Can dental amalgams damage health?
This is a theoretical possibility. We know that mercury is a poison. Albert Kingman’s paper from the National Institute of Dental Research in the US, published in the Journal of Dental Research, 1998, measured mercury in urine in more than 1,000 healthy males and found that the amount in the urine is directly related to the number of amalgam fillings. Is mercury unsafe for everyone? Sven Enestrom, at the University of Linkoping in Sweden, suggests in the Archives of Allergy and Immunology (1995) that mercury probably affects only a small proportion of people but those susceptible are difficult to identify in the type of large population studies that are carried out. The British Dental Association maintains that mercury is safe for all. However, this view may be difficult to sustain in the long term as we can now test individuals for allergic reaction to mercury. This establishes if their immune systems might be susceptible to metal poisoning, but it’s not a test that dentists usually d
