Amalgam waste management. Issues & answers.

A review of U.S. dental amalgam waste management activities finds a wide variety of approaches, processes and results, within which the authors have observed an inconsistency of definitions, measurements, standards and even of clearly applied goals. As a result, outcomes have varied greatly from community to community. This manuscript attempts to deliver logical options, which might prevail even within an atmosphere of differing perspectives. The authors believe that successful outcomes are achievable within a collaborative environment of shared learning and cooperative planning. By example, the authors attempt to demonstrate how the joint acceptance of certain definitions and goals has served as a pathway to success in one community's dental waste management project. The goal of this paper is to share tools that may contain some measure of applicability to other similar collaborations.