Going up in smoke
Even with the British summer weather up to its usual tricks and variations it seems a sad time of the year to consider the pros and cons of cremation. But not if you live and work in Barnsley where the local council has just increased its fees by £18 per person to cover the cost of adding mercury filters to their crematoria.
Apparently by 2013 all UK crematoria will have to have the mechanisms fitted as a result of the evaporation of mercury from amalgam restorations. No doubt this is a legacy of the 'heavy-metal' generation that Prof Jimmy Steele's report on the NHS highlighted so well. The fall-out from fillings has been known about for years and so to some extent it is surprising that the politicians haven't latched onto it before. In the same way that certain goods now carry a green levy to cover the environmental cost of their eventual disposal, why not a similar premium on the humble amalgam? While it might be yet another inducement for patients to move towards tooth coloured materials, has anybody (no pun intended) or any body, investigated the by-products of incinerating composite resins or even titanium for that matter? Come back Steptoe, all is forgiven.
North of the border
With current discussion about the eventual referendum on independence for Scotland it came as a sobering revelation that as well as having the worst dental hygiene in the UK, nearly one in five adults north of the border regularly skips brushing their teeth in the morning.
Is this the best sort of starting point for a new nation I wonder, when 20 per cent of the population admit to having gone without brushing their teeth for more than two days? I suppose that the Council of Europe or even the United Nations would probably turn a blind eye to a new member country with poor oral hygiene but I also wonder if, statistically, it would improve the oral cleanliness ranking of the rest of the UK if the Scots were to cede from the Union?
By George
There seem to be so many odd syndromes and disorders out there, most of which we would never come across in a practising lifetime but which somehow manage to creep into the newspapers. Witness the recent story of a dental patient in Oregon, USA who went to the dentist to have some teeth removed and awoke from the anaesthetic with an English accent. The incident has been diagnosed as a case of the rare disorder 'foreign accent syndrome', which is thought to be caused by a small stroke in the part of the brain that affects speech pattern and intonation.
May Winner
The winner of the May prize of Beverly Hills Formula products is Richard Guyver of Hampshire for the caption: ‘I wasn't looking forward to the inspection...but I didn't know he'd be rifling through my drawers!’