Health care Hemera Technologies r Worried about mercury in the fish you eat? Blame bad brushing and flossing. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking action to cut back on the amount of mercury entering the nation’s waterways by proposing new regulations on dental offices. The focus is dental amalgam; that’s the scientific name for silver cavity fillings, which contain mercury as part of their mixture. “We still do them, although silver fillings have mostly been replaced by the white, plastic fillings that people like much better,” said Bernie Dishler, a dentist at the Yorktowne Dental Group in Elkins Park. Dishler says most patients are familiar with the suction tubes dentists use in operatory chairs, typically to remove excess saliva and blood during treatments. But what patients might not know is that these tubes are also used to suction amalgam when a filling is being repaired or replaced, and that all of that material heads into public wastewater unless it’s filtered first. Dishler says his office uses something called a separator to filter out mercury from the waste. The different suction lines all drain into one pipe, which leads to the floor below where the device uses suction to pull metallic materials into a separate, removable compartment. Dishler says his office has been using a separator for 38 years, and that it’s a common device in dental offices. “It’s a standard setup,” Dishler said, adding that the EPA and American Dental Association had previously issued guidelines for separators. “About […]