The future of dental amalgam: a review of the literature. Part 4: Mercury exposure hazards and risk assessment.

This is the fourth article in a series of seven on the future of dental amalgam. It first describes toxic mercury hazards from all sources of exposure including dental amalgam. It begins by considering the many problems in accurately estimating daily mercury intakes from these sources. It then describes potential mercury hazards to industrial workers and the calculation of thresholds for the general public from industrial data. The implications of these findings to the production of a safe threshold for patients with dental amalgams are then discussed. It finally discusses the attempts which have been made to carry out a risk assessment of dental amalgam. In this connection it reports the reviews of the United States Public Health Service in 1993, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare in 1994 and the risk assessment commissioned from Canada Health which was reported in 1995. It also includes comments on the methods used in this last report.