Oral Examinations were conducted on 1166 Air Force male veterans as part of a battery of medical tests. The examination was designed to assess the oral health level of participants including caries, soft- tissue lesions, and complete tooth and surface based inventory of dental restorative materials. Caries was measured using the NIDR DMF scoring system, soft tissue lesions were recorded including type, description of lesion and location dental restorative materials were classified into five categories, including amalgams. Urine and whole blood samples were collected and assayed for total and inorganic mercury concentrations. The age of the 1127 study participants who had complete clinical and laboratory data was 52.8 years. Overall, 4.8 percent of these participants were edentulous. Dentate individuals averaged 19.9 amalgam surfaces per person, 3.09 mu g total mercury per liter in urine (range was 0 - 35 mu g/l), and 2.55 mu g total mercury per liter of whole blood (range 0 - 44 mu g/l). The correlations between the total number of surfaces with amalgam and total mercury concentrations in urine and whole blood were 0.34 and 0.09, respectively. For inorganic mercury the correlations were 0.34 in urine and 0.15 in whole blood. Both were statistically significant, but the blood 0.14 association estimate was considered trivial and clinically meaningless, as the range of inorganic mercury was from non-detectable to 4 mu g per liter maximally in these participants. The modest correlations for urine are clinically significant in that they are consistent with the suspected inhalation and ingestion of small amounts of mercury from amalgams.
