In article ,
Chris Bacon writes:
Chris McBrien wrote:
........ and aren't dental fillings made with a percentage of Mercury in
them?

Yes, they're a mercury/silver/tin/copper/zinc amalgam. There's been
a "scare" about it for years.

There was a Dispatches, or Horizon, or similar on this probably
some 15 or more years ago. My recollection is that mercury
release to the environment from crematoria chimneys is actually
quite significant, at around 3g per person. There was some
discussion about removing fillings, but that doesn't work, as
after around 10 years, most of the mercury has left the filling
amalgam and lodged somewhere else in the body (the brain seems
to absorb mercury more than other body tissues).

Quite frankly, it seems there's little
evidence it's harmful*, as it's been in use for over 100 years, and
the amount of mercury entering the body from dental amalgam is very
small compared to that ingested in food.

You may be right, but equally there are lots of diseases which
people get for which the cause is not yet understood.

The other large source of environmental mercury is from the
flues of coal fired power stations, depending where in the
world the coal was mined.

--
Andrew Gabriel