THE GREAT DENTAL DISGRACE
On the morning of March 6, 2017, sixteen teachers and pupils were taken to hospital from Camberley School in Hastings suffering suspected toxic inhalation. An old-fashioned thermometer, containing between 0.5 and 3 grams of mercury, had broken, necessitating the school’s evacuation and decontamination.
Rewind to 1974. In a school dental clinic, a dental nurse is preparing a filling for a young child. She pours mercury on to a scale, heats it with copper over a bunsen burner until the mercury bubbles to the top, then grinds the mixture in a mortar and pestle. She hand-squeezes the excess mercury in a gauze cloth, sometimes dropping beguiling silver beads of it onto her patient. Inevitably, some ends up on the lino, splattering like a silver raindrop. This she will do about 10 times a day over a working lifetime.
New Zealand’s dental nurses had never been warned about the dangers of working with mercury – second only to radium in its toxicity – despite its deadly effects having been known since ancient times. Mercury amalgam has been used in dentistry for more than 190 years, despite it’s being controversial even since its introduction in 1826. It was simply cheaper and easier to use than gold fillings.
Continuing evidence of mercury’s potential deadliness prompted an editorial in the in 1971. “[Amalgam handling] procedures …
