AUGUSTA – Two bills aimed at eliminating the use of mercury in dental fillings failed to pass muster with members of the Legislature’s Natural Resources Committee on Thursday afternoon, effectively ending debate on the matter until next year at the earliest.

The two measures would have required dental insurance plans, including the state’s Medicaid program, to pay for the more expensive white-colored fillings known as composites, which do not contain mercury. Schools in Maine that teach dentistry, dental hygiene or dental assisting would have been required to provide information on the risks of occupational exposure to mercury in dental settings.

The bills both called for the total phasing out of mercury fillings, also called amalgam fillings, by Jan. 1, 2008, and would also have protected dentists who stopped using amalgams before June 30, 2006, against lawsuits from patients who feel they have been harmed by exposure to the heavy metal.

L.D. 1327, sponsored by Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, ended with those provisions. But L.D. 1338, sponsored by Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, also called for tighter regulation of the use of amalgam fillings, including mandated annual reporting and routine monitoring of mercury separators already required in all Maine dentists’ offices. The state Department of Environmental Protection would have been charged with stepping up enforcement of existing provisions affecting the use of mercury in dental offices and with imposing stiff financial penalties on practices that violate the rules.

The bills, originally introduced during the previous legislative session, met with stiff opposition from the dental profession. In public hearings, dentists claimed amalgam fillings have never been linked with the kind of neurological damage known to be caused by exposure to mercury in other settings, and testified that once mixed with the other materials in the filling material, the mercury is rendered harmless. They also argued that composite fillings are more expensive, less durable and harder to place correctly.

The bills were held over for consideration in the current session on the premise that results of a 5-year study of schoolchildren receiving amalgam and composite fillings would be available. That study, which included children from the Farmington area as well as from Massachusetts, has been completed, but results are not yet available. Committee members were told at Thursday’s work session that results may be available in the late spring or summer.

Other objections were raised Thursday , including whether it is appropriate for the Natural Resources Committee to review legislation that has so many implications for Maine’s health care system.

“We are wholly unqualified to decide whether public health in Maine will be advanced by these measures or not,” declared committee member Rep. Robert Daigle, R-Arundel, an environmental consultant. The bills should be reviewed in the Health and Human Services committee, he said.

After discussion, members voted unanimously that Martin’s bill ought not to pass, and that Damon’s more inclusive bill should be tabled indefinitely.