May 21, 2009

´FULL_NAMEª ´ADDRESS_1ª ´ADDRESS_2ª ´CITYª, ´STATE_PROVINCEª ´ZIPª

Dear Dr. ´LAST_NAMEª:

The Pennsylvania Dental Association (PDA) and the Philadelphia County Dental Society (PCDS) are working hard on your behalf to enact reasonable laws and regulations regarding the use of dental amalgam and patient education. For more than four years, PDA and PCDS have advocated for dentistry before the Philadelphia City Council and Department of Health, and the results demonstrate the value of organized dentistry for all dentists.

Without our intervention, Philadelphia dentists would now face a requirement to display posters in offices about the dangers of “mercury amalgam.” This mandate was removed from a proposed ordinance during negotiations and a compromise was reached that Philadelphia dentists must distribute an information sheet about restorative options to all patients who receive amalgam restorations and have them acknowledge receipt of the information sheet. PDA and PCDS were successful in preventing important patient information being written by politicians, as opposed to the science-trained members of the Board of Health. PDA and PCDS believe that dentistry was ultimately successful in preventing the passage of harmful requirements in the ordinance.

However, our work did not stop there. The PDA and PCDS, along with the New Era Dental Society, continued advocating for all dentists before the Philadelphia Board of Health to ensure its adoption of an information sheet based on sound science. We believe we achieved our goal when the Board of Health adopted an information sheet in March that, while not perfect, is based largely on the information we provided, despite strong opposition from anti-amalgam groups. While the Board of Health generally based the information sheet on science, we do not agree with every statement in the document. For example, the information sheet mistakenly refers to amalgam as a hazardous waste. In fact, the federal Environmental Protection Agency does not list amalgam as a hazardous waste. We will work with the Board of Health to correct the definition in any future updates to the information sheet.

The City Council accepted this information sheet on April 30 and now all Philadelphia dentists have 120 days in which to comply with the new law. Included with this letter is a copy of the information sheet that all of your patients who receive amalgam restorations must receive, only once. You and your patient (or the patient’s representative) must provide signatures at the bottom acknowledging receipt. You should retain the original copy of the signed form in your patients’ records. You may photocopy this information sheet or download it for your use off of the Philadelphia Department of Health’s website at http://www.phila.gov/Health/. This law became effective on May 18, 2009, and dentists have 120 days to comply, but we encourage you to begin using the information sheet and obtaining signatures now. Dental practices “limited to oral and maxillofacial surgery, oral medicine, oral pathology, orthodontics, periodontics or radiology” are exempt from this law.

The use of dental amalgam and educating patients on all restorative options is only one of many issues affecting dentistry. PDA and PCDS will continue advocating on dentists’ behalf on this issue, as it most likely becomes a concern statewide in the future, and all issues impacting the profession and the patients you serve. We value membership in organized dentistry and believe that strength in numbers will only serve to bolster our advocacy efforts and yield positive results for the dental profession.

Sincerely,

Thomas Gamba, DDS, Immediate Past President David Tecosky, DMD, President Pennsylvania Dental Association Philadelphia County Dental Society (215) 546-2312 (215) 236-6200 [email protected] [email protected]