There are still, after overwhelming scientific evidence, many dentists that don’t see anything wrong, using amalgam to fill cavities. Amalgam is still the most commonly used material to fill a cavity after the clean out. It is a mixture of mainly the metals mercury, zinc, tin, silver and copper containing 50% mercury and only 20 to 35% silver. We know that gold and silver are inert materials that would not harm the body, and we might be fooled by the appearance of an amalgam filling – it sure looks like silver so it must be OK – but the high concentration of mercury makes it unsuited for implantation into our bodies.
I remember, many years ago, a friend bringing a vial containing mercury to school. Even as school kids we knew that this was dangerous stuff. At that time thermometers still contained real mercury and we had learned to be very careful if one of those broke. We were fascinated by that little sample of liquid metal in its securely sealed container our buddy had brought, and certainly the weight of it was real interesting. Nobody in his right mind would have gotten the idea though, to put this stuff into his mouth.
By today’s standard the situation in school, those many years ago, was very dangerous, but we just did not know better. Today we do and we would treat such a vial of pure mercury with much more caution than we did as school kids.
With amalgam, 50% of which is this liquid metal, we have to do the same learning. There might have been a time when we were not so knowledgeable about the dangers of amalgam and actually used it in our mouth. But now that we know what damage it can do we should avoid it like the black plague. Especially as we now have materials available that are much better suited for the repair of cavities.
Even historically the opinion about the use of amalgam was not undivided. For example, in 1843, the American Society of Dental Surgeons declared the use of dental amalgam a malpractice and forced its members to abstain from using amalgams.
The following video shows some more recent information about this material that many of us still carry in our bodies…
