Re: Environmental Issues Concerning Mercury Emissions from Amalgam Waste and the Responsibility of Dental Clinics in Canada, Oral Health, June 2001
The authors of an article in your June 2001 issue entitled, “Environmental Issues Concerning Mercury Emissions from Amalgam Waste and the Responsibility of Dental Clinics in Canada,” made several misstatements. Most important to us was a complete distortion of our pricing. I never provide these authors with any pricing information due to the fact that they were consultants to a competitor in this field.
Given the reputation of your publication, you also might be interested to learn of several other misstatements by the authors.
First, they misrepresented the Toronto Bylaw, which is readily available public information. On page 31, Table 1 under point 2 under the title ‘Equipment’ they state that for the City of Toronto an ISO 11143 certified amalgam separator or Canadian wide Standard is required for compliance. This is incorrect. Nowhere in the Bylaw is this stated.
Second, the authors further state, “Must be approved by the City.” This is a complete mis-fact and totally inaccurate. In fact, in an e-mail from a city official to me on this issue, he confirmed that in no way is the City involved in any approval process for amalgam separators.
Finally, on page 31, the authors state that “Dental clinics will have to install ISO or CSW certified amalgam separators for the July 1st 2002.” This is incorrect for the above reason as it relates to the ISO requirement but moreover is incorrect for the date. The Toronto Bylaw requires dentists to install amalgam separators by December 31st, 2001.
Again, as a leading publication in the dental field, we are confident you seek to provide accurate information to your readers and when such information is incorrect assume you will do everything in your power to correct such matters.
Marc Sussman
President, CEO
DRNA
Author’s Note:
Regarding the first point mentioning that he [Sussman] did not provide me pricing information, I include copies of e-mail I received directly from him. About the interpretation of the Toronto By-law, the approval process was supposed to be mentioned in the city’s guideline, not in the By-law per se. They may have changed their strategies between January and this summer.
As to the enforcement date, at the time the article was written, the City of Toronto was talking about two sets of dates. I mentioned two dates in point 3 of Table 1 in the column equipment (3.) Norms and standards enforced: (date) Toronto (January and July, 2002). I apologize for what could seem to be an error.
Yves Hennekens
Consultant
