Amalgam (dentistry) and the American Society of Dental Surgeons (ASDS), the only US dental association at the time, forced all of its members to sign a pledge to abstain from using the mercury fillings. This was the beginning of what is known as the first dental amalgam war. The dispute ended in 1856 with the disbanding of the old association. The American Dental Association (ADA) was founded in its place in 1859, which has since then strongly defended dental amalgam from allegations of being too risky from the health standpoint. Amalgam has been used for many years for restorations, commonly known as
Amalgam (dentistry) problem. This phase has been shown to be the weakest phase in the set amalgam and is subject to corrosion, particularly at the tooth-amalgam interface. In 1962 a new amalgam alloy, called Dispersalloy, was introduced with the addition of a spherical silver-copper eutectic particle to the traditional lathe-cut AgSn particle in a ratio of 1:2. The mixture of these two types of particles is known as admix alloy. The benefits of this alloy was to strengthen the set amalgam and reduce the γ phase (SnHg). The increased copper in the silver-copper eutectic reacted preferentially with tin so that SnHg could