In 2013, a new treaty, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, was adopted by a global community under the auspices of UNEP. The Convention is named after Minamata Bay in Japan to remember the lessons of the tragic health damage by industrial mercury pollution in the 1950s and 1960s. The aim of the treaty is to protect the environment and the human health from anthropogenic emissions and releases of the toxic heavy metal. It regulates the entire life cycle of mercury – its supply, trade, use, emissions, releases, storage, and the management of waste and contaminated sites.

By Charlie Brown
WASHINGTON, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

As it strives to be the prototype environmental treaty of this era, the Minamata Convention on Mercury continues its razor-like focus on ending all major uses of mercury. Emerging as the force leading the charge is the Global South, particularly the Africa Region, whose proposals led to hard-charging changes addressing dental amalgam, mercury-based skin creams, and fluorescent lights.

At the Fifth Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention (“COP5”), concluding in Geneva on 3 November, countries debated the African Amalgam Amendment, calling for the phase out of amalgam. The Africa region, led by Roger Baro, the Environment Minister of Burkina Faso, strategically built alliances beforehand, starting with the crucial 27-nation European Union.

Civil society was inspired watching one delegate after another rising to support the phase out of mercury in dentistry: from West Asia (Saudi Arabia, Jordan) to South Asia (Pakistan) and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam), from Oceania (Australia, Tuvalu) to South America (Argentina) and non-E.U. Europe (Norway, Switzerland).

But several dissenters, while agreeing action is needed, were not yet amenable to a phase out date. Emerging therefore was the worldwide consensus to take three giant leaps toward mercury-free dentistry:

• For the first time, the treaty recognizes that countries can phase out amalgam – and more and more have already succeeded!
• The nations amended the treaty to add a new requirement: those countries that have “not yet phased out dental amalgam” must submit an action plan or a report on their progress.
• Most exciting of all, the nations inserted into the treaty, in brackets, a phase-out date for amalgam – an action that is not legally binding but which automatically agendizes a debate and a vote, at COP6 in 2025, on whether and when to phase out amalgam.

The Africa Region led the movement to end the use of two other mercury products, gaining phase-out dates in the Minamata Convention for mercury in skin cream (UN Convention Agrees to Phase Mercury Out of Cosmetics by 2025 – Zero Mercury) and for all fluorescent light bulbs (https://www.clasp.ngo/updates/cop5-decision/).

Africans, both government and civil society, are grimly determined to protect its people from mercury exposure and not to let its continent be made a dumping ground for toxic products, including amalgam.

In the national capitals, the march to mercury-free dentistry continues unabated. In October, Gabon decided amalgam is no longer allowed – and huge credit here goes to Serge Molly of Libreville, a long-time leader at the Minamata Convention.

This month the European Parliament and the Council of Europe debate when—not if—to phase out amalgam in all 27 member states (a dozen already have). Other Parties are ending amalgam piecemeal . . . banning its use in children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers . . . or in the military . . . or in government programs.

No consumer or parent these days wants amalgam; no one with the power to choose accepts a mercury implant in the mouth. Where choice reigns—the private sector—amalgam use is ending.

Well-ensconced inside government bureaucracies, the mercury lobby imposes amalgam outrageously on powerless consumers—the indigenous, the poor, the racial minorities, the immigrants, the institutionalized, the privates in the army and the seamen in the navy.

Unchecked by their superiors, the condemnable chief dental officers of the U.S. and Canada (1) ignore their legal duty to comply with the Minamata Convention Children’s Amendment, (2) violate their Hippocratic Oath daily by outright defiance of the recommendations against use by both Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and (3) maintain mercury-toxic workplaces for dental workers while they sit protected from mercury exposure in their plush government bureaus.

The great Minamata Convention had its genesis from studies showing mercury in the Arctic, drifting there via air or waterways, was harming indigenous peoples. In stark defiance of the spirit of Minamata, Health Canada dentists fly planeloads of mercury fillings daily into the Arctic and sub-Arctic, leaving the dental mercury behind to pollute the Tribal Lands.

Equally ignominiously, the U.S. Indian Health Service has ignored for seven years the resolution from the National Congress of American Indians to cease amalgam use on Tribal Lands.

To the profound disappointment of the environmental community, Canada’s Environment & Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault MP—despite his superb résumé fighting toxins while an NGO leader—does nothing to reduce amalgam use by Health Canada, even though his ministry is the lead at Minamata.

It is time for Minister Guilbault to condemn this wholesale usage of mercury fillings that is poisoning tribal lands. Inaction by ECC Canada portends another Grassy Narrows scandal in the making.

Rather than apply President Biden’s splendid priority of environmental justice to the U.S. Public Health Service, Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine opts for physician-to-dentist professional courtesy—giving carte blanche to the pro-mercury chief dental officers to pollute Tribal lands, prisons, Army forts, Navy bases, and minority-dominated inner cities.

By the stroke of a pen, the 4-star Admiral could order the dentists under her command at the Public Health Service to end amalgam use—and the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry calls on her to do so now.

Dentists still implanting this colonial-era primitive device do so not because they need to; but because they want to. Inaction in Ottawa and Washington must end; these two federal governments are the major reason that North American oral health care remains two-tiered: choice for the middle class and mercury for the powerless.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
 
The fifth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury (COP-5) will take place from Monday, 30 October to Friday, 3 November 2023 at the International Conference Centre (CICG) in Geneva, Switzerland. More than eight hundred participants – including Parties’ representatives, non-parties governments, intergovernmental organizations, UN bodies and NGOs – are already confirmed to attend the meeting., according to UNEP.

By Charlie Brown
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 13 2023 (IPS)

As the Minamata Convention on Mercury’s fifth Conference of the Parties (COP5) approaches, momentum builds to adopt the Africa Region’s proposed amendment to phase out dental amalgam – a cavity filling material that is approximately 50% mercury.

Specifically, the Africa Region has filed a proposal to amend the Minamata Convention to add a 2030 phase-out date for amalgam, bringing it in line with many other mercury products. The proposal also adds common-sense measures to facilitate this phase-out, including (1) submitting to the Secretariat a national plan for phasing out the use of dental amalgam and (2) excluding the use of dental amalgam in government insurance policies and programs.

This amendment is already getting support from governments around the world. On 9 October the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry hosted a webinar on phasing out amalgam, featuring distinguished speakers ranging from the Honorable MP Nilto Tatto of Brazil to the Honorable Minister Roger Baro of Burkina Faso, from Dr. Luu Hoang Ngoc of Vietnam, the longest-serving Minamata delegate in Asia, to Joshua Sam of SPREP, architect of the Mercury-Free Pacific campaign—as well as dentists from three continents.

The momentum to end use of this primitive pollutant from the colonial era is substantial; more than 40 nations have enacted amalgam bans or partial bans:

• Ending amalgam use in children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding women (e.g., the European Union, Vietnam)
• Setting a phase-out date for all amalgam use (e.g., Tanzania, Italy)
• Banning amalgam use by law (e.g., Philippines, Moldova, Mongolia, Bolivia, New Caledonia)
• Ending amalgam use by shareholder consensus (e.g., St. Kitts & Nevis, Zambia)
• Ending amalgam imports (e.g., Cuba, Colombia)
• Ending amalgam use in public programs (e.g., Indonesia, Poland)
• Ending amalgam use in armed forces (e.g., India, Bangladesh)

These countries are working to end amalgam because they understand the many benefits of moving away from mercury products like amalgam – and toward a mercury-free world.

First, moving away from amalgam protects the environment from amalgam’s mercury. Between 226 and 322 tonnes of dental mercury is used around the world annually. Dental mercury enters the environment via many unsound pathways, polluting air via cremation, dental clinic emissions, and sludge incineration; water via dental clinic releases and human waste; and soil via landfills, burials, and fertilizer.

Studies show that after environmental costs are factored in amalgam is more expensive than mercury-free fillings, but these mercury-free alternatives eliminate the high environmental costs of amalgam.

Second, moving away from amalgam reduces human exposure to mercury. Dental amalgam releases mercury throughout its lifecycle. Higher levels of exposure to mercury (for both patients and dental workers) are associated with placement and removal of dental amalgams.

Once implanted in teeth, dental amalgam continues to release low levels of mercury vapor, with higher amounts released during mastication, gum chewing, tooth grinding, and tooth brushing. Phasing out amalgam will eliminate this source of exposure.

Third, moving away from amalgam actually improves oral health because of the advantages of mercury-free fillings. Studies show mercury-free composite fillings can last as long as – and even longer than – amalgam.

They preserve tooth structure that must be removed to place an amalgam filling, which can increase the longevity of the tooth itself. They can even help prevent future caries.

While support for the Africa Region’s proposed amalgam phase-out amalgam has been steadily building, the amalgam industry has been pushing back. Led by the pro-mercury World Dental Federation, the industry has issued a controversial letter that seemingly promotes a two-tiered system of dentistry: toxic-free dentistry for wealthy countries and mercury-based dentistry for lower-income countries.

Such health inequity and environmental injustice is unacceptable. The world has witnessed such outrageous disparities before, such as when Western nations banned lead paint at home but sold it to Asian, African, and Latin American nations. All countries worldwide, not only wealthy ones, deserve to benefit from mercury-free dental care.

At COP4, held last year in Indonesia, the Parties to the Minamata Convention added the Children’s Amendment, which requires each Party to “…Exclude or not allow, by taking measures as appropriate, or recommend against the use of dental amalgam for the dental treatment of deciduous teeth [baby teeth], of patients under 15 years and of pregnant and breastfeeding women…”

Now the Parties have a great opportunity take the next logical step at COP5: phase out the 200-year mistake of mercury amalgam dental fillings. During the week of 30 October to 3 November, the world will choose whether to accept the industry’s two-tiered system of dentistry that off-loads mercury into Africa, into Asia, and into Latin America – or embrace a mercury-free future for dentistry. It’s time to make dental mercury history!

Charlie Brown is president, World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry

IPS UN Bureau

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The World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry delegates at Minamata COP-4, on 23 March, 2022, Bali, Indonesia. Credit: Kiara Worth, IISD/ENB (Earth Negotiation Bulletin)

By Charlie Brown
LOME, Togo, Apr 26 2023 (IPS)

The Minamata Convention on Mercury, a stellar success story to date, has been favorably compared to the prototype success story for a treaty on toxins: the Montreal Protocol. Both had a single focused mission; both gained universal support across the globe; both matched technological innovation with environmental science to discard old polluting methods.

But emerging after hidden negotiations with the mercury lobby is a GEF project with UNEP endorsement which ignores, if not outright defies, the will of the Parties. As COP5 approaches, here is the test case on whether Minamata continues to move our small planet toward an end to anthropogenic mercury—or become mired in corporate capture.

For the past decade, the Parties repeatedly rejected the agenda of the dental mercury lobby—the dentists who still cling to the 19th century tooth-unfriendly pollutant amalgam, despite it being 50% mercury and a health risk to their own dental nurses; and the waste industry, whose obvious self-interest is to keep amalgam going into perpetuity to sell their equipment.

Charlie Brown

So, the dental mercury lobby met repeatedly with GEF and UNEP staff in sessions closed to the Parties . . . closed to the Minamata Secretariat . . . closed to the Minamata Bureau . . . closed to the dozens of CSOs who have actively pushed for a treaty to phase out anthropogenic mercury.

Violating their own standards, GEF and UNEP constructed (or allowed without objection) a project that bypasses the Children’s Amendment entirely in favor of trying to redirect the mission of the treaty from use to waste—the very position repeatedly rejected by the Parties since 2013.

Separators do not sell well because they do not and cannot eliminate mercury waste; they only catch the mercury in the dentist office—not the mercury implanted in people—and they require a massive infrastructure to ensure that even that partial waste, from dental offices, is properly disposed of. Only one solution ends mercury waste from amalgam: the switch to mercury-free dentistry.

The #1 beneficiary of this Greenwashing is the world’s only major publicly traded dental products maker expanding sales of amalgam: Southern Dental Industries (SDI) of Melbourne. While its competitors exited or scaled back amalgam—or never made it in the first place—SDI seized their exits as its opportunity to corner the amalgam market.

Just six weeks ago, in a call to its shareholders, SDI’s CEO boasted about its huge increases in amalgam sales, detailed its entry into new markets to sell amalgam, and affirmed her personal goal of ‘maximizing’ amalgam sales! Wriggling into a GEF-UNEP amalgam “reduction” project while increasing amalgam sales, SDI is the sole dental products company in a project partnership role—hence given market access denied to their mercury-free competitors in nations on three continents. Here is a classic case of Corporate Capture!

GEF’s requirement of stakeholder participation at the earliest stage was papered over via a legerdemain: a false claim that the NGOs are participating. Falsely listed as participants are the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, Bangladesh-based Environment and Social Development Organization, Germany-based European Network for Environmental Medicine, Philippines-based BAN Toxics, Nepal-based Center for Public Health and Environmental Development, Cameroun-based Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement, and U.S.-based Consumers for Dental Choice.

Equally troubling, RAP-AL Uruguay, who leads the campaign for mercury-free dentistry for Latin America, is preliminarily assigned to promote separator sales—a goal anathema to its very mission.

UNEP top brass in Nairobi and GEF top brass in Washington need to act:

• First, to determine who on their staffs submitted the plethora of false claims of CSO participation;
• Second, to kill this project, so that the Minamata Convention on Mercury does not become the treaty about corporate capture and greenwashing;
• Third, to use GEF funding to enact the will of the Parties as stated unequivocally in its 2022 Amendment: stop placing mercury fillings, for all time and all regions, in children and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

IPS UN Bureau

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