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Dr. Hal Huggins says mercury is likely in your mouth, and poisoning you
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Dr. Hal Huggins says mercury is likely in your mouth, and poisoning you
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| Christina M. Felice |
Back in 2002, we ran a cover story about silver fillings. That's what the dentists were calling them, anyway Â…
No health organization will dispute that mercury is a toxin: It arguably ranks as the second-most-poisonous compound on earth, after plutonium. What Brockman and her husband, Dr. Vincent DiLorenzo, discovered, in the years spent running a practice near Chestnut Hill, was that mercury inside a dental office is treated squarely as an industrial material; yet dentistry, they argue, is one of the few industries that has not sought to eliminate mercury from its day-to-day procedures. While Mercurochrome is no longer used in hospitals to disinfect cuts, nor are thermometers filled with the metal, the same mercury is habitually mixed with other metals and placed inside the mouths of patients, in one of the most common dental treatments: a "silver" filling.
Scary, right? Thankfully, just last month, City Council approved a bill that forces dentists to give their patients brochures about "silver fillings" and have them sign waivers before putting the deadly compound in their mouths. It's a big step — and Philadelphia is the first city to sign such a bill — but anti-mercury activists still aren't happy. Dr. Hal Huggins, who's been speaking out against the fillings since the '80s, is coming to Philly this Saturday to address what still needs to be done — eliminate the fillings altogether, he says. "What is the legal limit for mercury in fish? Point-five parts per million. A half of one part per million," says the doctor. "But in a filling, you have 500,000 parts per million and that's OK. Does this make sense?"
Sat., June 6, 1-3 p.m., free, The Philadelphian, 2401 Pennsylvania Ave., Social Room A, register by e-mailing aynomercury@aol.com.
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