The Maine Legislature is filled with people who want to do the right thing, who care about our children, our health, our environment, education and the lives of their constituents. Unfortunately, they are also surrounded by industry lobbyists and state agencies which, after years of regulating industry, exhibit Stockholm syndrome symptoms.

This month the Legislature took up An Act to Protect Children’s Health and the Environment from Toxic Chemicals in Toys and Children’s Products. Toxic products are everywhere in our lives; be it flame retardants in pajamas, mercury amalgams that fill cavities, or thimerosal, a mercury preservative that has been used in the many vaccines pumped into our children.

The bill before the Legislature was meant to identify toxins of concern in regard to children’s health and to replace them with safe alternatives. Excellent. But industry lobbyists not only reduced the number of toxins to be looked at (from 100 to a mere half-dozen), but also amended the bill to exempt mercury products that have caused, and will continue to cause harm to our children’s health and the environment.

Mercury is known to be a dangerous neurotoxin. It is ubiquitous in our environment naturally and in man-made products. Elemental mercury is relatively benign, but methylated elemental mercury is extremely toxic. It has harmed loons and eagles and other wildlife, and can damage the circuits of the brains of developing fetuses and young children.

At the turn of the last century, mercury amalgam was called quicksilver or, in German, quecksilber. Doctors who knew these fillings to be toxic started calling their colleagues who used mercury amalgams quacks, a derogatory term used to this day.

Mercury amalgams are 50 percent mercury. That material is hazardous waste going into the dental office and hazardous waste going out of the dental office. The industry would have us believe it is not hazardous in our mouths, but the tooth fairy would need to be in hazmat garb to take the tooth from under your child’s pillow.

Even if one believes that having a filling with 50 percent mercury is not harmful (as the dental industry would have us believe) and that mercury vapor released from these fillings doesn’t hurt the brain (mercury vapor is toxic and easily crosses the brain barrier in destructive ways), there is ample evidence of harm to health and the environment from mercury in amalgams that is released through excretion of urine and feces, some of which is already methylated through bacterial action in the body (in both saliva and the colon), and some methylates through deposition in the water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency believes it is one of the reasons many wastewater treatment plants cannot meet their obligations and goals in regard to mercury reduction.

That very toxic methylated mercury then works its way up the food chain.

The dental industry uses a whopping 40-60 metric tons of mercury a year that goes into our mouths and then the environment. In Maine, the industry imported 180 pounds of mercury last year. To put that into perspective, because of the extreme toxicity of mercury, it takes only half a gram to contaminate a 10-acre lake to the extent that fish consumption advisories would have to be issued. Multiply that by more than 100 million fillings a year (in the United States alone) and that gives you an idea of the magnitude of the problem.

The dental industry went before the Legislature’s Natural Resource Committee and got an exemption for this toxic substance that goes directly into children’s mouths by creating a loophole claiming it is already regulated. It is regulated as a hazardous waste and is trapped in amalgam separators. It is an unregulated toxic waste in our children’s mouths.

The bill before the Legislature tried to make sure that known toxins were taken out of children’s products, especially if there was a viable and safe alternative. There are safe and reasonable alternatives to mercury fillings. Last year MaineCare covered 41,365 resin fillings. However, they also covered 4,703 mercury amalgam fillings. Of those, 4,699 were placed in children, the most at-risk segment of our society to use this substance.

The dental industry uses mercury because it’s cheap and easy and can be slapped into a mouth with little finesse. They cost less, but the profit margin is large. There was no reason to exempt mercury amalgams except for huge profits for the dental industry and because they are unwilling to admit that they have spent over a century poisoning us.

As if putting a known neurotoxin into a child’s mouth isn’t bad enough, we have no idea of the synergistic effects with other toxins to which children are exposed. Combine that exposure with the other mercury loads by way of thimerosal and fish and toys, and we are feeding a neurotoxic soup to our most vulnerable population.

In the interest of protecting citizens, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Japan, Finland and Canada have taken steps to limit and phase out the use of amalgam restorations, especially in pregnant and nursing women, as well as children under 8. California has followed suit.

We had hoped backroom deals wouldn’t be made to exempt this very obvious toxic product. It has been a fairly bitter battle over the years because when it comes to the health of our children versus industry lobbyists and profit, profit wins every time.

Kathleen McGee is a director of the Maine Toxics Action Coalition.