When Lazar Franklin, who coaches youth football in the South End, heard about a game in central Massachusetts where five players sustained concussions, he could hardly contain his frustration.
“What were they thinking?” Franklin said of the coaches and officials, who did not stop the lopsided game even when the losing team could not field the required number of healthy players. “There was no reason for that game to keep going.”
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There's another reason contact sports, head concussions and jars to jaw can be dangerous to kids: if they have mercury amalgam dental "silver fillings", small amounts of toxic mercury off-gas in the presence of heat and abrasion, which is inhaled and contributes to the lifetime body, brain and cell burden of mercury. This potent neurotoxin is especially dangerous for those with the ApoE4 gene type, who do not clear mercury well, and can develop a host of chronic, costly, debilitating diseases from chronic, low-level mercury toxicity. Wearing a mouth guard is protective against teeth impact. How many children with these fillings are involved in other sports that result in occasional head injuries and jars to the jaw? It is time for neuroscience to look into the science of mercury poisoning, and for the FDA to follow the recommendations of its own 2010 scientific advisory panel to restrict mercury dental amalgam in young children, pregnant women, and those with a known allergy to mercury. It is time for informed consent in dentistry so we get the same warnings the dentists get from the manufacturers about its toxicity, information sheets like we get for prescription drugs, and patch tests like we are told to do before coloring our hair, before a risky medical device that was grandfathered by the FDA, and never proven as safe, is installed permanently in the mouths of our children, our family members, and ourselves.
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Why do we play such sports as football, boxing and hockey? I don't think that parents should allow their kids to do them, period. I cannot fathom why a parent is willing to risk his or her child's brain (and joint) health by letting them, even encouraging them, to engage in these sports.
Parents definitely bear major responsibility. Children that young shouldn't be playing sports that are apt to cause life threatening or life changing injury -- football, rugby, ski jumping, pole vaulting, etc If you love your kid, you don't allow it. If you're an irresponsible parent and your child is seriously injured, look in the mirror instead of trying to blame everyone in sight.