Unmasking The Unscientific JAMA 2006 Childrens Amalgam Study

Response to the NIDCR Funded Children's Amalgam Testing publications in the JAMA 2006
By Boyd Haley, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky

Excerpts from article at: http://www.bioprobe.com/ReadNews.asp?article=95

Below are some comments regarding these studies. Some relevant research publications regarding my comments are presented at the end of this summary.
1. In the first line of the Portugal based study entitled"Neurobehavioral Effects of Dental Amalgam in Children" Dr. Timothy A.DeRouen, et al. writes that "dental amalgam ---emits small amounts of mercury vapor". This is not a scientific nor quantitative statement, i.e.what is a small amount of mercury? The exposure level of a toxin to any such study of this type is absolutely needed and this is totally ignored in these studies making any comments on safety by measuring the urine mercury levels totally invalid. The fact is these researchers are implanting into children a material that is 50% mercury and known to emit mercury vapors, but the question is how much mercury vapor are these children exposed to daily. Both the ADA and the FDA have steadfastly refused to address this question by doing the appropriate experiments and publishing them. My opinion (since I have done this) is that they know the level of mercury vapor emission from amalgams is to high to be accepted as safe, so they stonewall this critical experiment. Now it appears as if the IRB boards of several prestigious medical schools have been convinced to do the same. It is a derilection of duty to place a toxic material into any patient, but especially a child, and especially if the level of toxic exposure is not defined.
2. It has been published and verified that over 90% of mercury excreted by humans leaves through the bilary transport system of the liver and is excreted in the feces, not the urine. Urine mercury levels are well documented not to reflect exposure under many conditions. Therefore, a major flaw in these studies published in JAMA is that they did not measure mercury using the appropriate fecal samples and, instead, used urine, which is a minimal excretion route and vastly under estimates the total mercury exposure. Also, most mercury excreted in the urine is that bound to cysteine or other soluble, small molecule sulfur containing compounds. Therefore, the urine mercury excretion levels are as much dependent on the blood levels ofcysteine or other compounds as they are on mercury exposure. Cysteine levels are dependent on diet. The bottom line is that these studies looked for mercury in all the wrong places. One study reported that mercury in fecal materials was 13 times that in urine of the same patients. If you don't want to find data indicating excess exposure to mercury look where it isn't, look in the urine and that's what these studies did.
3. Since the IRB of several prestigious universities approved this research, i.e. research that exposed children to an unknown daily level of mercury vapor, the public should demand that these same universities perform experiments on the same brand of amalgams, made outside of the mouth, of known weight and surface area and determine the amount of mercury released per day by these amalgams (with and without abrasion to mimic the daily effects of chewing). They should publish these results. With this data a decent estimate of the daily exposure of the children to mercury from these amalgams can be made and an approximate determination of what fraction of the amount excreted in the urine accounts for the bulk of the mercury. Studies done in my laboratory, similar to those done by others, have demonstrated that the emission of mercury vapors were much higher than what has been "estimated" by pro-amalgam individuals. Chew et al. Clinical Preventive Dentistry 13(3) 5-7, 1991, showed that in a study of long term dissolution of mercury from an non-mercury releasing amalgam it was determined that 43.5 microgram/cm2/day Hg was released and this remained constant for 2 years. What is also known is that different amalgam preparations release mercury at vastly different levels. The modern high copper amalgams were shown to release much higher levels than other older type amalgams.

Full article at: http://www.bioprobe.com/ReadNews.asp?article=95
References at: http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/4575_0_2_0_C/

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