World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry calls for immediate action, suspension of mercury-based amalgam from CEO Samantha Cheetham.
(MELBOURNE, VIC) – Despite the trend of all other major dental product manufacturers ceasing production and distribution of the controversial mercury-based dental fillings, and contrary to a worldwide treaty calling for a ban on its use in children and pregnant women, the Australian-based family business, Southern Dental Industries (SDI), led by CEO Samantha Cheetham has stated they have several more years of sales ahead, focusing on, in their own words, “lower socio-economic markets.”
The World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry is demanding immediate action for the monopolising dental giant to follow global standards and cease production immediately.
“With both U.S. FDA and Health Canada advising that amalgam should not be placed in children and in pregnant women, in addition to a ban in the EU, CEO Cheetham is gambling it all by continue to sell it,” said Charlie Brown, president of the World Alliance of Mercury-Free Dentistry and a Washington D.C. lawyer. “U.S. FDA says it should not be given to large categories of American consumers because of its 50% mercury content. These groups include children, pregnant women, breastfeeding women, kidney disease patients, persons with neurological conditions, etc.”
Brown goes on to note that the Australian government granted SDI a $3 million AUD cheque to develop a mercury-free product to replace dental amalgam – a material historically made of a variety of metals, including approximately 50% elemental mercury, that is commonly referred to as silver fillings. “Certainly, Canberra did not expect SDI to treat the money as a welfare cheque—with no obligation to do anything. The implicit promise, one would think, is that SDI would develop the mercury-free product and immediately stop selling amalgam. It’s a spit in the eye to the federal treasury to pocket the money and keep profiting off a product which the government gave them money to stop selling.”
“The decision by SDI to continue exporting a product made with mercury, a known neurotoxin, risks damaging the reputation of its home country and seems purely motivated by profit - especially as they also sell the non-mercury alternative” said Lee Bell of Perth, WA, and an Australian-based IPEN Mercury Policy Advisor. “One would think that SDI would take the hint that with companies around the world exiting amalgam sales, they should too. Instead, Australia’s reputation is diminished for being home to the last publicly traded manufacturer of mercury fillings.”
Pacific Island countries are among a key target of SDI’s socio-economic distribution routes. And Emele Duituturaga of Suva, Fiji, head of the Pacific chapter of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry says “Our Pacific community is very sensitive to companies who export toxic products like Mercury to our Islands. They poison the fish we eat, and we have no land space to store mercury products. Working with the Secretariat of the Pacific Environmental Programme in Samoa, we are trying to build a mercury-free Pacific. That said, what CEO Cheetham is doing flies in the face of this goal—it certainly will create reputational injury to her company and to the credibility of any imports from Australian companies.”
With dental amalgam now phased out in 65 countries, Reynaldo San Juan Jr. of BAN Toxics, Manila adds that “SDI will likely hurt all of its exports in the ASEAN region, which has more than twenty times the number of consumers as Australia, 600 million vs. 27 million. The reputational harm to this company of peddling amalgam in ‘lower socio-economic markets’—and by that I presume she means the ASEAN nations—could reverberate to tank sales of its commendable non-toxic products, leading to a direct loss in Australian jobs.”
For comparison, the EU recently instituted an amalgam ban that, according to a member of the European Parliament, would ‘avoid the release of approximately 10 tons of mercury into the environment by 2030’ and that is in the EU alone. With SDI’s claim to distribute until 2028, the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry is concerned about how those numbers could quickly multiply.
In an effort to prevent the poisoning of unknowing consumers across the globe, the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry now calls on not only SDI but the Australian government to be a good neighbour, an upright global citizen and henceforth ban amalgam exports.
For more information on the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, visit www.toxicteeth.org.
About us:
About the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry:
The World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry is an international coalition of organisations from six continents dedicated to ending dental mercury use. Headquartered in the USA at the Consumers for Dental Choice in Washington D.C., the Alliance consists of a global team of dentists, environmentalists, scientists, physicians, attorneys, journalists, and consumer advocates whose goal is to abolish the use of mercury-based amalgams in dental products worldwide. For more information, visit www.toxicteeth.org.
Contact details:
Susan McNair, Currie, 0439 389 202, susan@curriecommunications.com.au