Fluoride for drinking water?

[A Lurker]

I'm assuming the large 20L drinking bottles do not have fluoride in them.? This being the case I would like to know where I can buy fluoride drops to put in for my kids drinking water.

 

Have done a search around the old posts but haven't come up with anything.

 

Any ideas?

[Sheryl]

You cannot easily get this and I do not advise it - fluroide is quite toxic and when added to drinking water must be in very precise and very, very minute  quantities.

 

You can get toothpastes with fluoride in them (many brands) and dentists can provide topical fluoride treatments every 6 months (they should get checkups 6 monthly anyhow). Stick to that.

[mogandave]

What a long way pediatric dentistry has come since the dry-drill days.




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[A Lurker]

Thanks Cheryl.

[bazza73]

On 23/06/2017 at 2:43 PM, Sheryl said:

You cannot easily get this and I do not advise it - fluroide is quite toxic and when added to drinking water must be in very precise and very, very minute  quantities.

 

You can get toothpastes with fluoride in them (many brands) and dentists can provide topical fluoride treatments every 6 months (they should get checkups 6 monthly anyhow). Stick to that.

Sorry Sheryl, I have to disagree with you. Topical treatments and toothpaste fluorides are a bandaid - the fluoride has to be ingested. Although you are correct in saying the quantity needs to be small. Larger quantities cause enamel mottling.

Fluoride drops can be purchased at pharmacies. The aim is about 0.7 mg/L  in drinking water. The profit margin is huge - I once calculated a margin of about 5000 % on the raw material cost of sodium fluoride.

As anecdotal evidence, I present my family. My former wife and I were in a pre-fluoridation generation. We have probably paid for the Mercedes of several dentists between us.

We fed our son fluoride drops in the baby food. Victoria, Australia fluoridates the water supply.

He has had one cavity in his whole life ( now 43 ),and bitched bitterly about that. I'm still having implants.

The anti-fluoride brigade has a lot to answer for.

 

 

[mogandave]

My dad was born in 1912, did not know what a toothbrush was until he was drafted for WWll. Never lost a tooth and had his first root canal at 70.

I grew up in Southern California brushing my teeth and drinking Fluorinated water and have had trouble with my teeth my whole life.





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[bazza73]

13 hours ago, mogandave said:

My dad was born in 1912, did not know what a toothbrush was until he was drafted for WWll. Never lost a tooth and had his first root canal at 70.

I grew up in Southern California brushing my teeth and drinking Fluorinated water and have had trouble with my teeth my whole life.





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In that case, perhaps you should look at your mother's dental history.

[honu]

Fluoride really would help improve teeth but eating foods high in sugar could offset that.

 

I just researched the subject of fluoride related to writing a blog about tea, since fluoride occurs naturally in tea (and in some natural water sources; it's a mineral, contained in different forms of salts).

 

All that doesn't translate much into advice for here, but I'll add a little on what I've read.  I ran across reference to people in Europe using salts as an additive for fluoride intake but one would need to be very careful about dosage, especially related to what children consume.  I would spend a day reading up first if I was going to put my kids on fluoride (which might not be a bad idea).  I cited guidelines for fluoride exposure for children from Web MD in that post but I wouldn't just go with what a source like that says:

 

 

 

In the US water is treated within the range of .7 to 1.2 ppm (or mg / liter; it works out to be the same).  I was just reading an interesting study on the same practices applied in Ireland in 2001, on results, risks, etc., resulting in a move to dropping the target level from .08-.1 ppm to .6-.8 ppm, related to some cases of dental fluorosis, of getting too much of it:

 

https://www.fluoridesandhealth.ie/download/documents/fluoridation_forum_summary.pdf

 

For an adult either 3 or 4 mg / day is one earlier recommended dose, but then some later versions cite that as a daily limit instead (with a more conventional limit cited as 10 mg / day).  This is the part that gets tricky; sources like the EPA or CDC (US Environmental Protection Agency or Center for Disease Control) might be citing dated references, although this fact sheet released in 2015 by the EPA shouldn't be too dated:

 

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/2011_fluoride_questionsanswers.pdf

 

 

I ran through a lot of that background in more detail in my own article but the second half was on how much is present in tea.  That would seem strange to add tea to your kids' diets though, since caffeine intake isn't recommended for children:

 

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2017/07/fluoride-in-tea-good-or-bad-how-much-is.html

 

 

[Speedo1968]

From what I recall fluoride was used in the UK in national government water supplies.

Eventually local governments were given the option to use it because of concerns over the safety of fluoride.

It was rejected by most local governments over health risks.

Around 5 million people in the UK continue to have fluoridated water, mainly around one city.

The national government is again pushing for its use but, local governments have insisted that the local populations

must be asked.

I expect most, as in the past, will say no.

If you are from the UK the link below will tell you what areas of the UK have fluoridated water.

 

https://www.uk-water-filters.co.uk/fluoride_areas_uk.html

[honu]

In that post on fluoride I linked to a longer National Research Council (US agency study) about a review of all the risks related to fluoride, citing most of the main studies conducted and most of the main issues for concern.  

 

It's a long read, nearly 400 pages, but it tells the whole story, or at least the best current understanding of it:

 

http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/nrc/NRC-2006.pdf

 

The short version is that there is evidence too much fluoride poses a health risk, but then no one is really contesting that, it's accepted understanding.  The part that gets interpreted differently is how much is too much, and people tend to get confused related to variables.  Naturally occurring fluoride throws off review of risks of added levels of fluoride because people drinking well or stream water with naturally higher levels throws off statistics related to risk (effects) of added levels.  

 

In the US there is a real issue if reducing municipal water levels to 4 mg / liter (ppm) is really safe (when a source contains fluoride at higher levels than that), if that shouldn't be lower, but the standard EPA advice is that 4 mg / liter is a mandated limit, a requirement, and it really should be treated to lower, down to 2 mg / liter or less, with in the range of 1 mg / liter more ideal.

 

I don't really have a final personal conclusion related to all this.  The conspiracy theory / "it's government mind control" take seems clearly wrong but I don't know if the benefits outweigh any possible risks.

[Speedo1968]

28 minutes ago, honu said:

In that post on fluoride I linked to a longer National Research Council (US agency study) about a review of all the risks related to fluoride, citing most of the main studies conducted and most of the main issues for concern.  

 

It's a long read, nearly 400 pages, but it tells the whole story, or at least the best current understanding of it:

 

http://www.actionpa.org/fluoride/nrc/NRC-2006.pdf

 

The short version is that there is evidence too much fluoride poses a health risk, but then no one is really contesting that, it's accepted understanding.  The part that gets interpreted differently is how much is too much, and people tend to get confused related to variables.  Naturally occurring fluoride throws off review of risks of added levels of fluoride because people drinking well or stream water with naturally higher levels throws off statistics related to risk (effects) of added levels.  

 

In the US there is a real issue if reducing municipal water levels to 4 mg / liter (ppm) is really safe (when a source contains fluoride at higher levels than that), if that shouldn't be lower, but the standard EPA advice is that 4 mg / liter is a mandated limit, a requirement, and it really should be treated to lower, down to 2 mg / liter or less, with in the range of 1 mg / liter more ideal.

 

I don't really have a final personal conclusion related to all this.  The conspiracy theory / "it's government mind control" take seems clearly wrong but I don't know if the benefits outweigh any possible risks.

One of the reasons, apart from general health risks, why the UK local county administrations turned down chlorinated water was, because of fear of repercussions / court proceedings should there be a massive leakage of chlorine into the water supply.

[perthperson]

8 hours ago, Speedo1968 said:

One of the reasons, apart from general health risks, why the UK local county administrations turned down chlorinated water

 

All domestic water supplies in the UK are chlorinated. 

 

http://www.water.org.uk/consumers/water-and-health/faqs

[mogandave]

Chlorinated, Fluoridated, what's the difference!


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[Crossy]

4 minutes ago, mogandave said:

Chlorinated, Fluoridated, what's the difference!

 

Chlorinated to kill bugs.

 

Fluoridated primarily to protect teeth.

[honu]

I wrote a follow-up summary for another site (TChing) and turned up a reference related to how much is in tea.  I'd already mentioned a study in India that passed on a range (1 to 3 mg / liter), but this mentions more commercial types:

 

Lipton and Tetley tea bags are around 2 to 2 1/2 mg / liter, roughly double the treatment level of .7 - 1.2 mg / liter (or ppm, the same thing).  I'm wondering if the benefit isn't really greater for children since their teeth are still growing, and they would be less likely to drink tea (at least in the US or Thailand; maybe in England they drink it, and in China many definitely do).

 

As to limit the latest best-practice EPA advice is to limit long term exposure to .08 mg / kg body weight per day, or 6 mg / day for a person that weighs 75 kg (155 pounds).  Three cups of tea a day might reach that, depending on type, with no input from water source at all.  One of the highest real risks is from naturally occurring fluoride in water sources; untreated versions can have 10 mg / liter in them, although that would be rare outside North Africa and the Middle East (not sure why there is more of it there).

 

That blog post (really just a cleaned up summary of the first one, with more about that table at the end):

 

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2017/08/fluoride-in-tea-summary-version.html

[sappersrest]

This may be of interest to some.

 

FLUORIDE CONTENT OF COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE BOTTLED DRINKING WATER IN BANGKOK, THAILAND

Praphasri Rirattanapong1 and Opas Rirattanapong2

1Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, Mahidol University, Bangkok; 2Surin Dental Care Clinic, Mueang, Surin, Thailand

http://www.tm.mahidol.ac.th/seameo/2016-47-5/27-691223-1112.pdf

[honu]

Very interesting; thanks.  We switched from using Singha bottled water (the water cooler type) to a multi-filtration system for drinking tap water about a year ago.  I guess it seems possible my kids were ingesting fluoride through that bottled water, since Singha is listed there testing at .43 mg / liter.

 

Note the article mentions a recommended input range is .6 --.7 mg / liter for hot climates (people would drink more water here).  Of course not everyone is on that page, that any is good, but per my understanding .43 is completely safe.

 

I drink quite a bit of tea myself so I almost certainly wouldn't benefit at all from any supplement to what that would provide.  Ordinary tea-bag teas test in the range of 2 to 2.5 mg / liter for brewed teas, or lower for most high quality loose tea sources, more in the range of .5 to 1.5 mg / liter.