The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated their dental effluent guidelines in 2017. Amalgam separators are now required pretreatment standards to reduce discharges of mercury from dental offices into publicly owned treatment works (POTWs). EPA expects compliance with this final rule will annually reduce the discharge of mercury by 5.1 tons as well as 5.3 [...]
This article from the IAOMT offers an overview of occupational hazards of dental mercury and pertinent U.S. regulations. Because of daily exposures to dental mercury in their breathing zone during the placement, cleaning, polishing, removal, and other practices involving amalgam fillings, dentists, dental staff, and dental students are exposed to mercury at a greater rate [...]
On July 1, 2016, the IAOMT protocol recommendations were officially renamed as the Safe Mercury Amalgam Removal Technique (SMART), and a training course for IAOMT dentists to become certified in SMART was initiated. Scientific research demonstrates that dental mercury amalgam exposes dental professionals, dental staff, dental patients, and fetuses to releases of mercury vapor, mercury-containing [...]
By: Griffin Cole, DDS, NMD As many of us know, the issue of mercury discharges from amalgam waste impacts nearly every dental office. Research in the United States and other countries has repeatedly demonstrated that dental offices play a significant role in releasing mercury into the environment. Furthermore, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [...]
Many dentists, dental staff, and dental students do not realize that a variety of procedures involving manipulation of an old or new amalgam will expose them to levels of mercury that pose an immediate threat to their health unless they take precautions such as instituting work practices and engineering controls to minimize exposure.
International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research, 2012, 1, 1-15 Thomas G. Duplinsky 1,* and Domenic V. Cicchetti 2 1 Department of Surgery, Yale University School of Medicine, USA 2 Child Study Center and Departments of Biometry and Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, USA Abstract: The authors employed pharmacy utilization data to evaluate the [...]
In addition to the articles catalogued here, the IAOMT has other materials about dental mercury. Click the button below to access the additional articles. Additional Mercury Articles
