoms of autism and mercury poisoning are similar, and Haley has garnered evidence from hair samples that autistic children do not clear mercury from their bodies as efficiently as most kids do. They may have a genetic susceptibility that allows more mercury to accumulate in their tissues, he says. That could make them more vulnerable to mercury-laced vaccines and the continuous low-level exposure from their mothers’ dental fillings. “It is amazing to me that no one has taken the tissue of autistic children to see if there is excess mercury there,” Aposhian told a committee at the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., last year. “That’s one thing that really has to be done.”

There are other sources of uncertainty. The form of mercury in thimerosal–an organic compound called ethyl mercury–is the least studied of all mercury’s incarnations. When scientists argue about its toxicity, they typically rely on data from methylmercury, which may not be an equivalent form of exposure. Experts even disagree about whether ethyl mercury can cross the blood-brain barrier. (It probably does.) “There are no good ways to measure ethyl mercury in tissue,” toxicologist Polly Sager of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told the Institute of Medicine committee.

The Institute of Medicine concluded last May that no claim could be made for a causal link between mercury-laced vaccines and autism, but several independent researchers had complained that their access to federal vaccine databases, which could provide evidence of a link, had been repeatedly blocked. A few scientists, including Haley and neuropharmacolgoist Richard Deth of Northeastern University in Boston, continue to study possible mechanisms for the connection. Deth reported last year, for example, that in human nerve cells thimerosal blocks a chemical reaction called methylation that is critical to gene activity and that is also disabled by exposure to lead.

The report that first triggered worries about a connection between vaccines and autism was published in the British medical journal The Lancet in 1998. It described eight children whose behavioral problems surfaced within two weeks of receiving the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. The Lancet and most of the article’s coauthors ultimately disowned the study because its lead author had not divulged that he was also being paid to conduct research for parents seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers. Nonetheless, the number of parents in the United Kingdom willing to immunize their babies with the vaccine dropped from 90 percent in 1998 to less than 80 percent in 2004.

Health officials in the United States addressed suspicions about immunization by recommending that thimerosal be removed from pediatric vaccines. Thimerosal might yet prove harmless, they reasoned, but the threat to public health posed by a drop in immunization rates was not worth risking. The same balance of risks exists regarding the issue of mercury in fish. The current Federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report recommends at least two fish meals a week. Fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which have proven benefits in preventing heart disease, the number one killer in the United States. “We know mercury is a hazardous substance,” says the CDC’s Sinks. “We know that less is better than more. We know that fish and shellfish are the principal source of methylmercury. But we also know that fish and shellfish are pretty nutritious food: high in protein, high in vitamins. They contain healthy fats.”

But troubling evidence suggests that methylmercury in fish might cause heart disease. A seven-year study of more than 1,800 men in Finland showed that those who ate the most fish doubled their risk of heart attack compared with those whose diets had less fish. The same men showed the same increase in risk for death from coronary and cardiovascular disease. And Grandjean’s Faeroe Islands study found that prenatal exposure to mercury caused significant increases in blood pressure among 7-year-olds.

The most troubling aspect of this controversial heart-disease data is that deleterious effects occur at mercury-exposure levels equal to or lower than for any other toxicological outcome, including the subtle neurological symptoms in the Faeroe Islands study. In Grandjean’s most recent examination of 14-year-olds, he has found a doubling of certain neurotoxic effects at five parts per million in hair samples. In the Finnish study, the men with the doubled risk of heart attack had hair samples with only two parts per million of mercury. They were eating little more than an ounce of fish a day. Stern speculates that 10 percent of American mean may already eat enough fish to raise their risk of heart attack.

“There’s this interaction between mercury and fish oils that makes it very complicated because they both come from the same place,” he says.

The National Research Council report noted that low levels of mercury contamination might also harm the immune and reproductive systems. And mercury is being investigated in relation to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, attention deficit disorder, and multiple sclerosis. But many low-level developmental effects will be difficult to identify, Stern says, because the compromised organ or function still falls within the range of normal. The intelligence scores of the Faeroese children, for example, were not pathologically low; it took rigorous statistical analyses to prove they were simply lower than they would have been otherwise. Likewise heart disease, as the nation’s leading killer, has plenty of confounding variables. “You’re looking to pull a signal out of a lot of noise,” Stern says.

That signal might soon get a lot stronger. While mercury contamination is no longer a threat in most childhood vaccines, it is likely to get worse in fish. “Because of the beneficial effects of fish consumption, the long-term goal needs to be a reduction in the concentrations of [methylmercury] in fish rather than a replacement of fish in the diet by other foods,” said the council’s report.

That goal is nothing less than unrealistic.

Mercury was a naturally occurring element in Earth’s atmosphere long before coal-fired generators, medical-waste incinerators, and chlor-alkali plants put more there. Some mercury escapes into the air when volcanoes erupt and mountains erode. It stands to reason that mercury has been accumulating in the flesh of fish, shellfish, and marine mammals since humankind began eating them–which is most likely why humans have a protein called metallothione to help detoxify mercury and other heavy metals.

But human activities have caused the mercury content of the atmosphere to rise by 1.5 percent a year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and the problem is global. Roughly half of the mercury deposited on U.S. soils and streams comes across the Pacific from Asia. Last year a United Nations report found that the toxin can travel thousands of miles in the atmosphere to contaminate pristine and uninhabited areas, such as the Arctic. Still, the United States has so far balked at attempts by the United Nations Environment Programme to draw up a binding protocol to reduce mercury pollution worldwide.

In the 1990s the United States made considerable progress in curbing emissions from incinerators for medical and municipal waste. Yet the number of states issuing local fishing advisories went from 27 to 48 in the last decade. Due to heightened concern, advisories for mercury are increasing faster than for any other pollutant.

The EPA is in the final stages of formalizing a rule that would limit emissions from coal-fired utilities, which produce 42 percent of the nation’s domestic mercury pollution. The agency’s standing proposal has been for a 70 percent reduction in mercury emissions by 2018. But environmentalists argue that the Clean Air Act calls for a 90 percent reduction by 2008. In 1992 the Natural Resources Defense Council sued the EPA for not maintaining the act’s standards, and in 1994 the parties reached a settlement. Under the terms of the agreement, the agency is required to issue a cleanup rule this month.

 

Rising Mercury

Home Editorials – from the Bangor Daily News — Thursday, Apr. 12, 2001

Despite protests from the American Dental Association, any country that seriously discusses doing away with mercury thermometers because of their potential impact on health cannot be long from restricting the use of mercury dental fillings. Congress will soon work on the question while Maine reviews LD 1409, a concept bill that seeks to examine the long-term effects of these fillings and the steps the state should take to protect residents and the environment. For one expert who testified last week, the answers are clear. Dr. Boyd Haley, chairman of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky, concludes that normal body loads of mercury in older adults produce two diagnostic hallmarks for Alzheimer’s disease. Further, he says, in a test for mercury in the blood and urine of more than 1,000 soldiers, the vast majority, more than 87 percent, was traced to dental amalgams. Further still, the primary source of mercury in wastewater treatment plants came through feces and urine of people with these fillings. That is, he and other reputable scientists are identifying dental amalgams as a major source of this toxin in humans and in the environment. The ADA will have none of this. It says 150 years of dentistry show that the amalgams are not a problem, as evidenced by the dentists themselves who spend a career around these products. Individual dentists in Maine, however, sometimes tell a different story. They note that the alternatives to the mercury amalgams are more expensive but that they are safer for their patients, themselves and their staff, and for the environment. The legislature’s job in this case is not to start an argument among dentists but to look at the relative risk of mercury to the public and the level of importance of dental amalgams in contributing to that risk. Mercury can be toxic to the nervous system. U.S. dentists, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, annually use a total of between 40 and 60 metric tons of mercury in their practices but other sources have attracted the attention of regulators. Bills in Congress would more tightly regulate mercury emissions from power plants and incinerators, would reduce mercury in light bulbs and eliminate it in thermometers, switches and other household products. Rep. Tom Allen, who has followed the mercury issue closely, will reintroduce a mercury-reduction bill after the congressional break that for the first time encourages states, communities, dentists and dental associations to work toward eliminating the mercury filling. The potential for environmental damage alone would make mercury from dental offices endangered. A fair review of the studies of its human health effects by the Bureau of Health would take only several months. If the work by the bureau turns out as scientists like Dr. Haley suspect it will, lawmakers should begin a reduction and phase-out of this type of dental fillings.

The articles on this page discuss legal and political developments, their impact on the practice of dentistry and dental health consumers.

California Dentists Forced Out Of State Of Denial: The Health Risks Of Mercury Amalgam Fillings

Redacted Article: By Hal A. Huggins, D.D.S., M.S. Alternative Medicine Magazine, May 2001

After Years of Litigation, California dentist are finally required to notify their patients that mercury fillings are a health hazard. Disclosure at last! On November 15, 2000, the judge of the Superior Court of California in San Francisco signed a consent decree that marks a true milestone in California’s dental treatment. The link between birth defects and silver-mercury dental fillings will have to be disclosed to California dental patients after February 15, 2001. In a landmark decision, the judge ruled that, according to Proposition 65, patients must be informed of this connection. This is a 180-degree turnaround from the American Dental Association’s policy – still current – that silver-mercury amalgams are safe and that any dentist who suggests otherwise to[their] patients can have [their] license revoked. Officially called “The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986,” Proposition 65 was overwhelmingly passed by California voters in order to address growing concerns about exposure to toxic chemicals. Proposition 65 contains a number of provisions, including requiring the governor to publish a list of chemicals that are known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. This list must be updated once a year. Several hundred chemicals are already listed. Proposition 65 imposes certain controls that apply to chemicals that appear on this list. These controls are designed to protect California’s drinking water sources from contamination by these chemicals, to allow consumers to make informed choices about the products they purchase and to enable residents or workers to take whatever action they deem appropriate to protect themselves from exposures to these harmful chemicals. Of particular interest to dental patients is the provision that businesses are: Prohibited from knowingly discharging listed chemicals into sources of drinking water Required to provide a “clear and reasonable” warning before knowingly and intentionally exposing anyone to a listed chemical.

In spite of the proven connection between mercury and birth defects , the California Dental Association and allied industries fought to be exempted from having to post this warning. At first they just ignored the requirement for several years. After being sued, they went through a series of legal battles. Finally, 15 years after the law was passed, as the result of a complaint filed by the Environmental Law Foundation of Oakland, California, dentists are required to post this warning. According to the law, manufacturers of commonly used dental mercury-amalgam fillings (about 50% mercury) must warn the distributors, who in turn must warn the dentists. Here, a loophole shows up. According to the letter of the law the dentist does not have to inform the patient of the results of continual exposure to mercury unless the dentist has ten or more employees. Does this mean that birth defects are not a mercury-related factor if a dentist has only nine employees?

At the present time, if a dentist discusses mercury toxicity with a patient or suggests removal of mercury because of toxicity, he is “unethical” and subject to having his license removed. In the 1970’s, American dentist placed nearly 1,000,000 mercury fillings daily. With the advent of the controversy over mercury toxicity, that number has reduced to about 250,00 daily, according to amalgam manufacturers. It is possible that the truth about amalgam fillings will spread across the U.S., and other states will demand the cessation of the use of mercury fillings. Other countries have already limited or stopped their use. Sweden no longer uses mercury amalgam. Germany has stated that no mercury should be placed in pregnant women or even in women who could become pregnant. One of the more common happenings in the dental office occurs in the field of reproductive toxicity, which is a major issue in Proposition 65. Scientific literature shows that dental assistants are far more prone to spontaneous abortions, still births and the delivery of children with birth defects. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), is looking into the possibility of measuring mercury levels in dental offices. How is that going to effect the current complacency of dentists today? OSHA is permitted to levy large fines on workplaces that exceed limits for exposure to toxic chemicals. Many dental offices have been measured on an independent basis and found to exceed OSHA levels for mercury vapor. There is agreement on the actual toxicity of mercury. Everyone is in agreement that…

1. Mercury is toxic at very low levels. 2. Mercury can alter our DNA, which can lead to birth defects. 3. Amalgam fillings contain around 50% mercury. 4. Mercury is release from amalgam fillings on a continual basis. 5. The new high-copper amalgam fillings release 50 times more mercury than previous amalgams. 6. Mercury passes through the blood-brain barrier and the placental barrier. 7. Developing fetal tissues are more subject to damage than adult tissues.

Dentistry is bracing itself for a major change in both philosophy and the methodology of randomly placing toxic substances in non-informed patients. Dentists are finding themselves potentially abandoned by the ADA, their state organization, their schools, their insurance companies, their patients and even their own employees. One thing is for sure. The enforcement of Proposition 65 in California will almost certainly result in some dental group or organization being served up on a “silver-mercury” platter.