Do you have a reference for this claim?

I don't have any references on the subject, but considering that
mercury is competing against fluorine, yellow phosphorus, and
beryllium, I wonder if anyone else can confirm it.

(I would have included arsenic in the list too, but the one very
 quick check I made said that elemental arsenic is not toxic, even
 though its compounds are very toxic.)

Perhaps mercury has the lowest "safe exposure threshold," but has
a higher LD50 than fluorine or yellow phosphorus?  Personally, if
I was forced to choose between drinking mercury, or breathing
fluorine, I'd DEFINITELY choose to drink the mercury.

-Bret Wood

On Sun, 02 May 1999 13:30:15 -0700, Bret Wood

Not the best of choices though?

Perhaps the choice of mercury is optionable though?

Hmmm.....Mercury in the mouth. Doesn't sound like the
greatest ideas?

John

Many dentists lie and say they are putting in "silver amalgam" .   (It's
trade name is silver amalgam but the only thing silver about it is the
COLOR of the mercury in it (the major component).   So if the patient
doesn't know he/she is not getting a real choice.

They did a  scientific experiment: put amalgam (mercury) fillings in
primates (closest to us).  They used radioactivly labeled mercury so
they would know whether any mercury problems resulted from other sources
of mercury or not.   The  radio-labeled mercury from the amalgams
concentrated in the liver, kidneys, brains and other vital organs in
large amounts.

Get the picture?

But dental materials do NOT get safety tested in the US (many other
countries have outright banned amalgams and other are in the process of
doing so.)

I ask a dentist whether he/she installs amalgam.  And if the answer is
yes, I DON'T give them ANY business.

says...

This is just nonsense.  An amalgam is a mixture of mercury
and another metal.  Silver amalgam is a mixture of liquid
mercury and silver,  it is not named for the color. Gold fillings
are gold amalgam, a mixture of gold and mercury.  Aside from
remembering this from a materials course years ago,  I bothered
to spend a minute to search the web and found this site with
a nice description:
http://www.qualitydentistry.com/dental/amalgam/amalgam.html

Any proof that there's really a good alternative that's
affordable for normal folks?  I occationally ask my dentist
whether anything's appeared that can be used on the wearing
surfaces of teeth (at least that's where *my* cavities happened)
and he indicates no,  not really.  Certainly I'd like one, I
think silver fillings aren't very good cosmetically.

BTW - care to quantify what 'large amounts' is, and how does that
relate to the amounts you find in people with obvious mercury
poisoning?  How long did the mercury stick around, and how many
fillings (or the equivalent) where done on the unidentified
species of primates?  What studies in peer reviewed journals

The competition with mercury is not fluorine (which as an element is
corrosive, and poisonous as an ion, but, of course, it
is BY LAW forced down us in huge quantities) nor beryllium (whish
is poisonous, but not liek mercury) nor phosphorus (which as an
element is poisonous in one form but not so much in teh other forms, and
is of course an extremely essential element, of DNA for example) but
rather cadmium and thallium and perhaps a few others.

Doug McDonald