Saturday, October 3, 2009

The "Smoking Tooth"

There's a video out there called the "Smoking Tooth" video, depicting a lot of vapor rising from a recently extracted tooth that contained a silver filling. Silver fillings contain trace amounts of mercury. The video claims that the vapor rising from the filling is mercury. There's one small problem with this claim.

Mercury vapor is heaver than air.

If mercury was indeed coming off that tooth as vapor, the vapor would be FALLING not rising. Whatever is coming off that tooth, it's not mercury vapor. Anyone with dental training would have received enough basic science education to know this.

Why then is the narration in the video talking about mercury, when basic chemistry tells us that the vapor RISING from the tooth can't be mercury vapor? Is this a deliberate fabrication, or mere scientific illiteracy and incompetence? Is IAOMT, the distributors of the video, engaging in deliberate fraud, or merely displaying fundamental ignorance of the materials involved?

In short is the IAOMT lying or just plain stupid?

You can check out Mercury Fillings: A Mouthful of Death! by Skeptoid for more details, including the rather shocking fact that a chemist was involved in the production of the video! I shudder to think about the quality of work coming from a chemist who doesn't know mercury vapor would fall in air. You'd think if it was a deliberate fake he'd at least know to have falling vapor!

2 comments:

Dentists Daytona Beach said...

Is it even safe? Mercury is toxic for our body. That's very worrying issue.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, you are wrong in your mental excercise...check out this video of mercury vapor coming off of a mercury spill in carpet...no water there!

http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/WPIE/HazSub/Mercury.htm#MercVideo