this issue is more serious than you may think. If I had
known Hg was in fillings I am sure I would not be in
the mess I am in today. However it is a good illustration of
fate.

When studying for my SATS in Barrons I underlined the following
words in the A's as unknown (even though I pretty much knew
the first two):

Allude
Allusion
Alluvial
Amble,

skipping over
"amalgamate" - the definition given was, to combine;unite in
one body.

Now with my false sense of what amalgam really meant from reading that
and previous learning I actually read this in college chemistry (I
checked the book I used):

"Another way of removing metallic gold and silver from their
ores is to treat the mixture with metallic mercury-a liquid
in which silver and gold dissolve to form an alloy called
an amalgam...you are probably familiar with silver and gold amalgams as
the material used by dentists to fill teeth."

Notice that the above passage wins first prize for a confusing
definiton of amalgam and could be interpreted to mean
that mercury dissolved with silver could be considered an
amalgam but not necessarily that an amalgam always contains
Hg.

A few years later I developed more serious symptoms of Hg from amalgam,
but it never dawned on me then that the above passage absolutely meant
that Hg is in dental amalgam, probably because it seemed impossible and
because I thought they were using the term amalgam to  mean a
combination of a material containing silver. I suppose if I was a
better reader I would have gotten the point, but
I think it is also a poor commentary on dental terminlolgy that
delibrately seems choosen to confuse the public and perpetuate
this kind of confusion, to say the very least.

It is actually the guitar player who has the big lips...otherwise I'm with
you!

(;^D)

T

"Dental amalgam" is fine.

Of course, some mercury amalgams are used in applications other than
dentistry.

For example, zinc-mercury amalgam is useful for the electrodes of
electrical cells. See:

http://www.machinedesign.com/BDE/Electrical/bdeee7/bdeee7_10.html

I wonder if the particular electrical properties of this amalgam are
shared by the mercury amalgams commonly used in dentistry.

Which reminds me, do you know if anyone has ever measured the
electrical conductivity of a typical dental amalgam?

Keith P Walsh

PS, further enquiries concerning the electrical properties of dental
amalgams can be found at:

http://book.boot.users.btopenworld.com/intro.htm

Have heard that AC/DC may also refer to a switch hitter.
--

W_B
Take out the G'RBAGE
wubbabubbazG@RBAGEyahoo.com

Are you people for real??!!!
When the world AMALGAM is used to describe a material, then that
material has to have MERCURY in it. Period. Mixtures of other metals
must be called as alloys.
Describing a material as mercury amalgam is like going to a diner,
asking for an egg omelette and the wondering why everybody's laughing
at you.
The world amalgam is occassionally used to define a mixture of ABSTRACT
things, like an amalgam of cultures, an amalgam of qualities etc. When
used to describe a material you use the technical definition, so it
always defines a mercury + other elements compound. Just as when you
say omelette, you mean eggs + other stuff (i like tomato, peppers and
feta cheese).

George

So what if "redundacy is redundant"?

The use of "redundant" words in language is not erroneous "per se".

Sometimes it helps.

And it's not necessarily all that important.

No person of any rational disposition would ever seriously infer that
if I use the term "mercury amalgam" then it must mean that I think that
I can form an amalgam by mixing liquid mercury with liquid mercury.

I believe that the collective inability of people to either recognise
or address their own ignorance is a tendency which has much more
serious potential consequences.

For example, it has been demonstrated experimentally that metal amalgam
dental fillings generate electrical potentials with magnitudes of up to
350 millivolts.

See:

http://book.boot.users.btopenworld.com/dutch.htm

And the resting potential of the human neurological synapse is only 70
millivolts.

However, it appears that there isn't anyone anywhere in the world who
knows whether or not the electrical potentials generated by amalgam
fillings are able to dissipate electrical energy through the nerves in
people's heads.

This is because it also appears that no-one has ever carried out the
experimental investigations necessary to find out.

In this state of ignorance it is not possible to say how much influence
the dissipation of electrical energy from fillings through the nerves
in people's heads has in causing the so-called "psychiatric" disorders
known as "depression", "stress", "schizophrenia", etc.

Many millions of dollars have been spent on research attempting to
demonstrate that the root causes of disorders such as these are
"genetic".

So far without success.

That amounts to many millions of dollars worth of evidence that the
root causes of disorders such as these are NOT "genetic".

By comparison, it appears that nothing at all has been spent on
attempting to demonstrate that the root cause of these disorders is not
the dissipation of electrical energy through the nerves in people's
heads as a result of the generation of electrical potentials by the
mercury amalgam fillings in their teeth.

So there is no scientific evidence that this is not the cause (a
"double negative" which I am confident linguistic experts will agree is
perfectly valid).

And if you honestly believe that establishing a proper scientific
understanding of the consequences of the electrical behavior of dental
amalgams is less important than getting its name right, then all I can
say is that it isn't me who's the dolt.

It's you.

Keith P Walsh