SafeMinds E-News: Fox News Coverage, EPA Regulates Dental Mercury Waste and More

October 2010 Issue 1

Support SafeMinds

SafeMinds Secures FOX News Coverage

Take Action on dental amalgam

US EPA to regulate dental mercury waste

Age of Autism Action Alert

SafeMinds provides statement to Colorado Public Utilities Commission hearing

National Advisory Committee Meeting held

Check Out the New SafeMinds Online Store

Purchase t-shirts, hats, and even baby gifts.

Support SafeMinds When You Shop Online

Purchase your regular Amazon items through the SafeMinds Amazon store and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to SafeMinds.

Or Go shopping and save at:

SafeMinds is a Proud Sponsor of:

and

Age of Autism, the daily web newspaper of the autism epidemic.

SafeMinds secures FOX News coverage of autism and vaccines over the past few weeks

Click here to view video

Click here to view video.

Click here to view video.

Make sure you are a fan of SafeMinds facebook page so you can know ahead of time when these pieces will air. Keep FOX's ratings sky

high and email FOX afterwards. Friends@foxnews.com

Dental Amalgam Take Action and EPA Update

Consumers for Dental Choice has been waging an ongoing battle to force the FDA to ban mercury-containing fillings. New hearings are scheduled for mid-December. Please take a few minutes to submit comments to the FDA supporting this ban. Dental amalgam is the number one source of human exposure to mercury. Use this link to submit comments online:

http://www.toxicteeth.org/natcamp_fedgovt_fda_comments.cfm

You can also mail comments to:

Division of Documents Management, Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fishers Lane, Room 1061
Rockville, MD 20852

Label your comments: Dental Amalgam - Docket Number FDA-2010-N-0268

If you would like to attend the FDA hearings in person, here is the information:

December 14 and 15, 2010, 8am -6pm
Holiday Inn-Gaithersburg, Main Ballroom
2 Montgomery Village Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20879

Click here for details on how to register.

US EPA to regulate dental mercury waste

From IB Times| September 28, 2010

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will propose a rule next year to reduce mercury waste from dental offices.

The proposed rule to be finalized in 2012 is a reversal of Bush-era EPA policy that allowed dentists to take a voluntary approach to installing devices that separate out the mercury from old fillings, recycle and reuse it.

"We welcome EPA's proposal to end the Bush-era midnight deal allowing dentists to pollute until they enacted voluntary pollution prevention initiatives - which never substantially materialized," said Michael Bender, director of the Mercury Policy Project and a steering committee member of the National Mercury Products Campaign.

According to the EPA, dental amalgams, or fillings containing mercury, account for 3.7 tons of mercury discharged from dental offices each year. About 50 percent of mercury entering local waste treatment plants comes from dental amalgam waste. EPA cited an estimate in 2007 that 36 percent of the mercury reaching municipal sewage treatment plants is released by dental offices. Read more.

It is time to start the revolution that our children so desperately need

If ever there was a time that we need your help, it is now. We need your help spreading the word. Click here to find out what you can do in only five minutes that can make a difference.

Click here to view video of Don Imus interviewing Mark Blaxill and Dan Olmsted on Autism's Toxic Origins.

SafeMinds provides statement to Colorado Public Utilities Commission hearing.

Coal-burning power plants are the largest human-caused source of mercury emissions to the air in the United States. Read SafeMinds statement from the September 23, 2010 hearing. View SafeMinds energy policy.

National Vaccine Advisory Committee Meething Held
The highlight of the recent National Vaccine Advisory Committee meeting was the Vaccine Safety Working Group report and recommendations. Following the presentation there was quite a bit of criticism mostly from the public health and drug company members of NVAC. The assumptions were heavily criticized for lack of support, especially the ones relating to public confidence in vaccines. CDC said that despite all the adverse publicity, immunization update remained uniformly high as measured by the annual 17k family national immunization survey. The report for 2009 will be out soon in MMWR. The "emerging consensus" seemed to be that:

Nothing broken with the overall "safety system" so no need to fix.

Any attempt to "fix" it would just draw the fire of public controversy over what is in reality a non-existent controversy.

All that's needed is continued education.

The "real" problem isn't "risk" but "risk perception," so better risk communications is all that's needed and not a huge re-design of the "vaccine safety system."

VSWG Report
VSWG Recommendations
VSWG Update Slides