New campaign urges US food, drug administration to ban use of amalgam in children, others
A New York-based group, Consumer for Dental Choice, on Tuesday March 28, 2017 launched a campaign for mercury free dentistry calling on the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban amalgam use in children under age 15, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers.
Essentially, the group said the FDA 2009 amalgam rule fails to protect American children, urging the organisation to act and then take the lead in championing a mercury-free future.
National Counsel, Consumer for Dental Choice, Charles Brown, while launching an online petition for people to sign to compel FDA to ban amalgam use in the U.S, said the FDA need to catch up with the European Union.
“Now FDA needs to hear from you too, please sign this online petition, telling FDA to catch up with the European Union. Then share it with friends, colleagues, patients, and family”, he said.
Brown cited the example of the European Parliament that voted last week, by an overwhelming 663 to 8, for a comprehensive package to reduce mercury use, as required by the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
Under this new European Union regulation, according to him, amalgam use in children under age 15, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers will be banned on July 1, 2018 while each country in the European Union will be required to develop a national plan by July 1, 2019 laying out how it will reduce its amalgam use.
Brown, who is also the President, World Alliance for Mercury Free Dentistry, said the European Commission must decide by mid-2020 whether to move forward with plans to phase out dental amalgam completely in the European Union.
“This progress is the result of our team’s seven years of toil: building a united European coalition, meeting after meeting with government official; submitting comments to one scientific committee after another; presenting testimony at a half dozen public hearings; organizing the grassroots; finding the right experts and collecting signatures for petitions.
“When we started, the European Union was the largest user of amalgam in the world – but that will change dramatically when this new regulation goes into effect in 2018, as the European Parliament explains in its press release, this new regulation “aims to phase out the use of mercury in dental amalgam by 2030.”
“Today, Consumers for Dental Choice filed a petition that calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to act. It points out that while the European Parliament is taking steps to protect European children from amalgam, FDA’s 2009 amalgam rule fails to protect American children. To solve this problem, our petition urges FDA to follow the European Union’s example: ban amalgam use in children under age 15, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers….and then take the lead in championing a mercury-free future!” he added.
Similarly, at a recent stakeholders conference attended by government officials, NGOs, Academics, Nigerian Dental Association and Association of Private Dental Practitioners and the media held in Lagos, Nigeria where an action plan for phase down of mercury amalgam was developed, participants urged the Federal Ministries of Health and Environment to discourage and stop mercury amalgam use in children’s primary teeth and pregnant women in Nigeria by December 2017.
However, the Sustainable Research and Action for Development (SRADev Nigeria), has called on the Nigerian government to urgently take steps to support the ‘Abuja declaration’ and be the first Africa country to phase down/out dental amalgam use in health care in view of its serious health and environment risk.
