Dec. 10--The California dental board
has been sued for failing to provide consumer-friendly warnings
about the possible health hazards of mercury-based dental
fillings.
Consumers for Dental Choice, a Washington,
D.C., consumer-advocacy group, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in
Los Angeles Superior Court, saying the dental board was ordered
13 years ago to produce and distribute information alerting
consumers to the risks associated with mercury fillings.
"They
need the information now, not in three months, not in six
months, not in a year," said Charlie Brown, the group's national
counsel. "It needs to get out now."
The
lawsuit, which seeks to force the dental board to comply with
the law, is the latest skirmish in a long-running debate over
the safety of the fillings. Amalgam fillings contain about
50 percent mercury, 25 percent silver and 25 percent other
materials. Some medical studies have found amalgam fillings
can lead to diseases such as Alzheimer's, attention deficit
disorder and autism, but others have supported the safety
of the material.
Brown
said his group has worked with the dental board since 1999
to produce an easy- to-understand brochure about mercury fillings.
The board did produce an eight-page handout for patients,
but Brown said it is unintelligible and incomplete.
"The
dental board is fully committed to providing a comprehensive
and consumer-friendly fact sheet," spokesman Mike Luery said.
"It's just a matter of updating it and making it more conversational."
Luery
said mercury-based fillings are a contentious issue, with
disagreement even within the scientific community. He also
cited a recent article in the Journal of New England Medicine
that found "no connection" between mercury in dental amalgams
and neuro-degenerative diseases and no evidence to support
replacing the fillings with alternative materials.
On
its Web site, the ADA says that dental amalgam is "a safe,
affordable and durable material that has been used to restore
the teeth of more than 100 million Americans" and that the
material "has established a record of safety and effectiveness."
The association accuses amalgam opponents of pitting emotion
against science and scaring patients to the point where they
may not seek dental care. That is especially troubling, the
ADA says, for low-income patients who may not have insurance
or whose health plans may not cover the more-expensive alternatives.
Anita
Vazquez Tibau, California director for Consumers for Dental
Choice in Newport Beach, disagrees.
She
said she had serious gastrointestinal problems, chronic asthma
and other respiratory illnesses until 2001, when she had 13
mercury fillings replaced with composite fillings.
"It's
a poison any way you slice it," Tibau said. "It is an impossibility
to prove it's safe."
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(c)
2003, The Orange County Register, Calif. Distributed by Knight
Ridder/Tribune Business News.
Publication
date: 2003-12-10
© 2003, YellowBrix,
Inc.
