The automotive industry isn’t the only Western New York business group looking over its shoulder at China.

Local dental labs are beginning to lose clients to overseas trade in products like crowns, bridges and partial dentures, said Tom Graser, owner of Graser’s Dental Ceramics in Amherst and member of the Buffalo and Niagara Dental Lab Owner’s Association.

“With these products from China, some questions arise,” Graser said. “Do the patients know what they’re getting? Do the doctors realize what they’re getting?”



Lower quality imports?

Dr. Robert Chick, of Mid-City Dentistry in North Tonawanda, said he has seen some local labs advertising the savings that are possible by exporting work, but he’s wary on the quality of service they can provide.

“I believe in the quality of our local craftsmen,” Chick said. “We have an intimate dialogue with our labs. You can send your patient to a lab to check the shades and get an exact match. You can’t do that when something goes out of the country.”

Even if the products look fine going in today, recent imports of dangerous and toxic products from China bring the longevity and safety of these products into question, Chick said.

Joe Procopio, owner of Pro-Esthetics Dental Laboratory in Lancaster, said that even though the materials from China come with a stamp of approval that lists what’s in it, that guarantee is difficult to trust when it comes from unknown suppliers so far away.

“The only way to really know what’s in it is to break it down,” Procopio said. “So after it’s in, you won’t know and it turns into a waiting game.”

Pan-Am Dental Laboratory, a national company which has a branch in Cheektowaga and recently expanded into Rochester, is one of the local labs that ships its work overseas.

Pan-Am’s New York President Mike Kirkpatrick hadn’t returned calls as of press time, but the company’s Web site claims that “each case goes through three quality control checks to ensure proper margin, occlusion and anatomical precision to ensure patient satisfaction and less call-backs.”

International suppliers are required to list the substances used to produce their work on a sticker to ensure they’re using Food and Drug Administration approved ingredients. But the competitive pricing offered by Chinese retailers, who market some products at between 30-50 percent savings, has to come at a price and labor costs are only part of the equation, Procopio said.

“The price of gold is the price of gold all over the world,” Procopio said. “Most crowns have some kind of noble or high noble alloy, and if they’re using a cheap alloy or a substitute, it could be contaminated.”

Chick said he isn’t taking any chances with his patients where health and quality are concerned.

“When you’re dealing with people’s health, you don’t cut corners,” Chick said.



Loss of jobs

Along with the concern for the quality of imported work comes worries about the future of dental lab technicians in Western New York. Graser’s lab hasn’t taken a hit so far, but Procopio said he has had to lay off one of his staff and take another person to part time due to decreased demand.

To keep up, Procopio’s office has moved into new territory, producing removable dentures since the turn around time makes it impossible to get those products from China, he said.

“It changes our business strategy,” Procopio said. “To try to compete, we have to offer the doctors a little more bang for their buck.”

Some other labs are adapting to the shift by becoming more like brokers, taking orders from local dentists and shipping them out to China instead of doing the work in-house, Graser said. With that sort of setup at least some money stays local, but the craftsmen who provide skilled labor are left without work.

“There’s a lot of effort and skill involved,” Graser said. “It’s an art and a science combined and takes years of training and experience. Larger labs break the process down into its incremental steps and hire a lower skilled work force. But with the Chinese product, you have the process broken down into very small steps and you can’t reproduce that attention to detail on an assembly line.”



Looking to the future

If the track records of other industries are any indication, the flow of business to China isn’t likely to end soon. But many dentists won’t look to China for any of their needs because of the quality concern and long-standing relationships with local suppliers who deliver quality work with a guarantee, Chick said.

“I’ve never seen the price comparison,” Chick said. “I don’t even want to be tempted.”

For now, all a local lab can do is show dentists the quality of its products and services in the hope that business continues to come in, Graser said.

“We’ll just do better work than anybody else,” Graser said. “It’s the same way a small retail operation competes with Wal-mart: Offer better customer service and a better product.”

Contact reporter Daniel Pyeat 693-1000, ext. 158.