Consumers lack clear warnings about dangers of mercury fillings, group says.
Orange County Register
By Lisa Muñoz
Wednesday, December, 10, 2003
The California dental board has been sued for failing to provide consumer-friendly warnings about the possible health hazards of mercury- based dental fillings.
Consumers for Dental Choice, a Washington, D.C., consumer-advocacy group, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, saying the dental board was ordered 13 years ago to produce and distribute information alerting consumers to the risks associated with mercury fillings.
"They need the information now, not in three months, not in six months, not in a year," said Charlie Brown, the group's national counsel. "It needs to get out now."
The lawsuit, which seeks to force the dental board to comply with the law, is the latest skirmish in a long-running debate over the safety of the fillings. Amalgam fillings contain about 50 percent mercury, 25 percent silver and 25 percent other materials. Some medical studies have found amalgam fillings can lead to diseases such as Alzheimer's, attention deficit disorder and autism, but others have supported the safety of the material.
Brown said his group has worked with the dental board since 1999 to produce an easy- to-understand brochure about mercury fillings. The board did produce an eight-page handout for patients, but Brown said it is unintelligible and incomplete.
"The dental board is fully committed to providing a comprehensive and consumer-friendly fact sheet," spokesman Mike Luery said. "It's just a matter of updating it and making it more conversational."
Luery said mercury-based fillings are a contentious issue, with disagreement even within the scientific community. He also cited a recent article in the Journal of New England Medicine that found "no connection" between mercury in dental amalgams and neuro-degenerative diseases and no evidence to support replacing the fillings with alternative materials.
On its Web site, the ADA says that dental amalgam is "a safe, affordable and durable material that has been used to restore the teeth of more than 100 million Americans" and that the material "has established a record of safety and effectiveness." The association accuses amalgam opponents of pitting emotion against science and scaring patients to the point where they may not seek dental care. That is especially troubling, the ADA says, for low-income patients who may not have insurance or whose health plans may not cover the more-expensive alternatives.
Anita Vazquez Tibau, California director for Consumers for Dental Choice in Newport Beach, disagrees.
She said she had serious gastrointestinal problems, chronic asthma and other respiratory illnesses until 2001, when she had 13 mercury fillings replaced with composite fillings.
"It's a poison any way you slice it," Tibau said. "It is an impossibility to prove it's safe."
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