Or, Why is Your Mouth a Toxic Waste Dump?
Email from Consumers For Dental Choice
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 5:21 PM
Subject: Connecticut -- A step forward as we prep for court fight over abolition
By ruling to protect dental mercury from the state’s ban on mercury products, the Connecticut (CT) Dept. of Environmental Protection has set the stage for a dramatic court battle on whether the chief white-collar polluter gets immunity from the zero mercury law.
The CT state agency did, however, mandate that dentists distribute the state of Maine’s fact sheet on mercury, whose cover page reads: “Fillings: The Choices you have. Mercury amalgam and other fillings materials”; see www.state.me.us/dhs/boh/files/odh/AmalBrochFinal2.doc The opinion recognized what we showed in the Zogby poll of CT voters: most people still don’t know that “silver” fillings are really mercury fillings. We now have five states mandating fact sheets – and CT is the first to do so without a special statute. Such an action -- disclosure by executive order -- is a milestone, and we urge other state environmental agencies to follow suit.
For the first time, we are debating whether mercury fillings should be abolished for ENVIRONMENTAL reasons. Consumers for Dental Choice assembled a grand coalition of all major in-state environmental groups, the state’s environmental justice coalition, and the state’s leading civil rights group, and put the issue right into the lap of state government. The press ate it up -- every major newspaper and every TV station has written story after story about the fight to abolish mercury fillings. Of course, publicity alone causes more people to learn, and to switch.
Meanwhile, we can now head to the judicial branch of government and finally get our day in court, the level playing field we have been seeking. We are past the stage of running uphill against a state agency with such a cozy relationship with the CT State Dental Association that the two worked out the pollution rules behind closed doors and repeatedly called each other “partner.”
Using tortuous legal reasoning, the Department absolved dental mercury by absurdly claiming that dental amalgam is not a mercury-added product [huh?]. Further, it adopted the ADA argument that the words “elemental mercury” and “amalgam” mean the same thing -- a position opposite to ADA press barrages claiming that the two are quite different. Now the ADA will have to live with its position equating elemental mercury and amalgam. And the Department must explain how a product that is 50% mercury is not a “mercury-added product.”
Our law firm, Brown Rudnick (no relation, unfortunately) is one of the most prestigious in New England. Brown Rudnick spearheaded the tobacco litigation for most of the New England states, and is doing the case pro bono publico (at no charge).
Now we have the debate on the front burner: Should CT abolish mercury fillings? And, should your state abolish mercury fillings. The cork is out the ADA’s bottle.
Charlie Brown, National Counsel
Consumers for Dental Choice
[email protected]; www.toxicteeth.org
Sept. 15, 2005
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