Dental Offices Generate Mercury Contamination

At present, the Environmental Protection Agency is really concerned about the increased amount of mercury that appears in waterways as a result of dentistry. The agency is completely sure that dental offices play a great role in contaminating public waters and about half of mercury gets there from them. The problem is that public water treatment facilities cannot cope with the growing amount of mercury and it is considered to be toxic in relation to humans and fish.

Mercury appears to be a result of dental services, precisely dental fillings. That is why it makes sense to prevent mercury getting into water ways at the beginning, before it gets into the water treatment facilities. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the deployment of mercury removal technology in dental offices is possible and it is estimated that about 41 percent of dentists in the United States uses this sort of technology.

As a result, dentists will provide a great impact on strengthening human health protection. Concerning these requirements, dental offices will be equipped with amalgam separators which could help to separate water from mercury. Thanks to this technology, the amount of mercury that can get into waterways will be significantly reduced.

This requirement will be beneficial in a lot of aspects and the Environmental Protection Agency states that this requirement will help the country to fulfill the responsibilities under the Minamata Convention of Mercury. This convention is the example of an international intention to make the environment clean from mercury and this convention was drafted last year.

According to the estimations provided by the Environmental Protection Agency, this measure will prevent about nine tons of mercury from getting into public water treatment facilities. Dentists should not treat this measure as another obstacle that needs to be overcome, but they need to think about fish they can safe and about a great number of people they will not let be infected.

Photo by Zack Baddorf [Public domain], undefined