By Dr. Mercola
Mercury is a potent heavy metal toxin that can poison your brain, central nervous system and kidneys. Children and fetuses, whose brains are still developing, are most at risk, but anyone can be adversely impacted.

By Dr. Mercola
Mercury is a potent heavy metal toxin that can poison your brain, central nervous system and kidneys. Children and fetuses, whose brains are still developing, are most at risk, but anyone can be adversely impacted.
It’s considered such a potent toxic pollutant that just one drop of mercury in a lake would poison the lake to the extent that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would ban fishing in it.
Yet, unbelievably, they let you carry around a mouthful of this toxic metal and would have you believe it somehow loses its capacity to do harm once it’s put into your teeth.
The average person in the US has eight mercury fillings, falsely referred to as “silver” fillings. This misleading label, named “silver” after the color of the material, opposed to the actual ingredients, has been purposely used to keep you in the dark about the composition of the fillings. Clearly, this is no small problem and calls for urgent action.
Charlie Brown, a former attorney general for West Virginia, is the executive director of the non-profit foundation Consumers for Dental Choice, and one of our esteemed Health Liberty Alliance partners. He also serves as the president of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry.
He recently held a press conference, calling for one of the largest manufacturers of amalgam fillings, DENTSPLY, to stop making amalgam in the interest of human and environmental health.
Dental Amalgam is a Major Source of Environmental Mercury Pollution
DENTSPLY is a major manufacturer and aggressive marketer of mercury fillings. The company is also one of the world’s major mercury polluters.
“They certainly make good dental equipment,” Charlie says. “They make all the other dental materials. They don’t need to sell amalgam – it’s a tiny part of their profits – but they do so anyway. They are ignoring their duty as a good citizen for the environment.”
Amalgam contributes an estimated 10 percent of environmental mercury pollution, which means that amalgam manufactured by DENTSPLY and other major manufacturers is in fact causing direct harm to the environment. Mercury from dental amalgam is released into the air when people are cremated, for example. It also enters soils and waterways, where it becomes a major contaminant of our food supply.
“As a farmer said at that news conference in York, Pennsylvania, “I’m not giving you mercury at your table... But you are getting mercury at your table, because the mercury from the dental offices gets into our sludge and then to our vegetables.”
The sad fact is that, as Charlie mentions, American tax payers pay the cost that dentists are causing by polluting your environment with mercury. It’s time the pro-mercury dentists either stop using amalgam, or pay for the damage they’re incurring. Truly, any responsible dentist in today’s day and age would simply stop using amalgam, and any responsible corporation would stop making it.
“That’s why DENTSPLY needs to have a phase-out plan and needs to tell the dentists, “We’re going to stop making amalgam after this date and get out of that business,” Charlie says.
Success! Dental Mercury Included in International Mercury Treaty
Over the past three years, Charlie Brown has had the opportunity to work on the United Nation’s mercury treaty. The five treaty sessions -- from June 2010 through January 2013 -- spanned almost 1,000 days. In the end, despite fierce lobbying against it by the World Dental Association, dental amalgam was included in the treaty, and every country that signs this treaty will be required to start phasing down the use of dental amalgam.
This is no small feat considering how hard the World Dental Association fought against it, asking the delegates to leave amalgams out of the treaty, or if they put it in the treaty, to limit the measures to talk about cavity prevention like brushing your teeth.
“If the World Dental Association was that concerned about prevention, they wouldn’t be taking all this money from the major candy makers,” Charlie says. “[W]e were successful in part because of your readers,” Charlie told me. “We want to thank them because many people in the United States, all over the English-speaking world, every country in the world, people helped us. People went to their government leaders and said, “We ought to put amalgam in this treaty.” By the message you’ve gotten out, the people watching, listening, and acting – writing the letters, sending the emails, helping us with our financial needs – have all helped lead us toward getting this treaty...”
The treaty will require countries to undertake at least two of the prescribed steps to “phase down amalgam use.” Among the listed measures are:
- Setting national objectives aimed at minimizing (amalgam) use;
- Promoting the use of cost-effective and clinically-effective mercury-free alternatives;
- Encouraging professional societies and dental schools to educate and train dental professionals in the use of mercury-free dental restoration; and
- Encouraging insurance policies