If the victims even knew themselves.Back in February Rachel King told WFAA Television in Dallas/Fort Worth that she was butting against a roadblock trying to persuade doctors to test her for zinc poisoning. King was diagnosed with neuropathy, or nerve damage—and it was severely affecting her life and livelihood. "When I lift my arms it's like somebody is pushing them back down, like they're heavy," King said of her constant pain.
But while doctors agreed on the diagnosis, they could not determine a cause.
It wasn't until King saw a 2009 news report on WFAA about denture adhesive zinc poisoning that King began to suspect the denture adhesive she had been using for more than a decade to keep her dentures in place.
She approached her doctor for a zinc test, but said she was literally laughed out of the office. "I asked for the zinc test and [the doctor] told me…it's ridiculous," King said. "[The doctor] said it was a waste of money and time to do the zinc test."
In the year or so since that episode, a lot more is known about the potential for denture poisoning. The manufacturers of Fixodent denture adhesive and Poligrip have since updated their product labels, and one manufacturer has stopped using zinc in its products altogether.
The other manufacturer is being lobbied hard to do the same.
Plaintiffs who have joined denture cream adhesive lawsuits claim that prior to the updating of product labels, there was little mention of the potential hazards of zinc in denture cream. True, zinc is a naturally-occurring mineral in the body, as is copper. Together, the two strike a delicate balance for optimum health. It is when those levels get out of whack that the troubles soon begin. Specifically, too much zinc can deplete copper levels, which can lead to neuropathy.
That's what happened to Tammy Baugh, who reportedly can barely walk. She too, has joined a lawsuit—although it wasn't specified if she used Fixodent denture adhesive or another brand. But her frustrations were similar to King's. She told WFAA that even though zinc had been found in her system through a previous test, a visit to a hospital emergency room proved frustrating after she failed to convince the attending nurse as to the cause of her neuropathy.
"[She] said 'it couldn't be that, denture cream couldn't cause that,'" Baugh recalls.
At the time, product labels stressed only the recommended usage amounts, without cautions as to what could happen if too much of the product was used. There was also no regulatory requirement to list amounts of zinc in the product.
To be fair to the manufacturers, the amount of zinc based on recommended usage was small, and likely would pose little risk. However, recommended usage was out of sync with real-world usage trends.
In a nutshell, dentures can be expensive—and those who can acquire them in the first place either do not have the financial ability to update them regularly or were ignorant of the need to update dentures every few years due to changes in the shape of the mouth via the natural aging process.
READ MORE FIXODENT DENTURE CREAM POISONING LEGAL NEWS
While product labels recommended usage amounts for optimum results, there was little cautionary text regarding the need to avoid excessive use and why.
The "why," we now know, is the potential for denture cream zinc poisoning. Rachel King and Tammy Baugh didn't know and are suffering for it. Doctors and nurses didn't know, either. They do now. As to whether manufacturers knew, the allegation is that they did—and either failed to disclose that risk or simply turned a blind eye to the excessive manner by which denture wearers were actually using the product. The answer will likely emerge in the courts of law.