By Dr. Mercola

To see the interview with Charlie Brown

I am excited to have the opportunity to interview Charlie Brown, one of my legal heroes in the battle against mercury.  Charlie has been a major force in the ground roots movement against mercury amalgams.

Although the battle with the FDA rumbles on, we are whittling away at the barriers to progress, “hitting them upside the head” repeatedly with facts they can’t deny.  And we have no plans of letting up!

This issue is just too important, too critical to your health and the long-term health of your children.

Mercury is a potent heavy metal toxin that can poison your brain, central nervous system and kidneys.

It is one serious toxin and it personally severely damaged my kidneys when I had my amalgam fillings improperly removed 17 years ago.

Children and fetuses, whose brains are still developing, are most at risk, but really anyone can be impacted.

In fact, just one drop of mercury in a lake would poison the lake to the extent that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would ban it from fishing.

Yet, unbelievably, they let you carry around a mouthful of this toxic metal and would have you believe it somehow loses its capacity to do harm if installed in your teeth.  The average person in the U.S. has eight amalgam fillings.  Clearly, this is no small problem and calls for urgent action.

U.S. Lags Behind, While the World Moves Forward on Banning Mercury

The FDA has long been the world’s number one protector of mercury fillings, and the U.S. is lagging behind the rest of the world, and even behind some third world countries, in protecting its citizens from this product.

• Denmark, Norway and Sweden have essentially banned amalgams
• There are 5,636 hospitals in developing countries that are committed to or already mercury-free. The majority of these are in the Philippines, India and Argentina.
• Canada advised dentists to stop placing amalgam in children and pregnant women in 1996 (although Canada appears to be regressing on this issue now, thanks to the recent position taken by its Chief Dental Officer (Peter Cooney).

In the United States, four out of five dental specialists still use amalgams, and the material continue to be endorsed by the American Dental Association.  The FDA’s determination to protect mercury fillings has no doubt had something to do with its commissioner.  FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg has an egregious conflict of interest on amalgam, yet participated in the rulemaking that led to FDA’s disappointing ruling in 2009.

Hamburg entered the FDA through the revolving government/private industry door after allegedly making millions as the director of Henry Schein Inc., the largest seller of dental amalgam (mercury fillings).  The FDA has a history of stacking the deck of its advisory panels so that pro-industry, pro-mercury position is upheld.  Yet, most recently, the U.S. State Department has called for a “phase down” of mercury fillings, followed by an “eventual” phase out.  The State Department’s submission to the Mercury International Negotiation Committee also called for:

• Educating patients and parents (about amalgam) in order to protect children and fetuses
• Training of dental professionals on the environmental impacts of mercury in dental amalgams

This is a very encouraging turn of events that brings us one step closer to mercury-free dentistry for all.  Even though the FDA signed on to this statement internationally, they have yet to change the rule at home, so your support IS still needed.

Amalgams Frequently Used as They Generate More Profit

According to a Zogby poll, 77 percent of consumers would willingly pay more to opt out of dental amalgam in favor of safer dental fillings.  If this opt-out occurred, it would effectively reduce the number of patients your dentist could funnel through his office on any given day.

Mercury fillings are quick and easy to put in.  It isn’t that composite materials cost more–they just take longer to make.  Not only can dentists buzz through a lot of mercury amalgam fillings each day, but these amalgams also require the destruction of quite a lot of good tooth matter, which sets you up for more dental problems down the road… meaning, more dental work, including root canals.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving, from a dentist’s perspective.

So, the perceived profitability of mercury fillings has led to what Charlie Brown calls a “drill, fill and bill” mentality.

Fewer patients coming through the door each day isn’t the only issue striking fear in the heart of your mercury-loving dentist.  Many dentists are also wary of the possibility that thousands, if not millions, of lawsuits could arise if they–or the FDA–admitted to the damage mercury amalgams have done to public health.  Litigation and class action lawsuits could deliver an incapacitating blow to the dental industry.

If we are to gain the support of government regulators and the American Dental Association (ADA), then some protection from liability must be part of the package.  This is why the environmental approach is ideal, because it offers some insulation from liability on the part of the dental industry, hopefully making new regulations a bit more palatable and easier to get passed.

For more information, check out Dr. Mercola’s website.

Has Its Moment Finally Arrived?

By Dr. Mercola – January 28, 2011

At the end of the two-day hearing to evaluate the safety of amalgam, the FDA’s own scientific panel – including neurologists, toxicologists, epidemiologists, and environmental health specialists – told the agency to stop amalgam use in children, pregnant women, and hypersensitive populations.

After reviewing the available scientific studies and the presentations of researchers, experts, dentists, and injured consumers, the scientists concluded that – contrary to the claims of the FDA’s in-house dentist Susan Runner – amalgam is not safe for everybody.

According to the panel, the FDA’s amalgam risk assessments were not adequate to protect hypersensitive adults, children, and unborn babies. Repeatedly, panel members expressed their concern about amalgam use in children. Pediatric neurologist Dr. Suresh Kotagal of the Mayo Clinic summed it up for the entire panel:

“There is really no place for mercury in children.”

Other panelists went on to explain that dental mercury is like lead. The panel urged the FDA to quickly contraindicate amalgam for these vulnerable populations and insisted that the FDA provide consumers with labeling containing clear warnings.

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Dental “silver” amalgam fillings – or as I like to call them “mercury fillings” – are actually made from about 50 percent mercury and the rest of an amalgam is silver, tin, copper, zinc and other metals, and have been used for more than 150 years. An estimated 100 million mercury fillings are put into your mouths each year in the United States alone.

But the use of amalgam (mercury fillings), especially in pregnant women and children, has now been judged unsafe by a panel of scientists advising the FDA – the same FDA that has always defended the use of amalgam, and continues to defend its use!

In the words of Charlie Brown, president of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, “Amalgam is a primitive, polluting, 19th century product that began when physicians were sawing off legs. Medicine has since moved forward.” Unfortunately, this aspect of dentistry has not, at least not yet in the United States.

Mercury Does NOT Belong in your Mouth — Period

Mercury is a potent toxin that can damage your brain, central nervous system and kidneys. Children and fetuses, whose brains are still developing, are most at risk, but really anyone can be impacted.

I find it quite ironic, not to mention unsettling, that the metallic mercury used by dentists to manufacture dental amalgam is shipped as a hazardous material to the dental office. And any amalgam leftover is also treated as hazardous and requires special precautions to dispose of.

Yet most dentists will readily implant this hazardous material directly into your mouth, with continued and emphatic assurance that it’s perfectly safe and harmless. Now, at least the FDA advisory panel has admitted the obvious: mercury fillings are not safe for everyone. The truth is, mercury fillings are a hazard to everyone and should be avoided until the slow moving and stubborn FDA finally bans them.

Just How Much Mercury Do These Fillings Release?

Remember, virtually any kind of stimulation can cause these fillings to release mercury. Eating, drinking, brushing your teeth, grinding your teeth, chewing gum, anything. If you want to see vapors released for yourself, watch this shocking video.

Mercury vapor from the amalgams passes readily through cell membranes, across the blood-brain barrier, and into your central nervous system, where it causes psychological, neurological, and immunological problems.

For an interesting comparison, consider that scientists recently made a wise warning about eating mercury-contaminated seafood. Well, eating such seafood will expose you to about 2.3 micrograms of mercury a day.  A single dental amalgam filling, meanwhile, releases as much as 15 micrograms of mercury EVERY day.

But that’s not all. The average person has eight amalgam fillings and could absorb up to 120 micrograms of mercury per day. Clearly this is cause for urgent action to be taken.

Why the FDA is Resistant to Banning Amalgam

FDA remains adamant in protecting mercury fillings, which no doubt has at least something to do with its commissioner. FDA Commisioner Margaret Hamburg has an egregious conflict of interest on amalgam, yet participated in the rulemaking that led to last year’s abysmal amalgam rule. Hamburg entered the FDA through the revolving government/private industry door after allegedly making millions as the director of Henry Schein Inc., the largest seller of amalgam (mercury fillings).

The FDA has a history of stacking the deck of its advisory panels so that the pro-industry, pro-mercury position is upheld.

Why?

In a word: money. Over 100 million fillings are put into mouths in the United States alone, and each tooth that’s filled with toxic mercury represents a profit source for the amalgam industry – an industry that is used to having its way with world governments for the past 100 years.

Folks, bringing about change in the health care field has always been about battling against entrenched profit centers, and this is no exception.

The dental amalgam industry and their paid shills and former executives in government simply do NOT want access to your mouth blocked, regardless of the health implications. The mercury fillings industry is an entrenched, embattled and a very profitable industry, and they have been on a war footing against scientists all over the world for decades.

The FDA has been far behind the rest of the world in stepping up to the plate to reduce mercury in your mouth. The FDA has been standing in the way of banning this dangerous dental material for 34 years — since 1976. But the very good news is that we are starting to win this battle.

Where Do Other Countries Stand on Mercury Dental Fillings?

Other countries are now beginning to restrict the use of mercury fillings, much to the dismay of the amalgam industry, which unfortunately still includes the ADA (American Dental Association):

• Canada advised dentists to stop placing amalgam in children and pregnant women in 1996 — 15 years ago!
• Denmark, Norway and Sweden have essentially banned amalgams.
• Worldwide amalgam (mercury filling) use is in decline
• One California city, Costa Mesa, has endorsed a city-wide amalgam ban
• The World Health Organization supports an amalgam “Phase Down”

For a country that is supposed to be so scientifically advanced, the United States is currently lagging behind many nations, and even behind some third-world countries, when it comes to mercury fillings.

Mercury Fillings and the Environment

The ADA and other pro-mercury proponents have always claimed that mercury fillings are a low cost and very cost effective way to treat dental decay. Is this true? Not when you examine the true cost to human health and the environment caused by mercury fillings!

Mercury from dental offices is actually the largest source of mercury found in wastewater. According to an article by Michael Bender (co-founder of the Mercury Policy Project), at least 40 percent of mercury flowing into municipal water treatment plants comes from dentist offices! And urban water treatment plants are not set up to remove it, so eventually this mercury flowing out of dental offices will end up in your fish on your dinner table.

When someone dies, their amalgam (mercury) fillings actually pose a risk to the living as well. Emissions from the combustion of mercury fillings during cremation are a significant contaminator of air, waterways, soil, wildlife and food.

Seven to nine metric tons of mercury per year escapes into the atmosphere during cremations, and it is estimated that, left unchecked, crematoria will be the largest single cause of mercury pollution by 2020. Sweden now mandates that all mercury fillings be removed prior to cremation for this very reason.

So when you factor in environmental costs and clean-up costs, amalgam is actually the MOST EXPENSIVE dental material in the world.

It is also the number one cause of mercury exposure for consumers, according to the Canadian government and other sources. As it stands right now, U.S. dentists remain free to offer you any kind of filling they want, and four out of five dental specialists are still placing amalgams.

Help for Those Who Already have Mercury Fillings

If your mouth is currently free of mercury fillings, good for you. Make sure you keep it that way by seeing a biological dentist who can recommend a truly inert material that will not harm your health in the event you do need a filling.

For those of you who have mercury fillings, I recommend that you have them removed… but avoid making the mistake I did 20 years ago by having it done by a non-biological dentist. When you have these fillings removed you can be exposed to significant amounts of mercury vapors if the dentist doesn’t know what he or she is doing.

It’s also for this reason that I suggest you get healthy BEFORE having your fillings removed, as you want your detoxification mechanisms optimized prior to removal.

Help to Make the FDA Act on this Important Issue NOW!

FDA operates on its own timetables. The wonder is that the FDA even agreed to re-consider a rule they wrote just 18 months ago, since they often appear to consider their infallibility to be at the level of the Pope.

This time, though, the FDA is under heat to act, and we need your support to keep the pressure on them to tell the public the truth about mercury fillings.

The agencies of government who work on mercury issues – the EPA, Council of Environmental Quality, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with the FDA – are meeting with the State Department to hammer out the U.S. position on all the mercury issues.

The FDA is the odd man out, the one favoring a mercury product; the heat is on FDA to join the rest of the Obama Administration, and join the modern world. So both because of the scientists’ recommendation, and because the FDA is increasingly alone both in the world and in the US government, we may have reached the tipping point.

The science is quite clear; the FDA has to date ignored it.

For 30 years, in violation of federal law, the FDA refused to classify dental amalgam (that is, develop a rule to regulate it), doing so only when ordered by a federal judge. In that court case, in 2008, the FDA agreed, in negotiations with Charlie Brown of Consumers for Dental Choice, to post strong warnings on its consumer website about amalgam’s toxicity and its particular risk to pregnant women and children.

So What Happened?

In 2009 Margaret Hamburg became the FDA’s Commissioner. With Hamburg’s participation in the rulemaking, the FDA withdrew all warnings from the consumer website, and hid them deep in the rule. The FDA effectively gave the green light for dentists in the United States to continue concealing the mercury content of fillings from consumers, and the green light to continue calling them “silver fillings.”

Throughout the rulemaking process, Hamburg was corresponding with Schein’s general counsel, who, immediately after the rule was issued, wrote to Hamburg that the corporation is “indebted to you” for her work as FDA Commissioner.

What Happened Next?

A consumer groundswell erupted, including many writing the FDA after reading about this outrage in the Mercola Newsletter. YOU were so active that FDA Webview, an independent publication, said, “No final rule in FDA’s modern history, or perhaps ever, has attracted this kind of organized opposition.”

The FDA then came under the microscope because of world treaty negotiations working to begin phasing out the mercury product, and the rest of the US government, especially EPA, was supporting efforts to finally address amalgam.

With four petitions in front of them to reconsider the amalgam rule, the FDA agreed, convening a panel of distinguished scientists for two days of hearings on December 14, and 15, 2010. The scientists at the hearings told the FDA (1) to ban amalgam for pregnant women and children (either to age six or 12), and (2) put labels on amalgam so every dental patient and parent is aware of its mercury content and toxicity.

Just three weeks after those hearings came the resignation of FDA Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, who approved the 2009 FDA rule on mercury fillings that flew in the face of science.

Sharfstein dropped to a much lower perch within the government’s health ranks, caused most likely by his resistance at the FDA to facing the truth about mercury fillings. He is now the health director for Maryland.

What You Can Do Now to Make a Difference!

We need to get the assent of the rest of the resistant members at the FDA as well, or send them packing! And we are asking again for your help to do it! We simply cannot let the FDA get away with ignoring the scientists as it has done so many times before, we are so close now to bringing the truth about mercury fillings to the light. I encourage you to get involved!

Please write the FDA Director of the Division of Dental Devices, Anthony Watson, at: anthony.watson@fda.hhs.gov .

Tell Mr. Watson of the FDA:

• Since the FDA’s own panel of scientists advises that amalgam should “definitely not” be implanted in children, pregnant women, and hypersensitive people, how soon will you take action to protect these vulnerable populations from this toxin?
• Since the FDA has a duty to tell consumers that amalgam contains mercury that can damage the neurological systems of unborn babies, children, and hypersensitive populations, when does FDA intend to clearly state this warning on its consumer website and in consumer labeling?
• Since Commissioner Hamburg claims FDA is committed to transparency, how does FDA plan to keep the public updated on its progress with regard to the amalgam issue?

Don’t sit this one out. With your help we can get the FDA to finally admit to the public what scientists have known for a long time – mercury fillings are a public health and an environmental hazard, and should not ever be allowed in the bodies of pregnant women or in children!

The time to act is now!

Together we can make a lasting change and help protect pregnant women and children, along with the health of our next generation!

Article from: http://www.Mercola.com

By: Dr. Mercola

An Unspoken Connection: The Link Between Mercury Based Fillings and Chronic Fatigue

Are you tired? Have you ever been tired? Have you ever been more than tired, exhausted, totally spent? And I don’t mean the kind of tired you get from a hard day of work, a long weekend or with missing a few hours of sleep over the course of a couple of nights. No, I am talking about being tired, exhausted, all the time. I’m talking about feeling like your reserves are all gone and you’re just barely hanging on with caffeine and will power. I’m talking about the kind of tired that doesn’t go away with a full night of sleep. I’m talking about Chronic Fatigue and for those person’s who are dealing with that kind of tired all day, every day, I am here to offer some hope.

The problem with being tired in this country is that we tend to equate it with being hungry. The solution to the problem becomes a rather simple one. Namely, you’re hungry and you eat. If you’re tired, you sleep. And many of us do sleep; sleep well in fact, but we still wake up tired. So, we try going to bed earlier, cut back on activities, take sleeping pills or listen to self help tapes all to end up back at the same place: utterly exhausted, fatigued, and chronically so.

For those who end up at the same point of fatigue even after seeing doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists and anyone else whom might be able to help; they are left with more questions and frustrations than answers and solutions.

But what if I said that your dentist might have some insight into your chronic fatigue. What if I told you that there is a link between your ‘silver’ fillings and chronic fatigue. What if I told you that your teeth may hold the secret solution to helping you to deal with your chronic fatigue. But, what if I also had to tell you that the link between your ‘silver’ fillings and your chronic fatigue was not something that would be openly spoken about. And what if I told you that the American Dental Association used Mercury as a 50% component of your ‘silver’ fillings and that Mercury is the most toxic metal known to man that does not have radiation?

Now, what if I told you that knowing that mercury is not supposed to be in your body does not mean that the established medical community would be willing, and ready, to help you. Where would you turn to then?

Dr. Sambataro has been a dentist for over 30 years and in that time he has gone through a genesis of understanding. He has transformed himself into one of the leading experts on the link between ‘silver’ fillings and chronic fatigue. More specifically, he understands that the ADA’s use of ‘silver’ fillings, of which he placed hundreds if not thousands of, is really a catalyst for gum disease and other negative side effects associated with having a toxic metal, specifically mercury, in the system. It was his experience as a practicing dentist that helped him to understand that the link between chronic fatigue and mercury was something he could not ignore for the health and well being of his patients.

As a practicing dentist, Dr. Sambataro began to notice certain patterns for those person’s that he treated. He began to notice that those who had once been very active had been slowing down. He noticed that sometimes people who had dental procedures where cavities where being filled led to a slow down in lifestyle and an increase in fatigue. And, as he began to notice this trend he also began to search for some linking factor between all of these individuals who were claiming to be tired all the time. And after examining all the data he was only left with one unique connection between all of the individuals and their claims of chronic fatigue. ‘Silver’ fillings were the only consistent connection his patients shared.

At first he did not want to accept the fact that there might be a link between the mercury in the fillings and the chronic fatigue experienced by his patients but he kept coming back to that point. He kept trying to discount the potential impact on health that mercury could, and seemed to be having, on his patients. But eventually he was left with no other alternative. It had to be the fillings and there was only one way to test this hypothesis. He had to remove the mercury based fillings and replace them to see if any change occurred in the lives of his patients. He was not prepared for what happened.

To understand the link between cavities, fillings, gum disease and chronic fatigue you first have to understand how a ‘silver’ filling is made. A ‘silver’ filling is 50% mercury, and the other 50% is made up of silver, tin, copper and zinc. The mercury is used because it is soft and easy to work with but even when two dentists first brought this idea to America in the late 1800′s it was known to be toxic. In fact, the ADA sprang towards the idea that this type of filling was a safe and affordable alternative to the gold being used when a tooth was to be filled.

However, before we get to the outcome of the initial dental procedure where mercury based fillings were removed we have to discuss what mercury can do inside the body. First, it is important to understand that mercury is a very active metal once it is introduced into the human body. Mercury seeks out the thyroid and the thyroid hormone, which results in HYPO-THYROIDISM. Of course someone dealing with hypo-thyroidism is lethargic, sluggish, tired and they have no energy. Mercury that is being leached from your ‘silver’ fillings could be destroying your thyroid and you might not even know it. Imagine if your chronic fatigue was due to something that was put inside your body that never should have been there in the first place. What if solving one part of your chronic fatigue meant undoing something you thought would help you, namely changing your fillings from mercury based to some other safe metal so you did not have to live with the side effects of constant, low level, mercury poisoning? But Mercury does not stop there.

Mercury can also attack the pituitary gland, the adrenal gland and the heart. It can displace the ‘heme’ in hemoglobin so your red blood cells cannot effectively carry oxygen. Mercury can also attack the white blood cells which makes it harder for your body to fight infection. And since the mercury laced tissue is recognized as foreign by the body your immune system begins attacking your body. All of these reactions to the Mercury could be what you’re living with every day and if your body never gets a break, never gets a chance to heal properly you can start to see how being tired might not be a by-product of too much activity or not enough rest. No, your chronic fatigue might be directly linked to your bodies reaction to having a toxic metal implanted inside it.

And, at the core of this entire issue is the health of your gum tissue and the teeth which are holding the mercury based fillings. Your gums are very vulnerable to infection as a natural result of where they are and what they do. They are in a hot, moist environment where foreign particles are introduced constantly. There are bacteria that feed off of the food that enters the mouth and their by-products wear away our enamel, put plaque on our teeth and compromise the health of our gums. All of this is worsened by the mercury in our fillings which impacts our bodies ability to fight infection. The combination of these serious health implications is that the longer we remain tired, the longer our chronic fatigue limits our ability to live our life, the more severe the impact on our health from mercury is. If you are just plain tired of being tired please continue to read. So, Dr. Sambataro decided to remove mercury based fillings from one of this patients to see if there would be any change. And, he was not prepared for the positive reaction he received.

After learning that he had to have special equipment to keep both he and his staff safe from the mercury, he proceeded with the removal of mercury based fillings. At that time he was not sure how long it would take for his patient to notice any change, but he did not have to wait long. The very next day he received a phone call from a person who had more energy than she knew what to do with. She was out walking, working in her garden and all of this without feeling so tired she could barely make it. Suffice it to say that he was both astounded and amazed. And, over the years, he has transformed himself into an expert on the link between ‘silver’ fillings and chronic fatigue. He has become a Biological dentist who specializes in treating the whole person so they can rid themselves of their chronic fatigue and get back to the lives they want to live.

So, your journey back to health has led you to this web site and if you are like many of the people who come here then lights and ideas are filling your mind. But, I have to tell you that learning about why you are dealing with chronic fatigue is only half the battle. You have to be ready to take the next step of getting more information until you learn as much as you can because only then can you really find the help you deserve, and need, to get back to your life.

If you have decided to have your toxic mercury fillings removed and you want to protect yourself against the dangers of toxic mercury…

BEFORE YOU DO

You must read this Special Report:

The Hidden Dangers of Amalgam Removal

to download Click Here

In this report you will learn…

• Why some people should NOT have their mercury amalgams removed
• The importance of detoxing after amalgam removal – AND how best to do it
• The safest, most effective protocol that ALL dentists should follow – but don’t
• What you can do to protect yourself and enhance your healing
• How best to deal with the emotional release that may occur during or after removal
• How allied health professionals can help rid your body of toxins

Heavy Metal Poisoning

By Gary P. Owen

MS and mercury poisoning is something that rears its head from time to time and needs to be taken seriously. The substances in the blood harmful to nerves are kept separate by a special filtering layer in the walls of blood vessels called the endothelium. This is particularly important in the brain where the filter mechanism is known as the blood brain barrier.

Any number of life events can cause this barrier to be breached, including stress, tiredness, fever, emotional upset, heat, injury and eating too much fat. This allows chemicals from the blood which are poisonous to the nervous system into the brain where they can cause serious damage. Heavy metals such as mercury, cadmium, and aluminum are well-known examples of such potent neurotoxins.

Some researchers now believe that MS is a direct result of neurotoxins from the blood entering the central nervous system through the brain and some researchers claim they have found mercury levels more than seven times higher than normal in the spinal fluid of people with MS. This research lays the blame on the high amounts of mercury used in routine dental fillings and indeed some countries have now already banned the use of mercury fillings.

Shortly after I was diagnosed with MS I made a decision to have all of my mercury fillings removed because of articles I had read which linked MS and mercury. I had quite a lot of them and it took several visits to the dentist to have them all removed and replaced with white fillings. The dentist could only remove two at a time because to remove any more would have introduced too much mercury to my system at the one time. This surprised me because I had this dangerous substance in my mouth for a number of years, and was never made aware when I was getting them of the potential dangers. I now insist and pay extra to ensure that my children do not get mercury fillings and it might be something that you want to consider as well.

A few months after having the fillings removed I did begin to feel slightly better but at the same time I also embarked on a brand new diet. I took control of my MS and decided that I was going to control it rather than it control me.

I have greatly benefits from a book which has examined the link between what we eat and multiple sclerosis. If you would like to know what foods are attacking your body, what supplements you must take and how to create the energy that you need, then this book is a must read. Reverse Multiple Sclerosis

I am not a doctor nor am I qualified in medicine in any way. These are things that have worked for me in controlling my MS. Before undertaking any diet or fitness regime you should always consult your physician first.

Thanks for reading,

Gary P. Owen

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary P Owen

Chronic fatigue is one of the main reasons people go to a health practitioner and it is one of the hardest illnesses to tolerate. Lacking energy and mental alertness means you don’t feel like doing anything, which in turn makes you feel worse and consequently you don’t sleep well. Fatigue is the most common complaint stated by patients in my dental practice. Which is why I began looking for a connection between mercury amalgam and chronic fatigue.

You may not be aware that the silver amalgam fillings in your teeth are actually fifty percent mercury or that this mercury is highly toxic. There is a mass of scientific evidence that clearly demonstrates that mercury can leak from the amalgam fillings in your mouth and harm the body.

The World Health Organization recognizes that dental amalgam contaminates the human body and has made recommendations regarding safe levels of mercury in food. Yet this highly dangerous material is placed in your mouth because traditional dentists believe it to be a safe and stable substance once mixed.

Double Jeopardy

Interestingly enough, “silver” amalgams not only present a danger from mercury. The other fifty percent of metals in the composite are silver, tin, copper and zinc. When you put these metals into the mouth surrounded by saliva it has a battery effect. The battery effect creates an electrical current that can disrupt the nervous system and normal flow of energy to the body. This is one of the reasons why a person may experience fatigue.

Many countries worldwide have looked closely at the science behind this practice and many places in Europe and Canada have banned the use of mercury. It’s beginning to happen here in the USA, but it’s taking a little longer. However, in the UK, mercury fillings are the norm for national health patients.

From my experience as a dental practitioner, I believe that many of today’s so called “mystery syndromes” like chronic fatigue may not actually be so mysterious, but related to mercury amalgams. Physicians often bunch chronic fatigue together with recurrent depression, fibromyalgia and anorexia as supposedly incurable conditions. Basically they do not know how to treat them and many people suffer unnecessarily.

For more than twenty years I have treated patients with “silver” fillings without realizing the potential dangers of filling teeth with mercury. However, chronic fatigue seems to be such a common physical complaint that I started to wonder if there is a connection. It’s clear to me that there is no environmental cause and effect, as these people didn’t all live in the same house, work at the same job or eat the same food.

Obviously, diet, exercise or lack of it can be contributing factors, but what became really clear to me was that most of these patients have had dental amalgams at one point in their life, if not currently.

I’ve had clients come to me with a history of being very active. They took part in athletic activities, even marathon runners, yet over a period of time they became more and more fatigued, whereas others experience fatigue shortly after having dental work done.

You are probably wondering why the dental profession is not open to the idea that mercury is a toxic metal that should not be put in the mouth, so before going further I will give you a little background.

History of Mercury and the Dental Associations

Mercury has historically been used as an antiseptic (mercurial/mercurochrome), to kill bacteria in the treatment of some diseases. Its use in dentistry dates back to the eighteen hundreds when the governing body of dentists was the International Society of Dental Surgeons. In those days you could either have your teeth filled with gold, extracted or endure toothache and its consequences. The problem was that gold was far too expensive for most people.

It was as this point of time that two brothers introduced the concept of mercury, other wise known as quacksilber (German for quicksilver). This amalgam of silver and mercury could be shapes by hand, was easily installed in the tooth and was a great deal cheaper than gold.

The governing body of International Society of Dental Surgeons actually made a bylaw stating that dentists using this material could no longer belong to the organization. However, dentists of the time decided this was a viable option for treating and filling teeth, despite there being overwhelming evidence of its toxicity.

It was also no secret that hat makers were developing neurological problems. In fact “mad hatter syndrome” was well known, yet these dentists decided to go off on their own and formed the American Dental Association and became first to patent mercury fillings.

This is not to say that the American Dental Association’s intentions are malevolent. But when they started the first dental school, this became part of the education, as they were not willing to look at the science. From a psychological perspective it’s easy to see why they would want to protect their profession, as it’s very hard for anyone to admit they have been poisoning their clients for more than fifty years.

When You Remove The Mercury

Previously, I stated that the most common condition my patients report to me is chronic fatigue and that it’s clear to me that this is multi-factorial. Mercury fillings are yet another facet and I started to investigate what was the big deal about this. It soon became evident that mercury affects every system and every cell in the body. Of course this is dependent on what else is going on in people’s lives, how stressed they are and the diet they eat.

The average patient comes to my practice presenting chronic fatigue, not necessarily chronic fatigue syndrome, but some tiredness and not feeling up to doing all that they want to do in life. After removing mercury amalgams from patient’s mouths and filling with a non-toxic substance, the most common improvement in health was that they had more energy.

Over and over again I have seen so many symptoms improve after removing the amalgam fillings – skin rashes heal, muscles are less stressed, headaches go away and I can see the changes in their face. Most people really notice the difference and say how much more alive they feel.

I’ve had numerous patients who, all of a sudden, get their life back after having only one amalgam removed, even if they have four quadrants (all upper, lower, right and left) with fillings.

I always caution them to take it easy and allow the body to heal itself properly, but all of a sudden they are able to do things they haven’t been able to do for so long. So they are out there riding their bikes, playing with their children or mowing the lawn because they suddenly just felt better.

Science points to a connection between mercury poisoning and chronic fatigue.

This is not so hard to understand from a more scientific viewpoint, as it is known that mercury affects all the major organs. It can attack the thyroid gland, which makes people lethargic, sluggish, often tired and lacking energy. Mercury will displace the active thyroid hormone and may even attach to the thyroid gland and make it inactive.

This means when you are tested you may have plenty of thyroid hormone, but the mercury may be preventing it from being active. As it can embed itself in tissue, it may attach and destroy the organ itself leaving you with not thyroid function. The same thing can happen to the pituitary gland, which releases the thyroid-stimulating hormone, again affecting the thyroid.

This in turn could affect the adrenal glands so that less cortisol and adrenaline are released for energy. Circulation is affected because there is a displacement in the iron group, the heme in the hemoglobin, so that it is unable to carry oxygen efficiently, which affects the heart and will create fatigue.

The Immune System

As well as having an effect on the red blood cells and their ability to carry oxygen, mercury can attack the white blood cells (lymphocytes) and affect the immune system.

When these cells that are needed to defend your body are not functioning, an autoimmune disease will occur and the body will attack itself.

This means your body will be less able to fight other infections, which places even more stress on the body.

The Future of Dentistry

I believe it is important that as many people as possible learn about the dangers of mercury amalgam and chronic fatigue. It is not possible to definitely state that removing your fillings will improve chronic fatigue, but this is the result in most cases.

Just one word of caution here, if you are thinking of having your amalgam fillings removed, choose your dentist carefully. A biological dentist will take great care to ensure safe removal of your mercury fillings, whereas a cosmetic or traditional dentist may not have the correct instruments or safety protocol to prevent contamination.

With there being such a split between mainstream and alternative dentistry, you are not always presented with the truth, so I advise keeping an open mind and seeking out as much information as you can possibly find, as your health, perhaps even your life, depends on it.

Teen Charged With Cardozo Mercury Spill

By: Tarran Lively – The Washington Times – February 27, 2005

A 16-year old boy was arrested yesterday afternoon in connection with the mercury contamination of Cardozo High School in Northwest. The teen was taken into custody at about 5 p.m. and charged with illegal dumping of a hazardous material, said D.C. police spokesman Sgt. Joe Gentile. It wasn’t known whether the boy is a student at Cardozo, but he was arrested after police identified possible suspects from a school surveillance video. The investigation is ongoing, Sgt. Gentile Said.

Authorities tested two homes in which investigators believe the mercury may have been kept before it was spilled at the school on Wednesday. Mercury vapors were found in one home, in the 3600 block of Warder Street NW, in the Petworth neighborhood. Authorities evacuated the home of 13 persons, who ranged in age from 18 months to about 60 years. None of the residents tested positive for mercury contamination, but clothing in one of the closets tested positive for mercury, said Dr. Greg Payne, the city’s health director. The crews also tested a home in the 600 block of Irving Street NW. It was not clear where the student suspected of spreading the mercury lived. Cardozo, at 13th and Clifton streets, has been closed since hazardous-materials crews found about 2 ounces of mercury in three places inside the school, including the back of a stairwell on the first floor. Cardozo Principal Reginald Ballard Jr. said last week no mercury was stored in the school. He also said the mercury was likely smuggled in by a “prankster.” D.C. schools Superintendent Clifford B. Janey called the contamination a “dangerous situation.” About 600 students and 150 staff and faculty members were screened, and at least 15 persons had traces of the metallic element on their clothing.

Some students who left the building before they could be tested were examined yesterday, and all were cleared of any contamination, health officials said. The school is being cleaned and an announcement is expected today on when it will reopen. In fall 2003, students at Ballou High School in Southeast found mercury in an unlocked cabinet and threw it at walls and at each other. The contamination forced city officials to close the school for more than a month. The cleanup cost more than $1 million. The Environmental Protection Agency screened about 1,200 people and 86 homes after the students brought the toxic metal onto a Metro bus and into many of their homes. A 16-year-old Ballou High School student was arrested in the theft of the vial of mercury.

This article is based in part on wire service reports.

• TUNA TYPES- One particularly common source of low-level mercury exposure is tuna. Because they are large, long-lived predators, tuna accumulate more mercury in their tissue than smaller, short-lived fish. When tested for mercury – in parts per million, flesh from albacore tuna, which take five years to mature, was shown to contain about four times as much mercury as chunk light tuna, which is harvested from younger fish.
• HISTORY- Mercury was known to the ancient Chinese and Hindus; the element has been found in Egyptian tombs from 1500 B.C.
• SOURCE- Mercury rarely occurs free in nature but can be found in ores, principally cinnabar. The element, which exists in its natural form as a mix of seven stable isotopes, is most often found near volcanoes or geothermal springs. The metal is obtained by heating cinnabar in an air current and condensing the vapor.
• USES- Mercury easily forms alloys, called amalgams, with other metals like gold, silver, and tin. The element has many uses in the chemical industry, such as in the manufacture of sodium hydroxide and chlorine by the electrolysis of brine, as well as in making advertising signs, mercury switches, and other electrical apparatuses. It is also used to make sensitive measuring devices for laboratories. Other uses are in dental work, batteries, and catalysts. Because of mercury’s toxicity, many of these uses are under review.
• FAVORED FISH- An inspector at a California cannery in 1953 spot-checks canned tuna. In the United States, canned tuna is the third most commonly purchased food item, after sugar and coffee, based on dollar sales per amount of shelf space devoted to the product. An EPA study reported the median amount of mercury, measured in parts per million, in the following varieties of canned tuna: chunk light: .08 parts per million; canned albacore tuna: .34ppm; fresh or frozen tuna: .30ppm. A 2004 EPA advisory mentions five types of fish and shellfish that are low in mercury: shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollack, and catfish. The advisory also warns consumers not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish because they all contain high levels of mercury.
• MERCURY FILLINGS- Dental amalgams, known as silver fillings, are composed of roughly 50 percent mercury. Studies of people with mercury-containing dental fillings show a correlation between the number and size of the fillings and the amount of mercury excreted in their urine. The relationship suggests that the mercury is derived from mercury vapor released from the fillings. Some evidence shows that the level of mercury in the brain tissue of fetuses, newborns, and young children is also directly proportional to the number of surfaces of amalgam fillings the mother has.
• TESTING TROUBLE- Chronic low-level exposure to mercury is difficult to quantify because analyses of blood, urine, and hair will reflect only recent acute exposure, not past exposure. If acute mercury poisoning is diagnosed, administering compounds that bind to mercury and draw it out of the tissue — a process called chelation therapy — can remove elemental or inorganic mercury. However, chelation cannot remove methylmercury. Mercury has a strong affinity for the brain, especially the fetal brain. Methylmercury has been shown to alter the construction of structural components of the brain called microtubules and influence the development of neurons.
• SOURCES OF MERCURY RELEASE- During the last 150 years, human activities may have doubled or tripled natural amounts of mercury in the atmosphere. Although there are many natural sources of mercury emissions — such as volcanoes, geothermal springs, geologic deposits, and the ocean — there are also numerous industrial sources such as coal combustion, waste incineration, and mining. The greatest contributors are coal-fired utilities and industrial boilers, which account for about 50 percent of the transmission of inorganic mercury to the atmosphere.

Our Preferred Poison

A  little mercury  is  all that  humans  need to do away  with themselves quietly, slowly, and surely.

By Karen Wright  -  DISCOVER  Vol. 26  No. 03  -  March 2005                    Biology & Medicine

Let’s start with a straightforward fact:

Mercury is unimaginably toxic and dangerous.

A single drop on a human hand can be irreversibly fatal.

A single drop in a large lake can make all the fish in it unsafe to eat.

Often referred to as quicksilver, mercury is the only common metal that is liquid at room temperature. Alchemists, including the young Sir Isaac newton, believed it was the source of gold. In the modern era, it became a common ingredient of paints, diuretics, pesticides, batteries, fluorescent light bulbs, skin creams, antifungal agents, vaccines for children, and of course, thermometers. There is probably some in your mouth right now: So-called silver dental fillings are half mercury.

Mercury is also a by-product of many industrial processes. In the United States coal-fired power plants alone pump about 50 tons of it into the air each year. That mercury rains out of the sky into oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams, where it becomes concentrated in the flesh of fish, shellfish, seals, and whales. Last year the Food and Drug Administration determined there is so much mercury in the sea that women of childbearing age should severely limit their consumption of larger ocean fish. The warning comes too late for many mothers. A nationwide survey by the Centers for Disease Control shows that one in 12 women of childbearing age already have unsafe blood levels of mercury and that as many as 600,000 babies in the United States could be at risk. But that begs a critical question: At risk for what?

Infants born to mothers contaminated by mercury in Japan’s Minamata Bay in 1956 had profound neurological disabilities including deafness, blindness, mental retardation, and cerebral palsy. In adults mercury can cause numbness, stumbling, dementia, and death. “It’s no secret that mercury exposure is highly toxic,” says toxicologist Alan Stern, a contributor to a 2000 National Research Council report on mercury toxicity. But high-level exposures like those at Minamata cannot help scientists determine whether six silver fillings and a weekly tuna-salad sandwich will poison you or an unborn child. “The question is, what are the effects at low levels of exposure?” he says.

Data now suggest effects might occur at levels lower than anyone suspected. Some studies show that children who were exposed to tiny amounts of mercury in utero have slower reflexes, language deficits, and shortened attention spans. In adults, recent studies show a possible link between heart disease and mercury ingested from eating fish. Other groups claim mercury exposure is responsible for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and the escalating rate of autism.

How–and in what form–mercury inflicts damage is still unclear. Yet scientists and policymakers agree that more regulation is imperative. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to finalize its controversial first rule on reducing mercury emissions from power plants this month, and delegates from the United Nations Environment Programme met in late February to discuss an international convention limiting mercury use and emissions.

A decade ago researchers and lawmakers agreed that lead, another heavy metal, was harmful to children at levels one-sixth as high as previously recognized. But it took scientists decades to establish the scope and subtlety of lead poisoning. Mercury is now a ubiquitous contaminant. The average American may have several micrograms of it in each liter of blood, and the atmospheric burden of mercury has perhaps tripled since the industrial age. Whatever needs to be done to protect humanity from its love affair with quicksilver, it had better happen soon.

In August 1996 Karen Wetterhahn, a chemistry professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, spilled a few drops of a laboratory compound called dimethyl mercury onto one of her hands. She was wearing latex lab gloves, so she didn’t think much of it. A colleague saw her at a conference the following November. “She said she thought she was coming down with the flu,” says toxicologist Vas Aposhian of the University of Arizona. By the time Wetterhahn was diagnosed with mercury poisoning, in January, it was too late. Despite subsequent treatment that helped clear the metal from her body, she lapsed into a vegetative state in February and died the following June.

Scientists are at a loss to explain why mercury often takes months to exert its effects. “If we knew that, we’d know a lot more about how mercury poisons the brain,” says Tom Clarkson, a toxicologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The degree of mercury’s toxicity depends on the form and route of exposure. You can swallow the liquid form of elemental mercury without much fear because it doesn’t easily penetrate the lining of the stomach and intestines. On the other hand, liquid mercury vaporizes at room temperature, and when you inhale the vapor it moves right from the lungs to the bloodstream to the brain. A broken thermometer can release enough mercury vapor to poison the air in a room–one reason why some cities and several states discourage the sale of mercury fever thermometers.

Mercury also binds with other elements in salts and organic compounds of varying toxicity. Dimethyl mercury, the substance that poisoned the Dartmouth chemist, is a synthetic form of organic mercury rarely found outside a lab. A simpler organic compound called methylmercury is of greater concern because methyl-mercury is the form found in the flesh of fish.

Seafood is one of the two most common sources of mercury exposure in adults. Although concentrations of mercury in air and water are increasing, they are still too small for alarm. But bacteria process the mercury in lakes and oceans into a form that accumulates in living tissue. Plankton take in the bacteria and are in turn eaten by small fish. With each meal, the mercury concentration rises. Then larger fish eat the small fish, increasing tissue concentrations still more. Fish at the top of the food chain accumulate the most mercury. The species singled out by the recent FDA advisory–big predators such as albacore tuna, shark, and swordfish–can have 100 times more mercury in their tissues than smaller fish do.

The methylmercury in fish passes readily from the human gut to the bloodstream and on into all organs and tissues. It seems to act most powerfully on the brain because the compound is strongly attracted to fatty molecules called lipids, and the brain has the highest lipid content of any organ. Methylmercury crosses the protective blood-brain barrier by binding with an essential amino acid that has dedicated carrier proteins for shunting it into brain cells. Once inside brain cells, some of it gets converted to an inorganic form that sticks to and disable many structural proteins and enzymes essential to cell function. “It can destroy the biological function of any protein it binds to,” says Boyd Haley, a biochemist at the University of Kentucky.

Researchers learned how much  mercury the body can tolerate from studies of victims of catastrophic poisoning, such as the Japanese sickened by eating fish from Minamata Bay and the Iraqis who ate grain treated with a methylmercury-based preservative in the early 1970s. But those studies do not reveal how little mercury it takes to cause harm. At the time of her diagnosis, the Dartmouth chemist had 4,000 micrograms of mercury per liter in her blood. A diet consistently high in fish can create a blood-mercury level of about 25 micrograms per liter. That’s far below a lethal dose, but it still may not be safe.

Concerns about low-level toxicity haunt discussions of another ubiquitous source of mercury exposure: silver dental fillings. Elemental mercury, which makes up half of silver fillings, release mercury vapor, just as liquid mercury does. The vapor from dental amalgams is the primary source of the one to eight micrograms of mercury per liter of blood, that is, according to some sources, in the average American adult. That amount uncomfortably overlaps the Environmental Protection Agency’s current safe level of 5.8 micrograms per liter. But the EPA’s safety level is based on methylmercury exposure, about which more is known. No human studies have assessed prolonged exposure to low levels of mercury vapor. One study hints at subtle neural and behavioral anomalies in dentists, who collectively use 300 metric tons of mercury in amalgams each year and who often have two to five times the typical concentration of mercury in their urine.

“I think the methylmercury in fish is probably our least toxic exposure,” says Haley, who broadcasts the hazards of dental fillings.

Silver-mercury fillings have never been tested for safety. “The amalgam question will never be solved until we do a clinical trial like those we do with other medical devices,” says Aposhian.

“It’s really unclear what’s going on with dental amalgams,” says Stern, who notes that the issue is complicated by the potential for panic and lawsuits. “It’s a snake pit.”

One of the lessons of Minamata is that mercury, like lead, is harder on fetuses than on the women carrying them, or adults in general. In the Japanese event, women with no overt symptoms of poisoning gave birth to severely disabled children. “It was evident there was a major difference in susceptibility between the developing brain and the mature brain,” says Philippe Grandjean, an epidemiologist at the Harvard University School of Public Health. “When we saw serious poisonings in Minamata, that made us wonder whether mercury could be like lead.”

Studies of lead have shown that IQ decreases approximately two or three points for every doubling of prenatal and early postnatal exposure. To see if mercury has comparable effects, Grandjean, along with Pal Weihe at the University of Southern Denmark, is conducting the largest study to date of children’s cognition and behavior in a population routinely exposed to low levels of mercury. His work in the Faeroe Islands of Denmark includes 1,000 mother-child pairs and spans almost 20 years. In a typical year, Faeroe islanders consume 1,000 pilot whales, or one whale for every 50 islanders. “They belong to one of the most fish-eating populations in the world,” says Grandjean.

Whale meat is one of the most highly contaminated seafoods because whales are at the top of the food chain. Even so, the mercury content of whale meat is considerably lower than that of the hypertoxic Minamata fish. An earlier study of shark eaters in New Zealand suggested that relatively high levels of mercury in a mother’s hair during pregnancy correlated with a loss of three IQ points in her child. High levels, in that study, were identified as six parts per million and above in the hair shaft.

Grandjean gave a battery of sophisticated cognitive and developmental tests to the Faeroese children when they were 7 and 14. His results indicate that IQ drops 1.5 points for every doubling in prenatal exposure to mercury. The 2000 National Research Council report concluded that the risk documented by Grandjean “is likely to be sufficient to result in an increase in the number of children who have to struggle to keep up in school.”

“We learned there is a response at low levels,” says Grandjean. “It’s not a huge loss, but it’s certainly not negligible.”

Yet in another large, long-term epidemiological study conducted on the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, Clarkson has so far found no effect on neurological development from prenatal exposure to low levels of mercury in seafood. “We can’t exclude effects from 20 parts per million or even 12 parts per million,” he notes. But he concludes there is no graded risk that extends to the lowest exposure levels.

The 2000 research council report evaluated the Faeroe, Seychelles, and New Zealand studies and recommended that the EPA set safety standards based on Grandjean’s more sobering findings. The agency did. Then, for good measure, it added a 10-fold uncertainty factor–a safety margin to protect against scientific unknowns and individual differences in response to a toxin. The uncertainty factor lowers the threshold to a figure of 5.8 micrograms per liter of blood and 1.2 parts per million in hair.

The problem with safety factors is that they create a toxicological limbo between demonstrably harmful doses and levels that have been declared safe. Thus, when Centers for Disease Control surveys find that one in twelve American women of childbearing age–8 percent–have blood mercury levels above the safety threshold, the implications aren’t clear, either for them or for the children they bear. Epidemiologist Tom Sinks says, “It doesn’t tell us there’s a hazard.”

“The whole idea of a safety factor is to protect people,” Clarkson says. “You can’t turn it around to use an indication of who’s at risk. If you’re just above it, you aren’t necessarily in trouble.”

That kind of hedging, along with disagreement among population studies, leaves regulators with plenty of wiggle room. The FDA, for example, uses a more relaxed safety standard for mercury based on studies from the 1970s and 1980s. Where the EPA safety level for daily exposure is 0.1 microgram per kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of body weight, the FDA’s standard is about 0.4 microgram per kilogram per day. The difference is four times as much mercury.

Concern about early exposure to mercury doesn’t end at birth. Until recently, many infants received regular injections of mercury on a state-mandated, medically sanctioned schedule. The mercury came from a compound called thimerosal that has been used as a preservative in vaccines and other medicines since the 1930s. In 1999 the FDA recommended that thimerosal no longer be used in pediatric vaccines, and manufacturers have removed if from all but the influenza vaccine. But some scientists and many more aggrieved parents are convinced that thimerosal in childhood vaccines has already caused, or at least catalyzed, the U.S. epidemic of autism.

An estimated 400,000 Americans today have autism, a once rare neurological disorder characterized by social withdrawal, difficulty communicating, and involuntary, repetitive movements. Although the exact numbers are in dispute, the rate of diagnosis seems to have climbed sharply in the last decade. In California the incidence of autism was six times higher in 2002 than 1987.

During that period, federal health officials added four new kinds of vaccines to the childhood immunization schedule, and the amount of mercury routinely administered to infants in the first six months of life more than doubled. Throughout the 1990s, a 3-month-old baby might receive as much as 63 micrograms of mercury in a single visit to a doctor–roughly 100 times the daily EPA safety level. By the age of 6 months, properly immunized children were exposed to at least 188 micrograms of mercury in a series of at least nine injections. Although the 1999 FDA action minimized such exposure, some infant flu vaccines still contain 12.5 micrograms of mercury per dose–more than 10 times the daily EPA safety level for a 20-pound baby.

Circumstantial evidence also implicates mercury in autism. Some of the symptoms of autism and mercury poisoning are similar, and Haley has garnered evidence from hair samples that autistic children do not clear mercury from their bodies as efficiently as most kids do. They may have a genetic susceptibility that allows more mercury to accumulate in their tissues, he says. That could make them more vulnerable to mercury-laced vaccines and the continuous low-level exposure from their mothers’ dental fillings. “It is amazing to me that no one has taken the tissue of autistic children to see if there is excess mercury there,” Aposhian told a committee at the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., last year. “That’s one thing that really has to be done.”

There are other sources of uncertainty. The form of mercury in thimerosal–an organic compound called ethyl mercury–is the least studied of all mercury’s incarnations. When scientists argue about its toxicity, they typically rely on data from methylmercury, which may not be an equivalent form of exposure. Experts even disagree about whether ethyl mercury can cross the blood-brain barrier. (It probably does.) “There are no good ways to measure ethyl mercury in tissue,” toxicologist Polly Sager of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told the Institute of Medicine committee.

The Institute of Medicine concluded last May that no claim could be made for a causal link between mercury-laced vaccines and autism, but several independent researchers had complained that their access to federal vaccine databases, which could provide evidence of a link, had been repeatedly blocked. A few scientists, including Haley and neuropharmacolgoist Richard Deth of Northeastern University in Boston, continue to study possible mechanisms for the connection. Deth reported last year, for example, that in human nerve cells thimerosal blocks a chemical reaction called methylation that is critical to gene activity and that is also disabled by exposure to lead.

The report that first triggered worries about a connection between vaccines and autism was published in the British medical journal The Lancet in 1998. It described eight children whose behavioral problems surfaced within two weeks of receiving the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. The Lancet and most of the article’s coauthors ultimately disowned the study because its lead author had not divulged that he was also being paid to conduct research for parents seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers. Nonetheless, the number of parents in the United Kingdom willing to immunize their babies with the vaccine dropped from 90 percent in 1998 to less than 80 percent in 2004.

Health officials in the United States addressed suspicions about immunization by recommending that thimerosal be removed from pediatric vaccines. Thimerosal might yet prove harmless, they reasoned, but the threat to public health posed by a drop in immunization rates was not worth risking. The same balance of risks exists regarding the issue of mercury in fish. The current Federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report recommends at least two fish meals a week. Fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which have proven benefits in preventing heart disease, the number one killer in the United States. “We know mercury is a hazardous substance,” says the CDC’s Sinks. “We know that less is better than more. We know that fish and shellfish are the principal source of methylmercury. But we also know that fish and shellfish are pretty nutritious food: high in protein, high in vitamins. They contain healthy fats.”

But troubling evidence suggests that methylmercury in fish might cause heart disease. A seven-year study of more than 1,800 men in Finland showed that those who ate the most fish doubled their risk of heart attack compared with those whose diets had less fish. The same men showed the same increase in risk for death from coronary and cardiovascular disease. And Grandjean’s Faeroe Islands study found that prenatal exposure to mercury caused significant increases in blood pressure among 7-year-olds.

The most troubling aspect of this controversial heart-disease data is that deleterious effects occur at mercury-exposure levels equal to or lower than for any other toxicological outcome, including the subtle neurological symptoms in the Faeroe Islands study. In Grandjean’s most recent examination of 14-year-olds, he has found a doubling of certain neurotoxic effects at five parts per million in hair samples. In the Finnish study, the men with the doubled risk of heart attack had hair samples with only two parts per million of mercury. They were eating little more than an ounce of fish a day. Stern speculates that 10 percent of American mean may already eat enough fish to raise their risk of heart attack.

“There’s this interaction between mercury and fish oils that makes it very complicated because they both come from the same place,” he says.

The National Research Council report noted that low levels of mercury contamination might also harm the immune and reproductive systems. And mercury is being investigated in relation to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, attention deficit disorder, and multiple sclerosis. But many low-level developmental effects will be difficult to identify, Stern says, because the compromised organ or function still falls within the range of normal. The intelligence scores of the Faeroese children, for example, were not pathologically low; it took rigorous statistical analyses to prove they were simply lower than they would have been otherwise. Likewise heart disease, as the nation’s leading killer, has plenty of confounding variables. “You’re looking to pull a signal out of a lot of noise,” Stern says.

That signal might soon get a lot stronger. While mercury contamination is no longer a threat in most childhood vaccines, it is likely to get worse in fish. “Because of the beneficial effects of fish consumption, the long-term goal needs to be a reduction in the concentrations of [methylmercury] in fish rather than a replacement of fish in the diet by other foods,” said the council’s report.

That goal is nothing less than unrealistic.

Mercury was a naturally occurring element in Earth’s atmosphere long before coal-fired generators, medical-waste incinerators, and chlor-alkali plants put more there. Some mercury escapes into the air when volcanoes erupt and mountains erode. It stands to reason that mercury has been accumulating in the flesh of fish, shellfish, and marine mammals since humankind began eating them–which is most likely why humans have a protein called metallothione to help detoxify mercury and other heavy metals.

But human activities have caused the mercury content of the atmosphere to rise by 1.5 percent a year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and the problem is global. Roughly half of the mercury deposited on U.S. soils and streams comes across the Pacific from Asia. Last year a United Nations report found that the toxin can travel thousands of miles in the atmosphere to contaminate pristine and uninhabited areas, such as the Arctic. Still, the United States has so far balked at attempts by the United Nations Environment Programme to draw up a binding protocol to reduce mercury pollution worldwide.

In the 1990s the United States made considerable progress in curbing emissions from incinerators for medical and municipal waste. Yet the number of states issuing local fishing advisories went from 27 to 48 in the last decade. Due to heightened concern, advisories for mercury are increasing faster than for any other pollutant.

The EPA is in the final stages of formalizing a rule that would limit emissions from coal-fired utilities, which produce 42 percent of the nation’s domestic mercury pollution. The agency’s standing proposal has been for a 70 percent reduction in mercury emissions by 2018. But environmentalists argue that the Clean Air Act calls for a 90 percent reduction by 2008. In 1992 the Natural Resources Defense Council sued the EPA for not maintaining the act’s standards, and in 1994 the parties reached a settlement. Under the terms of the agreement, the agency is required to issue a cleanup rule this month.