Silver / amalgam fillings are appropriately also called mercury fillings because their predominant ingredient is in fact mercury. These fillings are frequently replaced for a variety of functional reasons such as cracking, chipping, or leaking. Cosmetic concerns are a common reason to change them too. But most importantly, in alternative dentistry, mercury amalgam fillings are removed for health reasons.

It's sometimes hard to feel supported on your health journey when the FDA, the ADA, your old dentist, all their colleagues, your doctor, and all our prestigious dental and medical schools claim that the mercury in these fillings poses little risk. However millions of people worldwide have discovered serious negative patterns in their health that they attribute to mercury from silver fillings. The dichotomy in dentistry is so bad that confessing that you believe your fillings are causing rheumatoid arthritis for example is often met with ridicule and even an insulting referral to a psychologist.

The truth is there is an enormous amount of scientific data which clearly demonstrates the harm caused by mercury to the human body. Examples range from eye floaters to high blood pressure, and from diabetes to cancer. The list is long, not well-known, and sometimes esoteric. Also since every person is affected differently, it's sometimes hard to recognize correlations. And finally since tests for mercury are flawed, toxic symptoms are often dismissed as coincidence or even psychosomatic.

You're at a point on your health journey where you realize that in order to progress, you must remove these sources of mercury from your mouth. But you may have also heard that removing them is potentially dangerous and may be worse than keeping them in. Well, it depends on how it's done.

Removing them carelessly does indeed release extremely hazardous amounts of mercury vapors and particles causing dangerous exposure for all nearby. Unfortunately, dentists are taught to just drill these fillings out without realizing the damage they're doing to themselves and their patients. Luckily there's a safe solution. The SMART protocol was designed to address this problem by protecting patients and healthcare providers from mercury exposure during filling removal. The protocol includes numerous engineering controls designed to mitigate each potential route of exposure such as inhalation of mercury vapors or particles, ingestion of mercury particles, contamination of clothes and hair, and more.

SMART-certification is a process of education, training, and testing to assure the safe protocol is being carefully applied. If you have silver-amalgam fillings, it is critical that you see a SMART-certified dentist for removal. Never allow anyone you know to have amalgam fillings carelessly removed the conventional way.

Make sure to watch beyond the 59 second mark for a stunning visual of what happens during careless removal: