American dentists use more dental x-rays than any other country in the world but American patients have less oral cancer than most other countries. If correctly used dental x-rays were seriously harmful there would be lots of problems in the United States.

          The new dental x-ray films used today are very sensitive so that dental x-rays do not need to be as strong as years ago. Dental x-ray films also have a small sheet of lead behind the film so that much less x-rays go thorough the back of the film on to other areas in your mouth.

          Some dental x-ray films use an intensifying screen that glows after x-rays hit it. This glowing makes the picture on the dental film and fewer x-rays are needed to make a nice dental picture.

          Most dental x-ray films are small and only need a small amount of x-rays to make a picture. Medical x-rays need much larger films and much larger amounts of x-rays to make a picture.

          Years ago some dentists failed to correctly use dental x-rays and exposed their own hands to more radiation than was safe. Dentistry learned it's lesson the hard way.