Neurological symptoms among dental assistants: a cross-sectional study

All dental assistants still at work and born before 1970 registered in the archives of a trade union in Hordaland county of Norway were invited to participate (response rate 68%, n = 41), as well as a similar number of randomly selected assistant nurses (response rate 87%, n = 64) in the same age group. The participants completed a self-administered, mailed questionnaire, with questions about demographic variables, life-style factors, musculoskeletal, neurological and psychosomatic symptoms (Euroquest).The dental assistants reported significant higher occurrence of neurological symptoms; psychosomatic symptoms, problems with memory, concentration, fatigue and sleep disturbance, but not for mood. This was found by analyses of variance, adjusting for age, education, alcohol consumption, smoking and personality traits. For each specific neurological symptom, adjusted logistic regression analyses were performed, showing that these symptoms were mainly from arms, hands, legs and balance organs.There is a possibility that the higher occurrence of neurological symptoms among the dental assistants may be related to their previous work exposure to mercury amalgam fillings. This should be studied further to assess the clinical importance of the reported symptoms.Mercury is known to be a potential health hazard, both for kidneys, the nervous system and reproduction [1-3]. Persons employed in the dental profession might have been exposed to metallic mercury during their work with the dental filling material amalgam. Amalgam has been the main dental filling material in Norway from 1945 to the mid-1980s. One of the amalgam filling materials used was the alloy copper amalgam [4]. It was prepared by heating a tablet, and this could give concentrations of mercury fumes in the air above 1.0 mg/m3, 20 times the limit value in Norway at the time [5]. Other types of amalgam alloys and different preparation methods have also been applied, causing less mercury exposure. In 1981 the Norweg