What Are The Long-Term Effects Of Ingesting Fluorides On Our Bones?

One of the longest-running controversies in public health is the addition of fluorides to municipal water supplies, a process that occurs all over the world, in numerous different places. Once considered an essential nutrient, fluorine is now recognized as a potential problem for maintaining healthy bones and teeth. The simple fact is that small amounts of fluorine in the form of fluorides helps to prevent cavities in the teeth, but larger amounts can of fluoride cause a range of detrimental effects of varying severity that depend on individual genetics factor.

Fluorides Are Everywhere

Fluorine is a highly reactive, corrosive gas in its chemically combined state. The gas is so chemically active that it quickly forms fluorides with metals, and these fluorides are stable enough to find their way into the food and water supply.

Even if you don't live in a community that uses fluoridation in its water supply, there is no escaping fluorides. A fluoride compound called cryolite is commonly used to make aluminum and as a pesticide. Another fluoride compound, which is known as sulfur hexafluoride, is used as an insulator in electrical transformers. And a third fluoride compound known as polytetrafluoroethylene serves as the building block of Teflon, the non-stick coating that appears on everything from pots and pans to artificial hips. Fluoride can be found in your daily environment in abundance, in other words, but the story doesn't end there.

Fluorides Occur Naturally in Food

We usually think of fluoride as a compound we get from drinking water or stannous fluoride toothpaste, but there is also fluoride in food and beverages. Most foods contain just a trace of fluorides, only 5 to 50 micrograms per 100-gram serving, but some foods contain much more than that. For example:

• Tea (iced or hot), not decaffeinated, contains 302-389 micrograms of fluoride per 100 gram serving.
• Raisins have 234 micrograms of fluoride per 100 gram serving
• Tea (iced or hot), decaffeinated has 220 micrograms of fluoride per 100 gram serving. (The process of removing caffeine also removes fluorides.)
• Canned crab has 210 micrograms of fluoride per 100 gram serving.
• White wine will give you 202 micrograms of fluoride per 100 gram serving.
• McDonald's French fries contain 115 micrograms of fluoride in each 100 gram serving.
• Red wine has 105 micrograms of fluoride per 100 gram serving.

Powdered coffee creamer is also high in fluoride content, although most people use only a very small amount.

Are Fluorides Good for Human Health?

While scientists have concluded that fluorides are not an "essential nutrient," they are sufficiently useful for preventing cavities that in 1997 the Food and Nutrition Board of the US Institute of Medicine recommended a daily dose of 0.01 mg (for infants) to 4.0 mg (for adults) for good dental health. The reason fluorides are helpful in preventing tooth decay is that they activate genes in teeth and bones that power a process called osteoclastogenesis.

This hard-to-pronounce term refers to the creation of "clean up" cells in bones and teeth that break down old bone and tooth tissue so it can be replaced by new healthy cells. This enables the bones and teeth to repair tiny, invisible microfractures that otherwise would lead to a break over time. Too much fluoride, however, leads to too many osteoclasts, and deformities in bones and teeth.