Amalgam filling is one the cheapest and strongest dental filling that can stay on your teeth for more than 40 years without any problem, if your dentist is good in it. But there is concerns about its safety for our health. The American Dental Association (ADA) has reaffirmed its position that dental amalgam is a safe and effective cavity-filling material, however its use in banned or restricted in most of European countries.
Dental amalgam contains elemental mercury combined with other metals such as silver, copper, tin and zinc to form a safe, stable alloy. Because amalgam contains elemental mercury, some groups have raised concerns about its potential health effects and questioned its continued use in dentistry. Dental amalgam has been used for generations without any harm effect but the problem is with amalgam waste that will harm the environment. Through precipitation, this airborne mercury eventually gets deposited onto water bodies, land and vegetation. Some dentists throw their excess amalgam into special medical waste containers, believing this to be an environmentally safe disposal practice. If waste amalgam is improperly disposed in medical waste bags, however, the amalgam waste may be incinerated and mercury may be emitted to the air from the incinerator stacks.