Dental Amalgam Essay

Introduction

Dental amalgams have been proven to a composition of an alloy of silver, copper, tin, and zinc combined with mercury which are dentally advantages when used (Wolff et al., 1983; Desmet et al., 1984; Shraim et al., 2011). ‘The Godfather of Amalgam’; Louis Regnart, added the mercury to solidify or strengthen a cement mix he made to make an amalgam. This mercury also assisted in preserving the cement mixture at liquid form to be used on human teeth (Eames, 1959). Then in 1959, the formula for the cement was again amended but with a reduced mercury-to-alloy mixture ratio (Eames, 1959). Later on copper replaced tin; the copper was introduced to strengthen the alloy and the copper was less probable to corrosion in comparison to the earlier

Each element has its own toxicology profile and how these elements are useful to the human system (Klaassen, 2001). Dental amalgams deteriorate due to a number of causes, namely; mastication, vigorous teeth brushing, oral temperature increase and abrasion. When the dental amalgam is damaged it tends to release a mercury vapour or little pieces of amalgam which are ingested into the system with beverages or food (SCENHIR, 2007; Roberson et al., 2006; Huggins, 1992). The amount of damage dental amalgams can produced is based on the size, sensitivity of the patient to one of the elements in the amalgam, composition of the amalgam, the age of the amalgam and the surface area covered by the amalgam (Weiner et al.,

Mercury interrupts the immune homeostasis and the measles virus stimulates the release of cytokines which sparks the further damaging effects of the disease (Cohly and Panja, 2005). Environmental mercury does in fact altercate the disease pathogenesis of autism, such hypotheses have not been substantiated the fact but Cohly and Panja (2005) does endorse the fact. The data of the study of Cohly and Panja (2005) illustrates that Thimerosal in the mercury does have health effects of humans; Thimersol does at time exist in some bacterial or viral vaccines. One cohort study conducted by Andrew et al. (2004) ruled out the fact that Thimerosal leads to any kind of neuro-disorders. To clear up all this controversy of mercury containing Thimersol, vaccines and dental amalgams, the Institute of Medicine in Washington released a report to the Food and Drug Administration stating there is no correlation between dental amalgam, Thimersol and autism (IOM,