why are mercury containing amalgam tooth fillings considered safe despite mercury being extremely toxic?
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You know how chlorine is extremely toxic to all life? And how sodium will burst into flames in water? Yet you eat NaCl all the time and in fact cannot survive without it. Compounds can have significantly different physical and chemical properties than the elements they are made of. Chlorine is extremely electronegative – it only has 7 electrons in the last shell and needs to complete it by reacting with pretty much anything. It reacts with sodium, “takes” that electron and is presto….at peace. NaCl is pretty inert – it will sit on your counter and happily not eat through metal, not burst into flames, not suffocate you because the reaction has already been completed. Similarly with Hg – it’s toxic because it replaces other things in metabolic pathways, the main one being inhibition of some enzymes. But Mercury amalgams are “pacified” – it already reacted with something else (like silver, tin etc), and for the most part (even after hundreds of years of use, there’s still lack of research) do not release elemental mercury in the organism.
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