What are the environmental concerns associated with mercury silver fillings?
It is well established that mercury is a significant environmental contaminant. Millions of dollars are spent on cleaning up toxic industrial mercury spills. Controlling mercury emissions from industrial settings has become a big environmental priority. In our neighboring Washington State, the Department of Ecology has included mercury on its list of the top nine targeted “Persistent Bio-accumulative Toxins” to be eliminated in our environment. A dirty little secret is that the dental industry is spilling a significant amount of mercury into the environment! Wastewater treatment agencies in several parts of the U.S. and Canada recently have been studying this problem. They find that wastewater entering the municipal treatment plants often contains unacceptable levels of heavy metals—including mercury. Wastewater treatment plants are not designed to process heavy metals. It is important that this contamination is cut off at the source. Their studies have estimated that up to 80%of the m
