The continuing woes of the crematory mercury emissions issue have reached the Los Angeles Times.

The December 26th article cites several states including Maine, Minnesota, Colorado, and their battles against government wishes to pull teeth, literally, and install half a million dollar scrubbers.

Why does this issue keep growing? It is in short, because cremation rates keep growing. As cited in the LA Times, “According to the Cremation Assn. of North America, a 2005 survey found 46% of Americans planned to choose cremation, compared with 31% in 1990. Its use varies widely by region: In Nevada and Hawaii, two-thirds of bodies were cremated in 2005; in a number of Southern states, a tenth were.”

This was a balanced article, however, one thing always missing from this topic is that although the cremation rates keep growing every single year, the number of dentists using amalgam fillings has been decreasing every single year since the 1970’s. Therefore, this issue has a shelf life of about 30 years, at that time the vast majority of people with mercury in their mouths will have died causing the issue to continually decrease until it becomes a non-issue. In the meantime people will still be accidentally breaking light bulbs releasing as much mercury in their homes as is released in a single cremation. The federal EPA notes that both crematories and broken light bulbs make up less that 1% of the mercury emission in the United States.