Sunday, September 12, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Dental fillings and mercury exposure

Last time, responding to a letter writer who complained, "Recently (President) Bush and his appointees have sided with corporate polluters to release seven times the mercury poisoning into the air as current law allows. ..." we decided to see if we could determine what the major sources of mercury exposure really are -- and how large a role smoke from American coal-fired power plants really plays.

Speaking before the June meeting of the Tucson-based medical society Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, Dr. Boyd Haley, chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky, noted that millions of dollars were recently spent tracking one Canadian cow with "Mad Cow Disease," but blamed the American medical and dental professions for not following the science and speaking out about a far more devastating epidemic.

Psychiatrists call it attention deficit disorder, autism, autism spectrum disorder, or pervasive development disorder. Dr. Haley calls it "Mad Child Disease" and thinks that its various forms represent different levels of mercury toxicity.

Every quantitative study has shown that the largest contributor to the mercury body burden in Americans is dental amalgams, Dr. Haley contends. "It is much more significant than coal-fired electrical power generation or fish consumption," reports the DDP's latest newsletter, in its summary of Dr. Haley's talk.

In a position statement released in October 2002, the American Dental Association asserted that, "The process by which amalgam is made renders the bound mercury component stable." The FDA reaffirmed the safety of dental amalgam in March 2002. But Dr. Haley argues the ADA has never tested or funded a test of an amalgam filling to determine whether it actually releases mercury.

In a July 2002 press release, the ADA admitted that a "minute" amount of mercury "may be released" by "vigorous chewing and grinding," but claimed, "There is no scientific evidence that this negligible amount results in adverse health effects."

But Charles G. Brown, national counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice and the Washington-based Coalition for Mercury-Free Dentistry, supplied me with excerpts from the 1999 Toxicological Profile for Mercury, updated in 1999 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

On pages six and seven we find: "A potential source of exposure to metallic mercury for the general population is mercury released form dental amalgam fillings. ... Estimates of the amount of mercury released from dental amalgams range from 3 to 17 micrograms per day. ... The mercury from dental amalgam may contribute from 0 to more than 75 percent of your total daily mercury exposure. ... "

On pages 278 and 279 comes a somewhat more alarming finding: "Female dentists and dental assistants exposed to metallic mercury vapors had increased reproductive failures (spontaneous abortions, stillbirth, and congenital malformations) and irregular, painful or hemorrhagic menstrual disorder ... ."

"Vaccines containing thimerosal, which immediately releases ethyl mercury, are the infant's next exposure," Dr. Haley told the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, back in June. Dr. Haley charged that giving a child, on the day it is born, a bolus of mercury 60 to 80 times what the EPA considers a reasonably safe level (if taken by mouth) is "not something an intelligent medical community would do."

Thimerosal was removed from vaccines for cats and dogs in 1992, but thimerosal-free hepatitis B vaccine was not available for babies until 2000, Dr. Haley reports.

The epidemic of Mad Child Disease started at the same time as the mandated vaccine program in 1982-1985, Dr. Haley says. The first case of autism, for a time a uniquely American disease, was described in 1941. Thimerosal had been patented in 1928 and was added to various American drugs in the 1930s.

The male-female ratio is about 4-to-1 in all the mad child diseases, suggesting that the cause is probably the same toxic vector, according to the University of Kentucky chemist. "It happens that boys are much more susceptible to mercury toxicity than girls because testosterone potentiates toxicity while estrogen is protective."

The effect on a generation of American boys has been devastating, Dr. Haley argues. While boys previously outperformed girls in mathematics on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the results have now flip-flopped, he reports. Affirmative action is being practiced to get enough men into medical and law school. This is not solely the effect of poor schooling, Dr. Haley believes.

Bernard Rimland, Ph.D., founder of the Autism Research Institute, estimates 4 percent of American boys are autistic. He predicts a serious shortage of technically trained men and suggests that fully vaccinated children could lose 15 to 20 IQ points and have blunted emotions and behavioral problems.

Yet the Institute of Medicine has called for an end to research on a connection between mercury and neurodevelopment disorders, and for channeling funds into "more productive" avenues, even though officials are unable to provide any other explanation for the epidemic of Mad Child Disease, Dr. Haley says.

Between 1970 and 1980, nearly 15 percent of British children were not vaccinated as suggested, and only one autistic child has been found in that group, Dr. Haley told the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness at their June meeting. As 47 percent of Australian children are unvaccinated, autistic children in this natural control groups are now being sought. Dr. Boyd wagers that few will be found.

Next time: Should we have our mercury fillings removed?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." His Web site is www.privacyalert.us.