Mercury amalgam fillings... the debate.

For the last few decades, many dentists and scientists have been becoming increasingly concerned about the mercury that dentists use to prepare the metallic, silver-coloured amalgams (fillings) that patch our decayed teeth.
The amalgam is a mix of 50% mercury and 50% powdered alloy containing mainly silver with copper, zinc and tin in varying proportions.
 
Anecdotes about mercury's toxic effects have been common.

Mercury is a powerful toxin. Once we were reassured that it was safe to use in the mouth because after it had set the mercury was locked in. Now we have evidence that this is not so and that mercury leaches out of fillings. It is absorbed through the oral tissue and is swallowed and inhaled.
It passes into the blood and is carried throughout the body across the placenta into foetus and into breast milk.

WHO 2005 Report: Mercury in Health Care
Despite claims to the contrary by defenders of amalgam, the official position of the World Health Organization remains that of the 1991 conference: dental amalgam is the greatest source of inorganic
mercury for the general population, outside of industrial exposures. 

In March 2007 in court the US the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) abandoned its long-time position for amalgam, five times admitting in its court brief that it the FDA doesn’t know if mercury fillings are safe or unsafe. Moms Against Mercury, et al. v. FDA  

For them to admit this takes some doing and points to the mounting scientific evidence against mercury amalgam fillings.Also it creates an astonishing gap between FDA’s position (doesn’t know if it’s safe) and its policy (may be implanted into anyone without even warnings)!

A systematic investigation by the Swedish Associationof Dental Mercury patients (Tf) looked at 25 studies of 5281 patients and concluded that “Most studies  give very consistent results:
there is hardly any medical treatment which gives so positive results on so many health problems as amalgam removal.” Read the Paper 

In a study of 465 patients diagnosed with chronic mercury toxicity 32.3% had severe fatigue, 88.8% had memory loss and 27.5% had depression. Safe removal of amalgam fillings with appropriate treatment
resulted in significant symptom reduction reported by the subjects. Read the Paper 

It is clear that there are health issues related to mercury toxicity, there does however seem to be an issue that not everyone is effected or in the same way.  This may be due to the fact that mercury toxicity is in part dose related and is linked with our ability to clear mercury from other sources. One of the other counter arguments concerning mercury amalgam fillings is that they emit in terms of the level of mercury fairly low amounts, this assumes though that they are in place and in a stable state.