Should I get all my silver fillings replaced?

Patients often come to our office and are concerned about their silver fillings leaking mercury into their mouths. However, please put your mind at ease! The amount of mercury in amalgam fillings is incredibly small, and is actually quite stable in the hardened phase in your mouth. In fact, you receive much more mercury exposure when a silver filling is removed than you do by just leaving it alone. While even that amount is extremely low and incredibly unlikely to cause any harm to your health, we typically only recommend replacing silver fillings when there is an actual problem with the tooth. Replacing them for the sake of replacing them doesn’t actually make sense!