To answer this, we must establish three research priorities. In particular, we need basic research on animals that would help us understand the mechanisms by which fluoride may be toxic to the developing brain. If these individuals are at risk, their water must come from a source that is lower in fluoride.
Nicole Davis is a science writer and communications consultant specializing in biomedicine and biotechnology. She holds a PhD in genetics from Harvard University.
Skip to content Fall Spring Winter Fall Issue Archive. Harvard T. Harvard Public Health Magazine expand child menu. Search for:. Scavengers followed wartime armies, according to the medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris. After the shooting stopped at the battle of Waterloo, many of the dead were toothless within hours.
In the first decades of the 20th century, American dentists regularly made full sets of dentures for teenagers so that they would look presentable at graduation.
American soldiers were required to have a minimum number of opposing teeth: six on the top, six on the bottom. Thousands of would-be doughboys and GIs were barred from service in the First and Second World Wars for failing to meet this standard. From May The truth about dentistry. So dire was the state of U. McKay was a dentist in Colorado Springs. McKay contacted a famous Chicago dentist famous in dental circles, anyway and got him to describe the syndrome to the Colorado state dental association.
Hardly anyone paid attention. They found that students raised in Colorado Springs had discolored teeth, whereas students from other areas had normal teeth.
Still, hardly anyone paid attention. In the s, McKay and others identified the staining agent: naturally occurring fluoride compounds in water supplies. This kind of staining, along with the other negative effects of fluorine absorption by bones and ligaments, is now called fluorosis. The researchers also discovered something else: Although the staining looked terrible, people with fluoride stains had fewer decayed and missing teeth.
A small group of dentists began agitating to add low levels of fluoride to drinking water—low enough to avoid staining and also low enough to be safe. Those dentists would soon get corporate reinforcement. Fluorine, a chemical element, is lethal in small doses and extremely reactive.
Fluorides—compounds of fluorine—can be nearly as toxic but are much more stable. They are a common waste product of the fertilizer, pesticide, refrigeration, glass, steel, and aluminum industries.
Understandably, executives were thrilled to discover that the chemicals they had to get rid of because they could seep into city water systems might be gotten rid of by being jettisoned into city water systems.
Less understandably, some later anti-fluoridation activists described the corporate embrace of fluoridation as evidence of a Communist plot. It was more like a capitalist plot. From to , the secretary of the Treasury was Andrew W. Mellon, a founder of the Aluminum Company of America, better known as Alcoa. The U. Public Health Service was then under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department. In January , Alcoa chemists discovered high levels of fluoride in the water in and around Bauxite, Arkansas, an Alcoa company town.
Eight years later, a biochemist at the Mellon Institute, in Pittsburgh, became the first researcher to call for the widespread fluoridation of water. Additional impetus came during the Second World War.
The Manhattan Project—the crash effort to develop the atomic bomb—processed uranium by combining it with huge amounts of fluorine to form uranium hexafluoride. Large quantities of other fluoride compounds, including the DuPont refrigerant Freon, were needed.
Accidents exposed employees to these little-understood substances, killing some and sickening others. Under the guise of protecting teeth, the Manhattan Project set about obtaining data on long-term fluoride exposure. Both cities added fluoride to their water. In both cases, the control was a nearby city that did not add fluoride. The experiments were supposed to continue for at least a decade, with dentists in each city examining their patients to evaluate long-term effects. As it happened, one of the control cities fluoridated its water within seven years because its citizens had heard rumors about the benefits.
Fluoridation took off. So did the anti-fluoride movement, a loose coalition of Christian Scientists, Boston society ladies, chiropractors, biochemists, homeopaths, anti-Semites, and E.
Bronner, the spiritualist soap-maker. The opposition mostly failed. Still more Americans get fluoride from soft drinks, most of which are made with fluoridated water. Some bottled water is fluoridated too. In , Grand Rapids, celebrating its historic role, erected a foot-high powder-blue sculptural monument to fluoridation. The fluoride revolution was not restricted to the United States. Fluoridation FAQ. Science-based answers to common questions about fluoride in water.
Recent fluoride issues. Facts on new fluoridation systems, overall health effects and more. More about fluoridation and oral health. It prevents tooth decay. Fluoride in water is the most efficient way to prevent cavities, one of the most common childhood diseases. An estimated 51 million school hours and million work hours are lost each year due to dental-related illness. Community water fluoridation is so effective at preventing tooth decay that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention named it one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.
It protects all ages against cavities. Studies show that fluoride in community water systems prevents at least 25 percent of tooth decay in children and adults, even with widespread public access to fluoride from other sources such as fluoride toothpaste.
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