Throughout the years as a dental assistant people have questioned whether amalgam fillings were causing harm to their health or if they were letting off poisons into their system .
At first the national board of dentistry thought that the amalgam fillings could be bad for your health overall if you had a lot of them in your mouth. But, recent studies have proven that amalgam fillings are not causing such hazards afterall. The board has even gone as far as to state that if a dentist tells you that you need to replace your amalgam fillings for health reasons that dentist can be charged with malpractice!
Amalgam or silver fillings as most people call them, are made of silver, tin, zinc, copper, and mercury. 50% of the filling is mercury. Tests have shown that the amalgam fillings do leak a little bit of mercury into your system but not at a rate that would harm you in any way.
Amalgam advantages and disadvantages:
- the material is very strong and durable
- can be used for an area in your mouth that is impossible to get dry– a necessity for composit fillings
- less expensive than composit fillings
- larger area of the tooth structure has to be removed in order to place an amalgam
- can cause stress fractures because it weakens the tooth
Composite fillings on the other hand are definitely more esthetic. The white composit fillings are made of a plastic material that is cured by the use of a special light. Your dentist should give you the option to choose either the amalgam filling or the white composit filling.
Composite advantages and disadvantages:
- can be matched to the exact shade of your other teeth
- only a small amount of tooth structure needs to be removed to place a composite
- usually they don’t cause the teeth to be sensitive to hot and cold like the amalgams do
- cannot be placed if the tooth is wet
- can be drastically weakened by the use of alcolhol and drugs.
So, the conclusion on the matter is that you don’t need to have your dental amalgam fillings ( silver filling) replaced for health reasons. Now if you have to get a cavity filled, composit fillings or tooth colored fillings are definitely my first choice for the cosmetic side of things but I just wanted to clear up the bad name that the silver fillings are getting:)
