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Home › Articles › Dental Health › Fluoride in Our Water?

Fluoride in Our Water?

An Issue You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

By Alyson English

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Gussman says that a visit to the dentist now, however, if very different than it was even 50 years ago. "In the case of fluoridation, people who grew up before air-powered drills rightly remember a dental visit as very painful," he says. "People facing dentistry of 50 or 100 years ago would accept a small risk of fluorosis to avoid many dental visits and have a better chance of keeping their teeth through adulthood."

Risks of Fluoride Treatment
But today, that small risk of fluorosis that Gussman mentions is enough to convince many people to eliminate fluoride as a water or toothpaste supplement. Fluorosis is a condition that, in its mild form, causes white mottling of the tooth enamel. More severe cases of fluorosis will result in dark brown spots all over the teeth and some degeneration of the enamel integrity.

And while the connection between fluoride ingestion and fluorosis is clear, some groups have begun to examine connections between fluoride and other health issues.

Dr. Kathleen Thiessen, senior scientist at SENES Oak Ridge, Inc., Center for Risk Analysis, has been involved in some of these studies. Dr. Thiessen maintains that because people have different levels of water intake, the distribution of fluoride is not controlled enough for it to be considered generally safe.

"For fluoridated water to be 'safe' would mean that all individual exposures to fluoride from fluoridated water are below a level at which adverse health effects might be expected to occur in at least some individuals," Dr. Thiessen says.

The risk-to-benefit ration, for Dr. Thiessen, isn't compelling enough to support the practice. "My review of the literature to date indicates little if any benefit from public water fluoridation, particularly for those most at need of improved dental health, and a variety of risks of adverse health effects, especially for those with high water intakes, impaired fluoride excretion or dietary deficiencies," she says.


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