A group of more than 25 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) launched a global campaign to eradicate the use of mercury in dentistry, a widespread practice that threatens health and the environment.
The Global Alliance leads the campaign for Dentistry without Mercury , based in Washington, which aims to eradicate 2020 dental amalgam, an alloy of mercury and other metals used as filling material which itconsiders a “primitive pollutant” element.
” It is the dental lobby which opposes the ban on mercury dental”: Charles Brown.
The environmental health benefits would be “huge for the planet , ” according to the Global Alliance. “The (EU) Scientific Committee of the European Union calls the amalgam of ‘secondary poisoning’ because the mercury containing gets into the fish and vegetables children eat , ” he adds.
A proposal to the European Commission advocates the use of dental amalgam in encapsulated form together with the application of spacers, which should be mandatory to protect dentists and patients from exposure to mercury and to ensure that their remains are not released to environment.
Dental amalgam is “much lower than alternative materials today,” said the president of the World Alliance, Charles Brown. “Western business interests I finance the campaign against sales to protect amalgams, especially in developing countries,” he said.
“In our favor is the Minamata Convention on Mercury,” which has signed 128 countries but only 28 of the 50 ratifications needed to be legally binding, the US said Brown.
Minamata Convention – which is named after the Japanese city where the 1950 hundreds of people were poisoned with mercury – aims to reduce or eliminate the use of metal.
“We need a push to get over the finish line,” noted Brown.
