What is the difference between silver (amalgam) fillings and white (resin) fillings?
Amalgam (silver filling material) is the traditional, time tested restorative material that dentists have used for hundreds of years that is composed of varying percentages of a liquid mercury and silver-tin-copper-zinc alloy powder. Shortly after it is placed in your child’s tooth, the mixture self hardens and can last for many years. Advantages of amalgam restorations are that they are less expensive than composite resin filling materials, that corrosion of the metals reduces the chances of recurrent caries (cavities that form under a previously existing filling), and that the amalgam restoration is easier and faster to place in your child’s tooth. Composite resin (white tooth-colored filling material) is a mixture of powdered glass and plastic resin which self hardens or hardens with exposure to blue light. Advantages of composite resin fillings include much better esthetics (matches the color of your child’s tooth), more conservative drilling of your child’s tooth (less tooth struc
