Daily HealthBeat Tip

Fillings

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Having a filling beats having a cavity. But what about the safety of the fillings? Dentists commonly have packed teeth with amalgam, which contains mercury as a binding agent, and mercury can be toxic.

Dentists say mercury amalgam is safe, but some people had their doubts. So researchers looked into it – checking for five years on some children who got fillings with mercury and others who got non-mercury composite.

The study, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health, was in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Sonja McKinlay of the New England Research Institutes says parents and kids needn’t worry:

"On IQ and other aspects of brain function as well as kidney function, the group that received the mercury-based amalgam was exactly the same as those that received the composite." (11 seconds)

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 18, 2006

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