A sense of place

Hancocks, Stephen

doi:10.1038/sj.bdj.2013.110

Br Dent J

2013

DOI: 10.1038/sj.bdj.2013.110

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A sense of place

Stephen Hancocks

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Cited by 5 publications

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“…There has been widespread positive welcome and overwhelming support, including from the BDA and FDI, for the Minamata Convention (http://www.unep.org/newscentre), an international treaty on mercury announced earlier this year and signed in that eponymous Japanese town on 10 October 2013. I touched on the Convention in a previous editorial 1 as, most importantly for the dental profession, it includes a phase-down in the use of dental amalgam as a restorative material rather than a ban; a possibility which had been hitherto floated as a near certainty and arguably only avoided by substantial and well co-ordinated lobbying.…”

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confidence: 99%

It's the environment, stupid

Hancocks

2013

Br Dent J

Self Cite

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

It's the environment, stupid

Hancocks

2013

Br Dent J

Self Cite

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Policy Development Fosters Collaborative Practice

Meyer

Kaste

Lituri

et al. 2016

Dental Clinics of North America

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Defining moments

Hancocks

2013

Br Dent J

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In a scene near the beginning of the classic 1960s film The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman's young character Benjamin Braddock is taken to one side by a family friend and given a single word of apparently worldly wisdom 'plastics'. It is played very seriously, which is what makes it so deliciously absurd, but it was undoubtedly the sort of careers guidance that was handed out at that time in the anticipation that plastics were the future. And so it turned out to be; where would we be without them?As with the substance itself in its countless forms the word plastic has many uses and connotations too, not all of them very flattering. We refer to credit card funds as plastic money, implying that it is not quite real. We use it as a somewhat disparaging adjective for something (or somebody) that does not quite match our standards or tastes and we infer that at best it will be a transitory or temporary solution to whatever problem we are trying to solve. A plastic one will do for the meanwhile.We are also guilty of using the word somewhat loosely in clinical dentistry. For example, all restorative materials can be described as plastic because of the requirement we have of them to be malleable to enable placement in a cavity or on a tooth surface. So, slightly bewilderingly in view of the ongoing debates, amalgam is technically also a plastic material in that it has inherent plasticity. More usually we think of plastics as nonamalgam restoratives; the composites, glass ionomers, compomers and other resin variants. Then again, we also use the term to describe the instruments we manipulate in placing and shaping the materials 'please pass me the flat plastic'. Very confusing. DENTAL PLASTICS IN THE ENVIRONMENTThe subject is of relevance because we need to be vigilant about the materials we are using in the light of the new Minamata Convention, as touched upon in a recent editorial. While breathing a collective sigh of relief that amalgam has not been banned but is rather being 'phased down', the dental profession has been given some time to possibly develop new materials and to ensure that the other materials that we are currently using are also safe environmentally. This is important because the charge against mercury in amalgam fillings and the impetus to reduce and then eliminate our reliance on it is based on environmental considerations.Coming to the aid of the cause is a welcome announcement from the Shirley Glasston Hughes (SGH) Trust Fund which is inviting tenders for a research of grant of up to £200,000 (in real not plastic money) for projects which will investigate the question 'Do dental restorative materials containing plastics act as environmental pollutants?' Bids for the funding must come from teams led by a primary care dentist and research proposals have to be received by 29 April 2013. Full details can be found on www.bda.org/curiousabout. Applications will be assessed by a panel of international experts, with the winning bid expected to be announced in September.The topic was selected by dentists and denta...

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A sense of place

Cited by 5 publications

References 4 publications

It's the environment, stupid

It's the environment, stupid

Policy Development Fosters Collaborative Practice

Defining moments

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